What I Learned After Begging My Mother For Extra Allowance Money So I Could Buy a Clock Radio
I was in love with a girl.
And I can say this with absolute certainty,
as I was in eighth grade,
and eighth graders know what love is
in ways that you all grow out of
with your big feet, bad skin, left at the pizza place and walking four miles so you don’t have to call someone for a ride and explain,
your first kisses, shocking tongue in mouth, cheeks turned rosy
“experience”.
I didn’t need experience.
I had Saturday afternoons with MTV.
I had heart-in-fist dedications on Casey Kasem,
I had Love Boat reruns still on network television,
so screw your coward jaded blissful knees-quaking “love,”
I was in love with a girl
and she wouldn’t call me back.
I had tried everything.
And by “everything,” I mean
every thing: I tried funny,
awkward,
self-deprecating,
I tried brainy
I tried stories in class about Santa being hit by an airplane
and super-weird honesty,
everything.
I
was in love
with a girl
and the months were winding that love so tight
it could slip and fly across the classroom and
crack
against the blackboard, I
was in love with a girl
and finally at the point
(while sitting in the top bed of my bunk
beds which I had all to myself)
of admitting love
was not enough,
that love!
was not!
enough!
to bend this universe as it needed bent.
I was in love with a girl and sighed
and turned on my little clock radio
to WINK 104
and they said
“Here’s a great song
by ELO,”
and there’s Jeff Lynne telling me “Hold on tight
to your dreams”
even adding emphasis by rephrasing it in French
“Accroche-toi a ton reve,”
and damn, Universe,
you had me going,
I almost gave up on love.
On love!
In the hindsight of adulthood,
of thirtyfive years unlearning what I learned that day,
of good dates, bad dates, eyelashes, folded maps,
yelling “What the hell do you want from me?!” loud enough
to be heard four apartments down,
heart-shaped cards, roses and rings,
fourteen small teddy bears (one for each
month)
poetry that said way too much about the goddamned moon,
the unruly surprise of warm breath in the ear,
I’ve learned that the Electric
Light
Orchestra
maybe could have been a little more specific.
That “Accroche-toi a ton reve,” I never did look that up,
it might only mean: “Don’t eat croutons”.
DJs are not (were not) waiting like archangels
to set the cosmos off its turntable wobble;
they’re people paid by the hour sitting in
tiny airless rooms
who put needles onto grooves
and let it
all
spin.
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