Tell ’em I’m a good kisser
If you’re gonna tell them everything, tell ’em I’m a good kisser. Tell ’em all the things you told me, in your desperate whisper. If you’re gonna tell ’em everything don’t leave out the good part…
I recently discovered a Band. Listening to an entire album and trying to submerge myself in someone else’s artistic representation of reality is probably the number one thing that makes me feel like myself. I discover a new perspective, I feel understood and if the vibe is right it makes my body move. Music is something I wouldn’t know how to live without. When I was a kid I used to have nightmares about going deaf. Like Beethoven. Nothing scared me more. More so than death itself. How could I possibly live in a world that is silent? How could I be me when something that literally defines me is gone? There’s a certain feeling I can only get when I hear someone’s clean voice recorded and spat back out at me through my headphones that is quite indescribable. That sax solo. The passion behind fingers picking at notes on a guitar. It’s as if there were messages hidden in the vibrations and I was always the person meant to receive them.
Today’s entry is mostly influenced by one song in particular. A song that was suggested to me by my dear old friend Spotify who I hope one day will sponsor this blog. Who knows. One can dream, it’s free. You know how they prepare daily mixes for you? Well, this song was on one of them and I loved it from the start. It was a love affair between me at the vocals at the very beginning of this wonderful music composition. Our singer talks about a relationship between herself and a partner who had committed himself to another before engaging with her. It’s the story of the feelings felt and the words said after two people do something that isn’t illegal but socially reprehensible. In this story we’re told how the man points the finger at our singer revealing to his buddies all her faults, personal and physical, to take the attention away from his. Such a common thing to do due to how easy it still is to accuse a woman of being a whore. How sad that it’s still worse to be a woman in this situation but we’ll leave this conversation for another day. Back to us. What I loved about this song is that she tells us the story as if she were an objective bystander. She’s not responding to him in feelings but in logic. She talks directly at him and says: tell ’em I’m a kisser. Whilst you tell them all the bad don’t forget to tell them all about the good stuff too. Because what’s undeniable is that there was good. If there was anything ever between two people, even in the shittiest, most toxic of situations there were some elements that made that time worthy of being experienced. Your hurt and your ego can never get in the way of that. Or, to be more specific, you’ll want to deny because it will help you forget or look good in front of your people but when you lay on your pillow at night what runs through your head aren’t the stories you tell your friends.
When I heard the song for the first time and I imagined the story, what my characters looked like, the bar in which the guy was gallivanting with his crew I just couldn’t get enough. I listened to the song on repeat. Go give the entire album a listen because it’s “good”.
Not being a music critic I don’t have better words than good in inverted commas because what’s good is merely subjective and conditioned by what I have come to believe is good in 28 years of living on this earth as me. Life thus far has gotten me to perceive Lake Street Dive’s — You Are Free as very good. If it isn’t “good” for you…good. Whatever. Let’s move on.
Loving is awesome. Sometimes we love in rather complex and complicated ways. Many times we say we’ll never love like that and end up doing the very thing we said we’d never do. Mistakes in love are probably the most common and shared experiences across cultures. What goes hand in hand in stories of mistakes in love are villains. Villains in these anecdotes are far more important than the hero. It is because of them that everything went wrong. It is due to their lack of understanding, care, communication, feelings, sexual preferences that the story concludes with no happy ending. What was supposed to be a delightfully light and fluffy tale becomes a Shakespearean tragedy in a matter of sentences. There might be entire chapters of happiness, paragraphs abundant in cheerful words but all of that doesn’t matter to the story teller. Exposing the true nature of the villain immediately undermines all the adventures previously lived. All the laughs become a form of manipulation. All the supportive moments had a second motive. All the hugs, kisses and cuddles become someone else’s porno.
When I was dropped off at my hostel that dusk and bid my farewells to someone who had unknowingly carved a few cracks in my heart I remember telling myself that I wasn’t going to search for answers outside of my physical body. If it wasn’t within me and my control I wasn’t going to bother trying to find answers. Being in a place with good internet access made communication with people who care about me far easier than the days preceding. I remember when telling my version of events I never spoke about the other protagonist in an ill mannered way even though blaming him for my wounds would’ve been so easy. I noticed that I did this with all characters in my stories, the good, bad and the ugly ones. I realized that even when I felt like a bulldozer crushed an entire castle of hopes and dreams and this shattered like glass in front of me I never once blamed the bulldozer. What the fuck was that castle doing in front of a fucking bulldozer?
It’s funny how when we’re in sub-optimal situations with others, whether this be serious or not, if you look far back enough you can see all the maneuvers you took to get yourself there. You were never forced down the road to destination failure. In the same way that you didn’t arrive there together. You took your different routes, you were driving different cars, you arrived there at different times. You’re there now. The roads ahead take to two very different and far away places. You can’t continue together nor do you want to. So how do you get into your vehicle and drive away? Do you press the accelerator as hard as you can and drive away into the sunset whistling in joy as you dump the weight of the “problem” behind you? Or do you sit on the hood for a while, watch as the sun disappears into the horizon, admire the beauty of the many different shades of pink and orange, feel whatever it is you need to feel as you open the door and get in front of the steering wheel?
In all honesty and fairness hurt is real and a humongous bitch! In the attempt to protect my ego I said and did things that were dishonest and sabotaged the possibility of clarity for myself and others. Doing this is common and feels as good as eating unseasoned boiled cabbage. Not good. We carry that taste for a long time. Even after time passes that flavor of bitter disgustingness is still detectable somewhere in your palette. But saying that someone else forced you to eat it is…well…wrong. The road is replete of lapses in judgment, poor decision making and wrong turns. You drive and go forwards along the road of the unknown, you get lost a few times, you hurt and get hurt, you love and even if you loop a couple of times you can never stop going forwards. In this road there is just life, decisions, mistakes and lessons.
What I’m trying to work on everyday is remembering that there is no hero and no villain because there is no story. There is no one outside of ourselves dictating the directions we take in our yet to be published autobiographies. Life has no plot. Therefore neither do relationships. Even in the most discussed, openly communicative and judgment free of partnerships… shit just kinda happens. Looking back with disbelief at all the goodness someone helped us feel is rather silly.
So as Rachel Price sings and I listen in awe I remember with a smile that he was indeed a good kisser. I won’t forget the good part. Any of the good parts. All experiences with all of the men that made me feel incredible even if just for a short time. So, if you’re going to tell them our story for however brief, don’t forget, I was a good kisser too!
Until next week,
Sarita.
