I always thought that if you were to set out to make the most depressing mix CD in the universe, a project I've been interested in for quite some time now, it would, definitively, have to end in Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." The idea, originally, was to make a CD that would make everyone in the world cry-- somehow, I see this being the part where everyone cracks. Something about it, I don't know. Maybe pure irony. Maybe the terrible pulse of hope. Sometimes, that really is the worst pain of all.

I guess it wouldn't work, a CD to make everyone cry, because in all the forums I've read where people list the most depressing song in the world, I can't help but think of how wrong they are. I downloaded a bunch of them off of one forum at once, I remember. Savage Garden's "Two Bed and a Coffee Machine", certainly a poignant narrative, but somehow not melodic enough to earn the title. AFI's "God Called in Sick Today", well, you'd have to be a very specific kind of fifteen-year-old and deeply affected by sub-par guitar rifts. John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" could do the trick if you were slumped over kitchen table with a bottle in your hand, thinking of how inevitable it is that your life is going nowhere, but it solicits just a bit too much anger to appeal to a purist like myself. And Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again, Naturally" juxtaposition pleasant, tinny melody and simple, devastating lyrics is just slightly too ironic, if you can believe that anything could ever be too ironic, for me.

My own choices have changed over the years as well, obviously. Where once ballads of unreqouited love topped the list (Linda Rondstadt's version of "Long, Long Time", and even- forgive me-- Brandi's "Have You Ever"), my tastes changed as love's pain became more about the fear of loss, rather than the sting of rejection. Today, the muted horns of the Judy Garland's rendition of "The Man That Got Away" serve to usher me hopelessly forward into a chilling vision of the possible future, and more often than not, I'll be teary-eyed by the time I'm belting out the epic final lines right in sync with her shaky, desperate voice: "Ever since this world began there's nothing sadder than a one-man woman looking for the man that got away." Same theme goes for Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do" and Harvey Danger's "Problems and Bigger Ones", and props to Elorza for having me download "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" years before I could ever appreciate it. Are these ex-love solos a little too lonesome for you? How about a duet about a bitterly failing marriage, a la Neil Diamond and Barbara Streisand? "I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry, I learned how to love and I learned how to lie. So you'd think I could learn how to tell you goodbye."

Failed love-- past present or future-- not your cup of tea? The loss of Chad's grandfather this past month has me listening to Harvey Danger's "Jack the Lion" quite a bit. For me, nothing says death of a grandparent like the Mariah Carey's version of "Without You", which would fit better into the previous category, were it not for the vivid memory I have of it playing in the car during the funeral procession of my father's mother. I have surprisingly few actual death songs on my computer right now-- the ever tragic "Tears in Heaven", always poignant in the moment but a bit too clichéd for me, "Paint it Black" is great, but again, not purist, maybe because I'd heard it about sixty times before I knew exactly what it was about. Check out "Give Back Yourself" by the Gufs (featuring Rob Thomas) for one you probably haven't heard. Unconventional death songs...Ben Fold's Five "Brick" is a great abortion song, should you ever have the need. My personal favorite suicide song would have to be "Camera One" by the Josh Joplin Group-- Bright Eyes' "No Lies, Just Love" would beat it out, were it not for the rather hopeful ending, and Blink 182's "Adam's Song" deserves an honorable mention, if only for the line that speaks so clearly to anyone who's ever considered suicide before-- "Please tell Mom this is not her fault." "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is, of course, incomparable, but I prefer not to think of this as a suicide song.

Okay, this has become more of a list than anything else, but bare with me, I think I'm almost done.

Let's see, miscellaneous depressing. Obviously, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", with some personal preference to the Rufus Wainwright version, and hey, while we're on it, let's give some props to all the Shrek soundtracks, all of which really set the bar for incredible variety of theme-- Tom Waits, on a kid's movie soundtrack? Brilliant. (Points taken away, however, for forcing a peppy song out of masters of depressing music, Counting Crows.)

The two Fray hits. Ani's "Untouchable Face", or "Sorry I Am", or others that I am forgetting. "Blood And Roses" by the Smithereens. "Older Chests" or "Cheers Darlin'" by Damien Rice. "My Immortal" by Evanescence. Martin Sexton's "Can't Stop Thinking About You". Joan Armatrading's "The Weakness in Me". "I'm Movin' On" by the Rascall Flatts. Maybe "Heather Nights" by Buck 65. Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now". Janis Ian, "At Seventeen."

Ahh, I could go on way too long. I'll enable comments-- must go to bed.

On with it.

"All the things I deserve,
For being such a good girl, honey."

Deserve. That's such an interesting word, it's tied to such an interesting concept. Mr. Leighton used to be hooked on a blog called "What I Deserve". What a perfectly ambiguous title. I didn't appreciate it amply at the time.

I was dancing with Chad at his prom, our senior year. This was the song. I'm sure I've told the story here a dozen times before; it doesn't matter. I can't hardly write on this thing anymore. Redundant might be better than silent. Then again, it might not.

I was dancing and this was the song. He was holding me tightly, I believe, or just tightly enough-- who remembers these details? What I do remember was the comforting warmth of his size, what some might call slightly overweight, and a bit taller than me. Maybe it's not so much that I even remember it, exactly, but if I close my eyes and breath in slowly threw my nose as I picture it, my body seems to know how to go back to that moment instinctively, I feel the reaction, I smile.

At one point, he pulled back just enough to look at me, straight in the eye, and he said "I enjoy spending time with you more than anybody else, I think." And it was perfect-- there's very little I like better than that kind of specific sincerity. It felt so much more genuine than those other words he could have said. What I found out later is that, beyond the superior specificity, it didn't quite translate on some more fundamental levels. But it was perfect, right then.

I'm listening to this song, I don't know. Because I've been spending a lot of time talking to Chad lately, seen him a few times. Because the feelings that I never got over with him, well, they've turned more or less comfortable and dependable, in relative terms.

Because, a few moments ago, I knew Zack would be walking through the door at any moment. When I left him in the living room to come in here, I left him in the knowledge that something was wrong, but not what. I was staring at a picture of Chad and I taken on that very night, and I was listening to the other song I associated with him during those key few months of our relationship-- "Standing Still" by Jewel. The plan, more or less, was that Zack would come in and see me looking at this picture of Chad, and he'd figure that was the basis of the problem I couldn't talk about.

Some guy I never got over. Someone I'll always be a little bit in love with. That's nothing we haven't dealt with a hundred times before.

Zack being who he is, he would have just gone to bed, put it out of his mind. Never suspecting the problem that lies deeper. The realization I just came to. The chilling truth I've just now verbalized, that every decent fiber of my being wants him never to have to bear the truth of.

If he's curious enough even to check this, and I doubt that he is, he'll see a few paragraphs about Chad and feel, I don't know. A relief in the familiarity of it all. Never get this far into the post. And you thought your relationship was dysfunctional.

"Foolish Games" by Jewel. That's what I'm listening to now.

When it all came down to it, I didn't have the will to lie in any capacity, it seems. Minimized the picture as he walked through the door. Told him I'd be to bed in a few minutes, when he asked. Kissed him goodnight. Stayed aloof in that telltale way. It won't come to anything, but I shouldn't take the chance that he'll be curious tomorrow. That if he asks what this is all about, I'll tell him.


The bitch of writing a post based around a song is that you have to listen to the song about a hundred times to get through the whole thing. I'm back to "Underneath your Clothes", by Shakira, in case you didn't recognize the quote in the beginning.

When Chad eventually answered the question that Jewel had posed for me-- "Do you want me like I want you? Or am I standing still?"-- and told me that, our fling being what it was (an infidelity), he was back with his ex-girlfriend, I couldn't escape the irony of Shakira's lyrics everytime I heard it. "Underneath your clothes, there's an endless story. There's the man I chose. There's my territory. And all the things I deserve, for being such a good girl, honey."

The last therapist I saw for vaginismus made a breakthrough with me, and whether or not it was a particularly helpful one, well, I never did go back. He woke me up to the buried belief I have, something I've managed to keep on the downlow, even from myself: that I believe I deserve the vaginismus. That I feel I am being, rightly, punished for something else, something that I did. More likely, something that was done to me before I was old enough to realize that I was the victim.

Whatever the reason, it seems the facts are the same: all this time that I've been thinking the critically low self esteem was caused by the vaginismus, I really had it all backwards. Don't that beat all.

Underneath my clothes, there's an endless story. Of all the things I deserve.

Like I said. It's an interesting word.


On with it.