Creative Non-Fiction (Both Auditory & Weekly): Dashboard Confessional - As Lovers Go

Even though I feel like I could have written more this week, I have kept pace with my writing goal for the month. If I keep going just like this, I'll have at least 15 writing days on my calendar by September 30. This extra effort hasn't just yielded me a check on my to-do list, it resulted in two music-inspired creative non-fiction pieces this week! Obviously I only chose one, but I thought I'd share news of my bounty.

This week's is a little long, so you'll find it under the cut.

“Earlier, in the car, As Lovers Go came on and now I’m like aaahhhh I want to listen to it again!”

“Do you have it?”

Though I’d had the option of expressing annoyance at my husband and sister for staying back at the house watching TV all day, I’d chosen gladness instead for the two half-days of antique shopping with my mother. We remained free to sit in silence, exchange news about our lives, gossip about others’, and look at every piece in every 10,000 square foot store. No extrovert filled the room with energy. No angsty preteen sighed, thinking of a boy waiting for her at the back fence by the oak tree, and asked “when can we leave?”

I lost count of how many drop-leaf tables I’d admired with eyes, then fingertips. How many inadequate fans had ruffled my hair as I examined depression glass, costume jewelry, a surprise shelf stuffed with toy cameras.

The song had come on as we were parking and swept me back to college, when people still quoted lyrics in their away messages.

“No, but maybe we could listen to music from that time—you know, our sophomore year.”

Doug, fiddling with the iPod between undignified and noisy battles with a sudden-onslaught sinus condition, couldn’t contain his frustration.

“I just need for you to tell me exactly what you want to listen to.”

I sighed and checked my blind spot, double-checked the signs, merged into the left lane.

“I didn’t realize how much you hated this. I thought it would be a fun game…”

309 splintered off and merged into I-78.

“You know, genius playlists really must be genius,” he whined in a voice that had lost hold of the situation somehow, “because when you say ‘play other songs like this one,’ I have no clue what that means.”

Having practiced the art of playlist-building since it had me glued to my dad’s stereo with fingers poised over Play and Record, I almost shot disbelief back at him.

“That’s a good idea,” I said instead, trying to pull the pieces together as he pressed his thumbs against the bridge of his nose and grimaced. “I already have a genius playlist saved for Again I Go Unnoticed.”

Unlike the husband who lived it with me, the genius playlist knew I also listened to Thursday, Brand New, Boxcar Racer, and The Early November in 2004. It knew that in between all the angst I also loved more upbeat anthems like Jimmy Eat World’s A Praise Chorus.

The road home from my mother’s new house—a move I never would have expected as a sophomore with paint and charcoal ground into my skin—takes me straight through my old college town. On the interstate I realize I’ve made this Sunday evening journey more times than I can count, starting that October night in 2004 when I visited Doug but we did not kiss.

When we pass the little sign pointing toward Kutztown, I wonder what I’m doing driving to a house I own in Baltimore, why I’m going by this overpass instead of pulling off the highway, parking, removing the duffle bag from the seat and carrying it up the stairway to my rundown apartment. Climbing into my lofted twin bed—the only bed that would fit in the room I shared—and reflecting on the miracle of the evening, that I didn’t fall asleep winding my way home.

The music is right, the day of the week, maybe even the time of day. But I’m not coming home to that apartment. I’m only listening to songs I haven’t quoted in years and driving past the exit in my new car, on my way back to a life that’s hardly new anymore.