Sinister: Maybe I AM loosing it

[Dan Hooper]

Hello kiddies . . .

Hmmmm, new listee Zoe writes . . .

In Greece B&S are like all the time on the radio and in clubs 
etc.Well,not in all clubs but in most of the rock clubs . . . Athens 
is sunny.

Hmmmm (again), Greece is sunny, in Greece they play B & S on the 
radio and in the clubs (though not all clubs), and Greece is the 
cradle of the Western Poetic tradition. Sounds like the place to have 
the Splinter meet-up of the Millennium (it could be of Olympian 
proportions!). Then again, small fragmented gatherings in cold 
overcast places where no one knows or understands our obsession and 
where "Bohemian Rhapsody" is considered high art (it was the theme 
song to Wayne's World for gosh sakes) and mentioned in the same 
sentence as Keats is much more to our liking. Hmmmm

I was in Ameboa Records on Haight Street (in San Francisco, 
California, (where it is not always as sunny as the travel agents 
say)) over the weekend and they were playing IYFS. I asked the clerk 
about it, and she said that someone had returned the week before and 
it had found its way into their playlist. But it was "defective" it 
would have to be removed before the week was out, much to her 
disappointment. I smiled.

I have not posted in a while because i have been nursing a bruised 
heart. A friend of mine sent me an essay written by a friend of his. 
I read the essay, which was about how this girl got into pop music, 
and was struck by how closely her story resembled mine (of course 
some of the details were different, as were some of the bands she 
liked, but the general curve of our stories were amazingly parallel). 
So I wrote my friend to tell him this, he passed my gush on to the 
girl (without my knowledge), and much to my surprise, she wrote to me.

For the better part of three weeks, we exchanged e-mails, often to 
the tune of three or four lengthy ones daily. During that time our 
correspondence grew much more personal than just "oh yeah, you like 
them too!" or "So who was the first Sino-Japanese band to cover a 
Matthew Sweet song in Serbo-Cruasian?" It was beginning to feel 
something like "89 Charing Cross Road" or certain Looper songs. And 
though we seemed to be spiritually joined at the ear, and were 
growing closer and closer emotionally, we were physically living a 
few hundred miles apart. Then an opportunity arose.

My job had me traveling to a city very near by this girl, who had 
wormed her way into my heart. We made plans to meet-up and spend all 
the free time we had on the weekend together exploring the 
possibilities of this new strange town. As I arrived in the city a 
few days before her, I rang her and we spoke for four or five hours 
each of the four nights before she arrived. It would appear that we 
were made for each other, soulmates as it were separated only by 
distance. We both were very excited at the prospects of meeting each 
other. She even told me that I was "too perfect".

And meet we did. But something wasn't right. I think we both tried (I 
know I certainly did) to make it work. I had the feeling that the 
person I was meeting was not the same person I had been writing to or 
that I had spoken to for all those hours. I assumed we were both a 
little nervous about meeting, and that things would be better the 
following evening. We chattered lightly on the drive back to my 
hotel,  and at the end, just before she, quite literally, kicked me 
to the curb, he asked, rather rhetorically, "We didn't hit it off, 
did we?" Before I could answer, I found myself sitting on the curb in 
the faded neon glow of a theatre marque, looking up through a cloud 
of exhaust at her taillights disappearing into the night.

I made a few valiant attempts to call her the following day, but to 
no avail. And upon returning to San Francisco, I send her an e-mail 
which remains unanswered. So I'm left wondering how I could go from 
being "too perfect" to less than gum beneath her shoe in fewer than 
24 hours, and am I such a hideous person in person that I should 
restrict my social life to pen-pals and posting to e-mail lists.  If 
such is the case, so be it. I'll be a manifestation of my words only.

Well, a little wound licking can be a good thing. And as that old 
Mexican proverb says, "Those things that don't kill us build 
character." Now I'm indebted to our S. Murdock for the perspective 
granted by repeated listenings to "I Don't Love Anyone." I can 
categorically state: "I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And 
doggonit, people like me." But is it wicked not to care . . .?

Thanks for your indulgence. I didn't mean to blather on like this, 
but confessions are a bit like cashews: once you start you just can't 
stop. I hope there was enough B & S content to pass muster. Oh by the 
way, a new pair of cashmere socks goes a long way to mending a 
bruised heart.

All the Best
Daniel Hooper
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