Sinister: My First Time!

[Jay Eckard]

"My First Time"!
 
 Sounds racy, doesn't it? Of course, unlike other Sinisterines (looks in askance 
 at Ken Chu and pines -- pines! -- at the memory of Markelby) I'm 
 not actually tarty. I just like to pretend I am, sometimes. And I've no idea
 why, but in my head just now, I sounded just like Tevye the Milkman 
 saying that. Anyway.
 
 I want a go at telling my "First time I heard Belle and Sebastian" story!
 
 It's a bit of a long story, so you'll have to indulge me. And it's long 
 because it's part of a much longer story about a boy (one of /those/ kinds
 of boys) and I have to tell at least a little of it for the B&S story to
 make much sense.
 
 The boy's name was Daniel. I met him my first year of college, back in the
mid 90s. When I think of him now, I think of him all in corduroys and
 Argyle sweaters, but I think most of that is sort of layered on, memories
 filtered back through TV and movies. Or maybe this time of year just lends
 itself to thinking of people in browns and greys.
 
 He was a year older than me, and I since I was still so fresh out of high
 school, I still thought that was a very big deal: in addition to being 
 very pretty -- all dark curls over bright green eyes and snowy skin -- he 
 was that much more older and sophisticated. Or so I thought.
 
 I'll spare you all the tedious details of how I actually met him (shoved into
 him by the proprietress of a charity shop on Franklin Street that liked to
 bill itself as a "vintage" store) and how we got to know one another, and
 skip to the part where he decided to go to a Study Abroad semester in London
 the next Spring. He was away all that semester, and when it ended he 
 decided to stay in London through the summer, too, loafing, in my
 opinion, in a sort of louche hipster grandeur.
 
 I, on the other hand, spent the summer dressed as an Elizabethan soldier
 for tourists at the seaside and tried not to pass out from heat exhaustion
 
 
 We met up again, of course, that Fall. We were lying together on my twin
 n bed in my dorm room, comparing stories about our summers and listening
 to the musical treasures he had brought back with him. We were talking about
 t something trivial when he remembered something. "Oh man," he said,
 "You have to listen to this. You'll love it."
 
 He dug around in his bag and fished out another cassette. It was a copy of 
 a record  he'd heard. He took out the tape we were listening to and put another
 one in the little boombox we were listening to, and then cued up the
 song he wanted to play. It started, and he looked at me, his eyes shining
 with expectation. (Or was it Expectations?)
 
 I listened.
 
 I thought it was crap. I said so. He sort of visibly sank and looked
 disappointed. "I'm no big fan of techno," I said. "but that isn't even very
 /good/ techno."
 
 To this day, I have no idea why, out of all the songs on Tigermilk, he
 picked "Electronic Renaissance", or why he didn't give me some prep for
 it, like "Wait, listen to the lyrics!" or "The next song is better!"
 
 I felt really awful, because he had been so excited to share this. I mean,
 I know: I've felt exactly that sort of evangelistic glee, too, before
 and since, and for the exact same music. But I didn't get it that night.
 Not at all. And I really liked him, too, but I was too dumb then to
 even try to give it another listen, just for him.
 
 In the end it was all right. He had brought back a ton of music, and we 
 listened to most of it that night. We ordered awful pizza and stayed up late,
 annoying my roommate, laughing and trying to correct the faults in each
 ch other's musical tastes, till we found other ways to occupy ourselves.
 
 And clearly I managed to hear some other Belle and Sebastian not much later
  and liked it. A lot. But that's another story.
 
 Oh!
 
 I have some actual content: I've been listening to "Marx and Engels" a lot 
 lately. Does anybody know what Isobel is saying underneath Stuart's lyrics 
 in the second half? I can't figure it out for the life of me...
 
 --GayJay
 

--
"If you can't be great you may as well be bright..."
Sodastream

"There's more to life than books, you know/
But not much more..."
The Smiths

"The natural state of the theatre is that of insurmountable obstacles on the path to imminent disaster."
Phillip Henslowe

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