Here In Katie's Head

Today is, among other things, Bad Poetry Day.

I registered badpoetry.net toward the end of a terrible high school relationship when my boyfriend started making me read a binder full of his terribly dull poetry. I figured the impending end of the school year would handle the breakup for me, so I could go ahead and get started with the hating him.

Sometimes I contemplate the butterfly effect consequences if I’d never gotten into that relationship in the first place.

Dear drunk guy from 2003,

We met at a party.

It must have been some scholarship hall’s New Men’s party at the start of the school year. We were at some guy’s apartment.

You were sitting on the stairs with a friend. Me and a couple of my friends joined you.

My roommate later told me she already knew (of?) you and that you were a jerk. I don’t remember why she disliked you. Maybe you were from around St. Louis like her.

You were clutching a bottle of Grey Goose and would not share. You were too good to drink jungle juice like the rest of us.

You went to an IB high school like me, and I wanted to compare HL subjects, but you seemed bored with the topic.

We talked about what our favorite bands were and discovered we had similar taste. You recommended a couple of bands for me to check out.

I emailed you the next week to ask what bands you had mentioned. I remembered Apples in Stereo (I’d heard of them before) but forgot Beulah.

You replied with a long, meticulous list, in alphabetical order with notes about favorite songs and who else they sounded like.

I cherished that list. I don’t know if you wrote it just for me. I suspect you’d been working on it for a while before that.

I worked through the list in order, downloading songs from each artist and listening to them carefully before moving on to the next one on the list.

You liked Ben Lee and suggested “Cigarettes Will Kill You.” I never got to tell you about how I ended up on the guest list when Ben Lee played at the Granada the next spring.

You liked The Decemberists and suggested, I think, “Apology Song” and maybe “Angel, Won’t You Call Me?” (which would, years later, become the “cute boy ringtone” on my RAZR). This was, of course, before everyone else insufferably declared The Decemberists to be their favorite band. This was back when just you, and then me, had heard of them.

I never made it all the way through the alphabet. But you’d taken more care with the top of the alphabet than the rest of it anyway.

I probably emailed you back and told you about some of the more obscure bands that I liked. I probably told you about Spiraling and The Incredible Moses Leroy and Candy Butchers.

You never indicated that you took the same joy in my list that I did in yours.

The next time we saw each other, when GP had invited Sellards over for dinner, you blew me off. I gave up and moved on.

If Facebook existed back then, I might remember your name now.

But I never forgot that list and I never stopped loving the music it introduced me to.

Thank you for that email.

Yours briefly,

Katie