All I Have

My husband thinks I make shit up.

Like when we first met. I told him I used to be a famous local culture hero. That George Thorogood once invited me to his backstage party. That I spent New Years Eve 1977 stoned at the LA Forum with Bonnie Raitt.

Shit like that.

Okay. Maybe the storylines are adjusted a bit. Like my mother-in-law's recipe for "adjusted southern eggs." I really love that dish. Which is what my husband used to say about me. Now all I get are cracks about leftovers.

Like that old Joan Rivers joke about greeting her husband at the door dressed in nothing but Saran Wrap in an effort to spice up their sex life. Her husband looks at her and says, "What, leftovers again?"

Like that.

So. Ever since I've known my husband, I've been talking about this certain song. A song from the Old Days. From my wild and woolly youth up on the wild and woolly Iron Range. The year is 1966. I'm sixteen years old, walking home in the rain, carrying a brand new 45 in my purse.

Not a gun, bub. A record.

(FYI: in the Old Days people used to have hi-fi record players, which stood for high fidelity. Some people had stereos, but they lived in New York. The hi-fis most people had were equipped to play albums, which ran at 33-1/3rpm. Smaller records with singles on them ran at 45rpm and required a plastic insert to adjust the size so they could be played on a hi-fi turntable.)

Which is probably how my husband feels after twenty-five years (a quarter of a century!), that someone somewhere turned the tables on him.

Anyway. There I am, walking home in the rain, singing the song off the record I just bought at Woolworth's.

When I first heard this song, I was smitten. Besotted. Sick with longing. This song was me. I wanted to be this song. I wanted to devour it. I wanted to live it. You know the feeling. At night I'd clip my Rocket Radio to the bedframe and search for WEBC. After school I'd sneak my sister's transistor, on Saturdays I'd camp out in front of my parents' old tube radio with the little red light on top.

I came of age in the days of CT (Caveman Technology). No wonder I have trouble wrapping my brain around the idea of an iPod. What the fuck is an iPod anyway? When I was a kid I walked ten miles to school with hunters taking potshots at me and misogynists in hardhats trying to run me over with Euclids! Did I mention the Rocket Radio?

Meanwhile, in amongst the Beatles and Herman's Hermits and Mitch Ryder and ? and the Mysterians, there was, for me, this other song. The one that was so totally utterly completely me. The one I still remember, word-for-word, deep in my ears and heart, all these long years later. The song no one else seems to remember hearing! It's true. Everyone I've ever asked has never heard of this song.

My husband, of course, being foremost.

My husband doesn't believe me about this song. He thinks I made it up. After all, I used to be a famous local singer-songwriter, I told him, so maybe I wrote the song myself, he thinks. My husband also has his doubts about the singer-songwriter bit, except I've threatened to produce actual witnesses (if I can find one still living), so he's eased off.

One of the reasons my husband doesn't believe me about this song is because he's one of Those Guys. You know the type:

My husband knows the name of every band, the name of every player in that band, the name of every player who was ever in that band, and the names of any other bands any of those players might have played with. He knows the name of every song on every album that band made. He knows the name of every album and what cover art was used and where and with whom it was produced. Not only that, my husband remembers the date and place of every concert he ever attended and who he attended it with and which songs were played and in what order.

Okay. Maybe that storyline is adjusted a bit. But I couldn't recall a fraction of this kind of shit if my life depended on it.

The only thing my husband can't remember is song lyrics. Can you believe that? He can't remember the fucking words! The words were the only things that ever mattered to me! I was one of those! Which is another reason my husband has never believed me about the song I'm referring to: all I ever remembered were the words. Name of the band? label? lead singer? Nada. But do you want me to sing the words again?

To quote another singer I don't know from some band I can't recall on some album I don't remember in lord-knows-what year,

"Words are all I have to take your heart away."

Being of a CT background, I'm a little slow on the uptake. It never occurred to me that the answer to this decades-long conundrum regarding that Song of my Youth was right here at my fingertips. Then, just last week, after listening to Susan Boyle on YouTube for the five-hundredth time, a lightning bolt struck. Could it be? Was it possible? I only had the words, but maybe, just maybe...

So. This one's for you. You know who you are. I'm turning the tables on you again. I'm sitting right here, watching you read this, raising my glass. I've waited a quarter of a century for this. During which time, I would hope you'd agree, I've tried to take good care of your heart, the one I took away all those long years ago.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPZVrmJ2HH8