My favorite song for about fifteen years has been “Blister in the Sun.” Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea. I am not a particularly raging fan of the Violent Femmes in general, but for some reason that one song sends me into fits. I thrash, I howl, I long for a set of drums, usually don’t find any, but beat the air nevertheless along with those two miraculous beats that follow the bass lick. It’s very, very strange. Back when disposable income was allowance, it never occurred to me to buy the CD, so whenever the song would come on the radio (which was rare) it would be like Christmas had come early. I remember one very particular instance, driving somewhere during high school while I lived in California, when suddenly my favorite radio station bestowed a miracle. Upon reflection, I was probably in moderate danger of driving my car off the road. The sheer joy of hearing the song was enough to burn specific instances into my memory.
Not too long after, I bought the CD. And not too long after that, I got an iPod. Suddenly the intense joy that had been at the fickle mercy of a radio station was mine to have whenever I wanted it: literally at my fingertips. What followed was very natural and disgustingly trite. It just wasn’t the same anymore. I still love listening to the song, and I still pull it up after a particularly hard day and thrash around my apartment to the familiar bass lick. But that sheer, unadulterated burst of joy has diminished.
And so, it is with annoying self-awareness that I admit to myself that maybe it is a good thing that I cannot find the one person I would kill to track down.
His name is John, and we met in Rome in the spring of 2006. As if that circumstance alone were not special enough, he was also the first guy I had ever met who had seen me for exactly who I was… and liked it. And hadn’t been afraid to show it. On the spectrum of personalities, I suppose I’ve always leaned more towards the loud, intelligent, eccentric side, which did not particularly help my dating efforts in high school and college. Most of the guys who were interested seemed to like me in spite of a lot of my qualities, as if in liking me, they were going against their better judgment. John liked the whole package: sign, sealed, delivered. It also helped that he was sweet, kind, hilarious, and blisteringly smart. When he used the word “ostentatious” in a sentence, while sounding neither self-conscious nor like an asshole, I nearly keeled over from joy right there on the street. The soft southern accent and a smile that could floor me from twenty paces didn’t hurt either.
We were not together for very long, but all of it was like Christmas morning; like a vast extension of the blissful instant when I realized “Blister in the Sun” had just come on the radio. When it came time for us to go back to our respective schools in the states, we agreed that building a long distance relationship on three weeks probably wasn’t the best idea. I think what we didn’t say but also agreed on was that we didn’t want to ruin it: take something wonderful and organic, and stretch it and twist it to be something we weren’t sure it could be. And so he went back to Alabama, and I went back to New Hampshire, always missing him a little bit but armed with the knowledge that it was possible that there were guys out there who could and would treat me the way he had.
The following Christmas, we exchanged a few emails: easy, flirty, happy. The following year, upon graduating, I lost my college email account along with his email address. I had forgotten to transfer it into my new account, and my solid, real world link to him was gone.
And no, he’s not on facebook. And unfortunately, he shares a name with a horrid, famous golfer. So social networking and google are out, and I am pathetically stumped. I go through phases where I’m suddenly inspired to find him, and frustratingly unable to do so. I often wonder where he is, and while I flatly ignore the possibility that he could in fact be married out there somewhere, I have to realize on some level it could be true. Whatever the case may be, though, I really hope that he’s happy, wherever he is.
In a strange way, I have found a backwards sort of joy in the opposite of instant gratification: the one that got away. I can’t find him, and realistically, I probably never will. But I am very grateful to have met him, known him, and been genuinely, thrashing around like a moron, beating on invisible drums to a bass lick wild about him. Not being able to find him, or pull him up on facebook, or google track him doesn’t change that. I hate to admit it, but maybe it makes it better.
Nevertheless, as far as sheepish truths go, my enduring hope to find him someday may be the best one I have. And hey, stranger things have happened. Believe me, I’ve been there for a few: imagine being an eight year old girl howling along with, “I’m high as I ki-ite I just mi-ight stop to check you out…”
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