Love is not a bottle of gin

(69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields)

This is not San Francisco [Life, 32 boxes earlier]

That night I was not, logically, in the bar where Stephin Merritt thought it would be a good idea to write an album about love. Nor was I in 1999. I was in a very small bar, far from home, waiting for a friend who wanted to talk to me about a girl he finally met in person and with whom he spent -according to him- the happiest days of his life. Coming to me is a rather incoherent idea. But we arranged to meet at seven o'clock. The day before I had been listening - after having put it off for ages - to the 69 Love Songs by The Magnetic Fields. I had heard some of that album at another time, on improper whims. But it always seemed too long, and Stephin Merritt always seemed too intense to listen to all at once. So I continued listening to it that day, bit by bit, while waiting for my friend.

Some guy from the bar approached me, I took off one of my headphones. The guy recommended a drink with some chocolate. I'm worried about drinking chocolate after six, because it's bad for insomnia. So I ordered vodka, which is worse, but I like it better.

I was not in the mood for other people's dramas. Neither for those of my friend, nor for those of Stephin Merritt. Much less for my own dramas. I was for a little vodka in peace. But I wasn't up for peace either. So the 69 Love Songs were an inappropriate decision. And yet I found it to be a beautiful decision with consequences, like almost all inappropriate decisions.

I put my hearing aid back on. Come Back from San Francisco was the first thing that popped up. And my head said Come backand my head said Kiss me, I've quit smoking. And I lit a cigarette after the song was over. I played it again to hear the lyrics better. And I smoked it all at once, because I know how to fail at everything. To songs. To comebacks. To everything. What can we do... [Damn you, I've never stayed up as late as this]. A whole cigarette lasts as long as Come Back from San Francisco.

Returns last little longer. Approximately 32 boxes.

One leaves one's lungs in the meetings.

***

-Are you still there? Transport is lousy.
-Don't worry. I'm fine. Take your time.

And I had my drink. And I ordered vodka. Again. Lately cocktails make me horribly nauseous and I prefer something without much elaboration. Shot and ice. At least vodka never tastes like perfume.

I was really into the album. All the songs seemed to speak to me, because all the songs talk about the same thing when you have something that lingers in your memory.

The songs of The Magnetic Fields -not only those of the 69 Love Songs- sometimes give the impression of speaking from a half-sad present, or adhering to a mocking resignation; but I assume that here we are not talking about the present, at least we are not talking about it exclusively, nor with the importance and rigor that one should give to the time in which one lives. I assume that the past does not want to let go. The past clings to a stanza and bites it and spits in its mouth and leaves marks. Then it leaves. I assume that the lyrics live inside a dream that keeps running in a strange verb tense. Chronic present tense, perhaps. The feeling dragged like a silk chain. It seems not to weigh. And it does not weigh on the feet. But they are moorings, after all. Even if the silk weighs less than the metal.

That's why I think it's far from being a light album, even if it says all the lovey-dovey lightness all at once.

Fourth glass [I love you, I can't touch you anymore].

My friend had not arrived yet. An inhuman silence outside the headphones. I was tired, and my feet hurt, and I had been involved in a lethargic conflict and I wanted to go home. There's always a time of day when it doesn't matter how righteous or how sinful you are. You're going to wonder what you did wrong, why you are where you are, why you don't have something, why someone went away. This is intensified when you have four drinks in your blood and a conflict seeded in your frontal lobe. There is a moment when all the accumulated hope vanishes as if by a glitch in the system. You just want justice you may not even deserve. You just want someone to stop serving you drinks, or to serve you all of them. You want to not be where you are. You want to have something. You want to not have something. You want to hug someone who went far away. That moment of the day can last four seconds or it can last the whole night. And it happened when I heard I Can't Touch You Anymore. And I could not think of the small pleasure of vodka, nor the joy of music. [There's so much to hate you for]. I could only think that 32 boxes is 6400 pesos per taste and that the encounters were not worth much more than that. [You wanna tell me how you've loved 200 others]. I could only think of the system error that led me to listen to a record in the middle of a distant bar.

***

My friend arrived around nine o'clock. He arrived with watery eyes and a tired face.

-My boy, are you all right?
-No.
-What are you going to drink?
-What are you drinking?
-Vodka.

And he asked for one for him too. I wanted to see him better and asked him if I could play him a song and he said yes. I explained that I was excited about the album, it always does him good to see me excited and this time was no exception. I took off my headphones. I gave them to her. I made the slight and premeditated mistake of playing her a song. Love is Like a Bottle of Gin. I had heard it the day before and thought you might like it.

I got up. I went to the bathroom. When I returned, I found him crying with some restraint, perhaps it was embarrassment. Initially I felt a sadistic pleasure. I like crying too much to stop it. I stood still. I felt like looking at him for a while, but only did so intermittently. I love songs to be a bomb going off, or counting down. I disguised my sonorous sadism and put my hand on his knee in warmth. It was a sincere gesture.

He took off his headphones. He ran his hand over his face. I didn't know what to do. I never know what to do when someone cries.

-The girl. I met her at last. She's gone. I've never felt so bad. I can't do anything about it.

His words were the same words that desperate people have always said. And they contained the same sentiment that all songs that speak of love contain, absolutely all of them. In another moment I would have found the situation very pathetic [I can make you see rainbows]. But I was once a girl who left, and I was once the girl who stayed, and the one who said I've never felt so bad; and I was once the girl who said I've never felt so good. And once I wanted to hug more than I wanted to live. And once I wanted to live in spite of a hug.

We continue drinking. We shared headphones. We talked about other things, but the theme was recurring. Love is like a bottle of gin.

***

We left the bar early. I suggested going to a quiet place to listen to music and talk for a while. It was still very early. We sat in a park.

We talked about accidental monogamy, songs, and everything was fine until he asked me for advice. I remember I asked him to listen to a song first.

I put The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be. I love the silence that is made when a beautiful song plays. I like the serenity with which Stephin Merrit assumes that that muscle in my chest needs little to nourish itself and to remain. It irritates me that he tells me that I'm trapped [okay, I'm trapped], and that if I don't run away it's because I can't. The Cactus Where Your Heart Should BeI was just for fun, because no one was going to come and throw some water on me or run their hand through my hair while I spewed out my theory about The Magnetic Fields. A cactus, yes. A cactus that feeds on vodka, a monstrous cactus that listens to the problems of other people's homes. I don't need anyone to repeat it to me. I know it very well. But I kept listening to the song.

-Let's see, dear, what are the chances right now that you two can be together?
-None.

And in my head I unleashed all my rage and swallowed it, especially since the girl was sleeping 15 blocks from the park. And in my head I said Yeah, I know, life madeyour home, relationships, things, years. The love that is no longer love, but a cyst of love, but there it is, half palpable and half harmful, at home; unable to grow, unable to kill. Incapable of everything. But there it is and there it must be, right? You're never going to be happy because every time you want something you get full of thorns and then you dry up.

But I told him to try to think about something else and I also told him that his life was peaceful and beautiful, that he was happy, of course. I told him that everything was going to pass. But I told him with anger. With the anger of someone who also could not do anything about it in a similar situation. I said it with all the rage of all the cowards in the world.

I played him the whole album that night, I don't know if it was for revenge, I don't know if it was to make him suffer and to make him suddenly discover how wrong he was. With so much vodka, and with so much to drink, all I could think was Life is one, you have to do your best to be with her (Vodka and her teenage hope).

The tenderness of Absolutely Cuckoo invited me to tender love and the thought that life is only good when you look into other eyes and discover that you are paying for them all. I can't remember the last time I was so upset with someone. I knew that the next day my pessimism would return. But at that moment all the love songs were taking on a pathetic and hopeful meaning.

***

I asked him to walk me home, it was already 3:00 something. There was a comfortable silence for most of the way. We stopped at a corner and he asked me to pass him the disc. I passed him only Long-Forgotten Fairytalewith the excuse that I would pass the rest on to him later. I wanted him to hear that heartbreaking song. Me and my faith that songs make people come to their senses. At the door he told me If you ever feel this, don't let it slip away. [And a long-forgotten fairytale is in your eyes again.]. I had to laugh with regret. Everything has escaped from me, not from my chest, but from my hands, because I am a prison whose security is easy to violate. I expel everything. I amputate everything. I abort everything. I am a coward but I am at peace with it. I imagine how many blocks away the thing I love sleeps and I won't do anything about it. [There's an old enchanted castle].

Before I left, I told him, "You know what you're doing.

I went upstairs. I lay down. The ceiling was spinning. And I repeated inside all the words I didn't tell him because I had chosen prudence. And I accused him of cowardice and I felt sorry for myself, that I have been more cowardly and more of a girl and more of a runaway. But at no time did we talk about me.

Ah, but sometimes that time of day comes back when it doesn't matter how righteous or how sinful you are. And you wonder what you did wrong, why you are where you are, why you don't have something, why someone went away. This is intensified when you have countless drinks in your blood and a conflict planted in your frontal lobe. That moment comes back when all the accumulated hope vanishes as if by a glitch in the system. That moment when you want to stand on a balcony and scream while a song by The Magnetic Fields plays.

But you prefer to keep quiet and save the welfare of a neighbor who supposedly does not care about you. And you close your eyes and come out of your trance and go to sleep with the peace of the just and the sinners, knowing perfectly well to which side you belong. The sinners, of course. To the side of those who listen to heartbreaking songs to wash their hands.

***

I took out my phone. I sent an SMS:

"A long-forgotten fairytale. Please don't make my mistakes, I beg you".

***

The city shut down and I was about to shut down too. Everything was dark and I put Washington D. C. when the sun had not yet risen, and that happiness contrasted sadly with the surroundings of the house. Beautiful and clear places, in spite of the night. Places with radiant street lighting. Faraway places. Distant joys. I wonder what my friend is thinking right now. But I know he's at home, wearing a nice T-shirt, planning some paper for the promotion he wants, listening to some song where life and songs don't look alike. Thinking about the girl he let go. Looking at the girl he decided to stay with. Wallowing in a cyst. Loving without loving. And not realizing the weight of the decision that is not taken, of the weight of the feeling that is avoided. Cowardice is made of lead and not silk. It has the taste of bullets. It has the dull sound of a gun with a silencer. [Only a gun. All songs in one].

But today I am sober and today I understand. Today I would have been as cowardly as he was. Today I am as cowardly as he was even though everything weighs on me.

The One You Really Love [Life, 20 thousand boxes after]

Stephin Merrit wrote "You're thinking of someone who's gone", but he could have said:

Nothing, dear, stay in your miserable existence, sitting on your miserable sofa, but until 12 o'clock, because tomorrow you have to get up at a quarter past six. If you get hungry in the early morning, then you get up, eat something, but try to sleep, eh? Lest in your miserable cyclical work you faint. Then you take a car at five o'clock in the afternoon while listening to any of the 69 songs. You get home, you can eat, have the same decrepit sex (open your eyes every now and then, so no one notices that your panting is directed at someone who is not under you, and that you close your eyes to invoke other images; how different sex is when you are thinking of someone else), you can then order the papers that will get you to the promotion, see a realityAnd then you go to sleep, but around noon, because tomorrow you have to get up at a quarter past six. If you get hungry in the early morning, then you get up, eat something, but try to sleep, eh? Lest in your miserable cyclical work you faint. Then you take a car at five in the afternoon while you listen to another one of the 69 songs... And so on until the years go by and you want to break the loopAnd you run out of songs and continue being the same miserable, but more miserable, because that cactus you have on your chest will be dry. Ah... But don't be discouraged: one day, with your poor retirement, you'll be able to buy three bottles at once. [Oh, bitter tears. All songs in one]You'll be able to buy all the vodka in the world on your own, and you'll be able to come clean with yourself, and sit down on the console of your poor worn-out life, and say I once knew a girl who made me happy to look at her.... [The endless streets I walk along./ You made them so pretty....]. But she won't even remember your name because the girls get tired and learn other names, and replace yours, and let it dry up like a cactus. That day your wife (a warm lady) is going to tell you Come in, you'll catch a cold.

You are going to close the precious balcony of the 28th floor, with the hand trained by the years, with the automatic hand [only a gunAnd you're going to let out one of those I love you's that are already pure signifier and pure swindle. And you're going to die after 20 thousand boxes [one leaves one's lung in the waiting], you're going to have failed life without having been as happy as you once were with the girl who forgot your name [What have you done...]. But that's what life is all about, isn't it? Of realizing it too late, of getting up at a quarter past six, and wanting to go home, not for the joy of seeing someone at the other end of the room, but for the longed-for cyclical rest..

But Stephen Merrit said "You're thinking of someone who's gone". And who am I to put words in his mouth.