Mood Music: a song and a story

It's been a weird week, folks. Thanks to Monday morning's email from the ex-boyfriend, I've had more occasion to think about my life in Tallahassee and Boston many years ago than I have in ages. This morning the following song came on my iPod and it immediately transported me to 2002.

But let me take you back even further, to the fall of 1995 when we first met. I was a young, inexperienced and woefully naive 20 year old FSU student. My roommate convinced me to run for student Senate, and while campaigning for our seats I met Gabe. I actually met him for the first time at the house just on the edge of campus that we used as our campaign HQ--known as the "House of Kaos." I was at a party there, and Gabe walked in. (He was also a student senate candidate.) It was one of those moments like out of a movie, when you see someone and for no apparent reason you realize they are going to be significant to you in ways you cannot possibly anticipate. A few days later, we spent an afternoon campaigning sitting at a table outside the English building talking to students who stopped by and wanted to know more about our party, the Progressive Coalition. I was intrigued by him, and the die was cast.

During the course of that senate campaign, I also met Susan, who was running for one of the other Arts & Sciences senate seats. We became fairly good friends almost immediately, and in the months that followed after we won our senate seats and took over the FSU student senate, we spent a lot of time together. Susan was there for the budding romance between Gabe and I, including the disastrous first date (wherein SOMEONE neglected to mention to me that he would be rooting for Miami until we arrived together at the FSU-Miami game), the dream I had that convinced me to give him another chance despite said disaster, and the growing realization that there was more than just a spark at work.

Susan probably also knew it would be an eventual catastrohic failure. In some very obvious and important ways, he and I were so different.

For reasons I've long since forgotten, Susan and I fell out of touch. Gabe and I moved to Boston for several years before we finally broke up at the beginning of 2002. At the end of that year, I bought Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2, and I can still remember the slow, sad smile that crept across my face as I listened to this song for the first time. It was just so right.

In a happy quirk of coincidence, Susan and I have now both ended up living in Atlanta, and last fall we reconnected via Facebook. There is something so wonderful about reconnecting with someone who knew you at such an incredibly important formative point in your life, and I am privileged to have her as a friend again. I have never told her this story of how this song has made me think of her for the past 7 years, but hopefully she will listen to it and smile as well.