By Working at a record store taught me a tragic truth; no matter how much you love your favorite albums, they’ll never be as popular as they deserve to be. Each month at Merry-Go-Round Magazine, I dust off some long-overlooked records, revisit my pretentious past, and explore how this music forever etched itself into my history. Eventually, all your memories get marked down and thrown into The Bargain Bin.
Nina fancied herself a Blues singer, a genre I had very little patience for at the time. As far as I was concerned, the only thing worse than listening to the Blues was listening to bland white people sing it. But Nina? Nothing about her was bland. I could listen to her brand of melancholy all night. Her words poured out slow as honey from the comb—thick and sweet without ever becoming cloying.
I remember lying on the floor of the room I rented in a house full of rotating 20-somethings around 2008, each of us a character orbiting adulthood without quite landing. I dimmed the lights, and she sat next to my exhausted husk on the floor. I had been rude to her for no discernible reason other than the fact that I hated myself and couldn’t understand why she insisted on being kind when I was so unpleasant to be around. She sang quietly to me and patted my back anyway.
—
We met the way I met many of my friends in the late 2000s: She sent me a random message on MySpace.
I was an anxious mess back then. Meeting people online gave me time—time to read, to consider, to line up words carefully in the perfect order before releasing them into the world. It felt like magnetic poetry. I’d spend lunch breaks in the back office of the record store reading novels by Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut, refreshing my inbox every few minutes, hoping to see one bolded. A small electronic letter, sealed and sent over phone lines, into a crappy Dell computer.
That’s where I was when Nina first reached out. I recognized her last name from somewhere. It wasn’t common. I flipped back the pages of my recent history, filed away in a faulty memory. A glance at her friend list confirmed it: I’d worked with her brother at the campus radio station a year earlier when I was trying to pretend I cared about getting a college degree. We’d hosted our respective shows and chatted a few times at station events. I mostly remembered him complimenting the flyers for my indie rock program while I stapled them up around campus. The flyers were designed by a clever co-worker and featured clip-art jokes I enjoyed more than putting together the show: a clothing iron and a glass of wine, Belle from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST standing next to Sebastian from THE LITTLE MERMAID. Nina said he vouched for me, telling her I was a “nice guy.”
Hearing that I was a “nice guy” felt strange. I didn’t feel particularly nice anymore. Even though I felt hollowed out, apparently I still radiated something warm. I wasn’t in a place for a serious relationship. But I was lonely as all get-out. For a week or so, life felt almost manageable again. Someone was romantically interested in me. We met up for coffee and dessert at a cafe next to the record store. Nina smiled, and that joy radiated to everyone around her. She seemed happy just existing—something I was no longer convinced was possible. She gave me a reason to get out of bed before I had to be at work.
I stayed up three nights arranging songs in iTunes for a mix CD I’d burn for her, handwriting the track list the way I always did when a crush began to take shape. A mix was how I communicated. If I couldn’t say it outright, I could sequence it. The mix was my way of saying, “I’m interested. Here is my interior.” It didn’t include anything bluesy. The only song I distinctly remember was “Super Animal Brothers III” by EAR PWR—a weird, repetitive electro-clash song about a manatee and a tiger using love, lightning, and fire to defeat something that’s lyrically unclear. The rest of the record features songs about sparkly sweaters, kitties in pyramids, and riding a magic beam of light. It reminded me of her cheerful disposition: a little silly, a bit whimsical, and 100% pure joy. A precursor to the glitched-out maximalism of hyperpop, EAR PWR felt ahead of its time, like it had been composed under fluorescent lights on a Windows PC in an internet café. Nina, of course, was obsessed with it and constantly referenced the lyrics.
—
While I was carefully curating songs for Nina, the rest of my life was falling apart. I was working two jobs to afford a meager room in the house at 7420 Zephyr Place. I memorized the address quickly. I spent seven days a week there smoking weed and trying not to think. I slept on a mattress on the floor surrounded by a massive DVD collection that made my room into the de facto Blockbuster of the house. I made a sign-out sheet and taped it to a clipboard for rentals when I wasn’t home. I probably should have charged late fees.
While I was able to keep my movie collection in order, I struggled to keep the rest of my life in order. I rarely bought groceries, opting instead for cheap garbage on the go rather than negotiating fridge space around four other people. On nights that I wasn’t working at the record store or at my second job as a bouncer, I’d get stoned and wander down our street and across four lanes of traffic to 7-Eleven for cigarettes, a king-sized Twix, and a bottle of papaya juice so I could pretend I was on some kind of health kick.
Being an extremely introverted person, working as a bouncer at a rock club was absolute hell. It had been easy to nab the job since I had friends who worked there. Moreover, they needed bodies, and as far as they knew, mine was capable. I told myself it would be exposure therapy. If I forced myself into uncomfortable situations, surely it would cure the panic I felt being in crowds. Soon after working my first run of shows, the job proved my hypothesis incorrect. But it was too late, I needed the money. My anxiety would spike night after night while my body ached from having to stand for hours at a time in a sea of bodies packed tightly together like sardines in a tin. On top of all that, more often than not, the bands they booked were not playing my kind of music. I couldn’t ignore it.
Stress metastasized into rage that spread through my body. I didn’t know how to relieve the pressure. It was uncomfortable to carry around this much unchecked frustration. I knew how to carry depression, but anger was unfamiliar territory. During shows, I would fantasize about beating the worst drunk assholes to ground beef. It seemed like the only way to finally let off steam. I’d never been in a fight, but I’d played enough MORTAL KOMBAT to imagine terrible violence.
“Please,” I’d plead silently to the universe, “let this asshole be dumb enough to punch me—just one clean shot to the jaw. Let me taste blood. I can’t be the one to start it. It has to be out of self-defense. Give me a reason to tackle him and make him regret coming to see Rob Zombie.”
—
Most show nights ended the same way. I’d drive home in my mom’s old minivan, whose dome light refused to shut off no matter how hard I slammed the door. I’d stop at Del Taco for two shredded beef burritos and fries, and spend a few hours watching my favorite season of THE SIMPSONS to wind down before eventually passing out. The mix of fast food and stress caused intense nightmares, and I’d wake up in a pool of sweat.
Those intrusive thoughts scared the hell out of me. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was living in a nightmare, the kind where you try to scream for help but nothing comes out. I wanted to be one of the Super Animal Brothers with Nina and take down the evil twin keeping the real me trapped inside. But it wouldn’t have been fair to her; it wasn’t her battle to fight.
I gave Nina the silent treatment for a couple of busy show weeks, hoping she would take the hint. She didn’t and asked if I wanted to hang out. I felt so isolated and craved the embrace of another. I wanted intimacy without being romantic. I wanted love that was free and easy. I wanted silence, followed by making out. It felt gross to want someone that way.
Hoping my attitude towards her would be different after a break, even though I hadn’t done any work to change my situation, I agreed to grab dinner. We walked to a pizza joint around the corner. Her eyes were still bright, her nose still crinkled up when she smiled, her voice still so sickly sweet. We shared a pineapple and Canadian pizza. She tried her hardest to make me smile the entire meal. None of that mattered; I was dead inside.
We parted ways, and later that evening, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Nina.
It was so good to see you! I had such a great time. Did you?
I didn’t know how to respond. I typed N. Then o.
My thumb hovered over the delete key. I knew it was cruel. I could have told Nina it wasn’t working. I could have said she was lovely, so dazzling and kind, that I simply wasn’t in a place to give anyone the love they deserved. I could have said I wasn’t myself and that I was sorry.
I added a period and pressed send. If I were going to be miserable, at least I could control the ignition. I expected my phone to buzz immediately with texts full of anger, sadness, confusion—something.
It never did.
I wish I could say that moment changed everything. It didn’t. I kept isolating. Kindness still felt overwhelming. When I returned home after another long shift at the club the next night, I parked on the street and slammed the minivan door. While I was walking towards the Zephyr house, I heard a voice yell from a few houses down.
“YOU LEFT THE LIGHT ON, FAT ASS!” someone yelled from a nearby window.
I lost control.
“FUCK YOU, I KNOW! IT’S FUCKING BROKEN! I CAN’T AFFORD TO GET IT FIXED! SO UNLESS YOU’RE WILLING TO FUCKING PAY FOR IT, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!”
It was a culmination of all the rage and anger that had been building long before that stranger ever opened their mouth—in crowded rooms, in silent bedrooms, in the space between a kind text message and a single-word reply.
With my shoulders tight and fists clenched, I went upstairs and collapsed on the floor in tears. I couldn’t keep living like this.
—
Years later, I apologized to Nina over Facebook. She was as kind as I remembered. I asked the question every ex of a musician secretly hopes the answer to is yes: “Did you ever write a song about me?”
She had.
She sent it over. It did not paint me in a favorable light, which felt fair. I listened alone. Her voice was still soothing. Still steady. If the worst thing I’d done at that point in my life required a song, she would be exactly the person I’d want to write it.
I didn’t realize it then, but Nina would become one of those people who never quite leave your life. We haven’t seen each other since, but we check in occasionally on Instagram to see how the other is doing. Time continues to move on, and the messages move to other platforms.
Looking back, I don’t think I isolated because I was alone. I isolated because I didn’t know how to let kindness land without feeling exposed by it. I didn’t know how to express stress without swallowing it until it fermented into resentment. Maybe it was sheer anxiety. Maybe something else. I only know that crawling back into myself felt safer than staying on the floor beside someone willing to sing me through the dark.
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