by Kunal Nayyar
I suppose it was a new sound to me. I was mostly used to hearing songs in major keys. This was different. I didn’t get it.
“Listen,” she said again. I listened a second time and I still struggled to feel whatever it was that she was trying to make me feel. She played it a third time and a fourth. Still nothing. Then she told me how the song had come to be made. I learned that Thom Yorke, who wrote the song, had read in the newspaper about a missing child who was trapped in a London cellar. The child survived for three days on only lollipops and crisps (potato chips). The song is about this missing child yearning to live, hence the lyric: “True love waits on lollipops and crisps.”
“Play it one more time,” I said.
And then I heard it.
“True love waits. True love waits. On lollipops and crisps.”
The song sprang to life in my heart. All the minor notes and the odd key shifts that didn’t make sense began to flow through me like lava. It wasn’t about the catchy chorus or the sing-a-long lyrics I was used to; it was about something real, and the connection I felt to that song in that moment was not something I had felt before.
I was intoxicated. I had fallen in love with Grace. I liked it.
She also taught me about things like vintage stores, ironic T-shirts, Converse sneakers, record stores, and the farmers’ market. Soon I even started dressing like her, wearing red sneakers, bootleg jeans, and torn and scrubby ironic T-shirts. My favorite T-shirt to this day is a dirty white one that says “Brown” on it. She taught me how to make hummus and cucumber sandwiches on pita bread. Which is made exactly the way it sounds.III She taught me how to explore my dark side. I’ve always been the kind of person who wakes up happy. If I’m having a bad day I can shake it off with a smile. But Grace encouraged me to explore something deeper. She asked me all sorts of questions about how I was feeling, and why. I was used to masking my pain through humor and she wanted me to wear my pain on my sleeve. She said, “It’s okay to feel.” “You don’t have to pretend.” “Enjoy the melancholy.”
Before I knew it I was drinking black coffee, smoking cigarettes, wearing torn jeans and vintage T-shirts, and listening to Radiohead on repeat. I was so emo and I was loving it. Because for the first time in America, I felt like I had an identity.
She taught me how to make love.
Many months flew by like this—hanging out in the park, listening to gut-wrenching music, laughing, watching old sketch comedy shows like The State and classic SNL. She loved making me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Grace was my first real-life girlfriend. And I was eating it up.
I never thought about the fact that she would graduate in May. Or that she would ever graduate. Or that we would have to talk someday about our relationship, or anything that could ever take me away from my first true love.
Grace got cast in a play that I was not in. I was busy prepping for another play that semester. This meant that since she was in rehearsals all evening, I wouldn’t have a chance to see her until 10:00 p.m. This began to gnaw at me. And all these thoughts began to creep into my brain. I envisioned her shooting the shit with her castmates, chatting and gossiping with them, maybe talking about our relationship. Maybe flirting with the other actors.
I began to see less and less of her. This led to a vicious cycle: the less I saw of her, the more I wanted to see her. I remember calling her cell phone as soon as the rehearsals ended at ten o’clock, and sometimes she would call me right back but sometimes she wouldn’t. Sometimes I wouldn’t get a call back until ten thirty. Sometimes eleven. Sometimes not at all.
One night I called her at 10:10 (I knew she’d be home), no answer, then 10:17, no answer, then at 10:45 she picked up the phone.
“I just got home,” she said.
“Don’t rehearsals end at ten?” I could hear the desperation in my voice.
“Dude,” she said. “Dude, just relax, okay?”
Dude. Dude?
We eventually did hang out that night. All would be well. It’s interesting how we can go from severe insecurity about a relationship to absolute security as soon you see that person face-to-face. We make monsters in our head when we’re alone, and they just as quickly vanish when you’re together. All I wanted was to see her, to make her happy. But part of me was beginning to turn resentful. I wanted her to know that I was trying to make her happy, and I wanted her to know that I knew that she wasn’t working as hard for my happiness. For example, I knew that she wanted to go to the Rufus Wainwright concert. The tickets were expensive but I wanted her to be happy, so for her birthday I bought her one ticket. One ticket.
My gift was laced with acid. I wanted her to see that they were expensive and that she should feel guilty that she could go and I could not. I wanted to kill her with kindness so she could never leave me.
“Dude, this is silly, you have to come with me!” she said.
I let her ask me three or four times before I acquiesced and bought a ticket for myself. At the concert I sang loudly to “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk.”
“Shhhhhhhhhhh,” she said. “Don’t sing, just listen.” That hurt my feelings. Everything was hurting my feelings. You see, it wasn’t about her anymore; it was beginning to become about me.
One night I arrived late to a party and saw her leaning against a tree, smoking, talking to a guy covered in tattoos. He was strong looking, ripped in ways that I was not. He was wearing a whole string of earrings. He looked so damn cool, and I could tell from his body language that he liked her. Worse, I had a feeling that she liked him, too.
“I’m Jeff,” he said, shaking my hand.
“Strong grip,” I said, wishing I had met his hand with the same force.
“Hi, baby,” I said to Grace.
She side-hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. Not on the lips. On the cheek. Was she distant? I couldn’t tell anymore. The three of us made some dumb, uneasy small talk and I learned that Jeff loved surfing and dogs, and that he drove a green Volkswagen bus.
“I’m not feeling that great,” I said, hoping Grace would take her eyes off this guy and go home with me.
“Oh, do you mind if I stay?” she asked.
“Of course not,” I lied.
I hugged her good-bye and we didn’t kiss, again. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was the kind of feeling that just grows, and it grows and grows and grows and you can’t do anything about it.
The next morning I had to drive to the grocery store to pick up some batteries, and by coincidence (not by coincidence) I passed Grace’s house. I looked at her place like I always did. And parked next to her door was a green Volkswagen bus.
I took a breath and decided to call her from the car, just to see how she would react.
“Hey, I’m at the store; want something?” I asked.
Silence.
“No, I’m good,” she finally said. “See you later?”
I drove home, shaking with anger, sadness, confusion. All the monsters in my head were coming true.
I didn’t call her all day. Around 10:20 p.m. my phone rang.
“Come over tonight,” she said.
“I saw his bus.”
She didn’t say anything. Her silence made her sound like she was staring at the floor.
“Did you hook up?”
She began to cry and said, “I don’t want to break up with you, Kunal, but what’s the point? I’m graduating soon. In May I’m gone. So what are we doing anyway?” Her response was brilliant. She had accomplished several things:
1. She didn’t confess to hooking up with him.
2. But she didn’t deny it.
3. She didn’t break up with me.
4. But she implied that we should be broken up.
We had reached an unspoken stalemate. We were still boyfriend and girlfriend without being boyfriend and girlfriend.
A few days later, while I was driving by her place, I saw the green Volkswagen bus again. That fucking bus. But I pretended t
hat the situation didn’t exist. Out of sight, out of mind. Except I saw the green bus again the next day. Then the next day I saw it again. Soon the green bus was parked outside her apartment every night. It became an open secret that everyone knew about, including me. But I just didn’t want to accept it. I just wanted her to love me. I wanted her back.
I decided I was going to fight for what we once had. I was going to fight for love. I was going to win her back.
“For her birthday, we’re going to go to her house and win her over with a song,” I told Caleb, a friend in the theater department who I knew could play guitar.
“Of course, great idea,” said Caleb. I loved his positivity. There was no judgmental scolding of “Kunal, dude, she’s cheating on you, forget this witch.” Everyone loved Grace—even then—and they understood why I wanted her back in my life.
So with Caleb and a few other friends, we practiced an a cappella version of “The Still of the Night.” They took it really seriously, and we all rehearsed it like our life depended on it. Well, at this point, I really felt that my life did.
The plan: I would knock on the door to surprise her, we would start softly with doo-wops, and when the chorus kicked in, I would ask her to slow-dance with me on her front porch.
On the night of her birthday, we showed up at her doorstep. Parked in front, like always, was the green bus. I didn’t care. At that moment I didn’t care if he was inside the house with her. This was my chance to win back Grace, and no amount of tattoos could get in my way.
I knocked on the door.
She answered. I caught a glimpse of Jeff on the couch as she closed the door behind her.
“Listen,” I said.
She stepped out onto the porch as the guys began . . .
Doo-wop dooby-doo
Doo-wop dooby-doo
“Dance with me,” I said, not asking a question.
She wrapped her arms around me as the lyrics began to flow—
In the still of the night
I held you, held you tight . . .
We began to dance slowly, gently, tenderly. I ran my hands through her hair, and she turned to jelly. I could feel her tears on my neck. I could smell her Egyptian Musk.
I’m thinking THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME. Jeff and his green bus could go take a shit somewhere; I just wanted Grace, for the rest of her life, to remember this moment.
She looked at me. “Thank you. I love you.”
She went back inside and I can imagine that she probably cried some more, and Jeff probably held her, and then, later that night, they probably made love.
Many weeks earlier, before the dance, before things had soured, I had offered to drive her to her parents’ house when she graduated (a six-hour drive). Now we were broken up, but I didn’t want to back out. I wanted to see her off. I felt like I owed it to her. Or maybe I just wanted to spend as much time with her as I could.
I helped her pack up all her stuff. We drove the six hours and when we arrived, her parents, whom I had met before, invited me to stay for dinner and the night. I accepted.
Grace and I slept in separate rooms (it was her parents’ house), so when her folks went to bed I said good night to Grace, slipped on my pajamas, and went to sleep in the guest room. Tired from a long drive, I fell asleep instantly.
At 2 a.m. I heard a knock.
I know that knock.
I knew what was coming next.
“Koooooooooonel.”
Wordlessly I opened the door.
Déjà vu.
“Come sit with me in the living room,” she said.
I obliged.
We didn’t talk. We had already done all the talking. Instead, right there on her parents’ couch, boyfriend and girlfriend or not, we made love.
And as she closed her eyes and drifted off I remember studying her face. Her breathing was not so gentle anymore; she was no longer gently smiling. She had said good-bye already.
The next morning it was actually time to say good-bye. For real this time. I opened the trunk of my car and threw in my bag.
“I love you. I’ll miss you,” she said.
“Same,” I said, hopping in the car to drive off.
“Oh shit, I almost forgot!” she said.
My key was already in the ignition when she dashed into the house. She returned with a small brown sack. “I made you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I even cut the crusts off.”
At the words “peanut butter” the floodgates opened and she began to cry. I hugged her through the car’s window, accepted the sandwiches, and drove off. I won’t cry. I won’t cry. I won’t cry.
I flipped on the car’s stereo and inserted a CD.
True love waits on lollipops and crisps.
True love waits on lollipops and crisps.
I played the song on a loop for hours, and I bawled my eyes out. I mean it just gushed from me, tears upon tears upon tears. And then, hours later, after driving for hundreds of miles, something strange happened: I began to feel good. It was as if I had been cleansed. It was as if the poison of Saruman had washed away and the trees could grow again. I was free of the anxiety. Free of the jealousy. And I realized what I had known all along: the problem really was me, and that it was my fault for pushing her away. You see, love doesn’t belong to anyone. You can’t force it on someone and you can’t take it away from someone. The more you try to hold on to it and keep it for yourself, the more fleeting it is.
Or maybe I just realized that I should have spotted a few red flags when I first connected with the girl of my dreams by licking her eyeball.
As I pulled into Portland I felt a lightness in my spirit. I looked at my phone and saw a name that intrigued me: Miyuki, a cute Japanese girl from school. Hmmm. I stopped for gas, and as the tank was filling I sat on the hood of my car eating an ice-cream cone, looking at the pink and mauve hue of the dusky sky. I flipped open my phone. “Hey, Miyuki, wanna hang tonight?”
* * *
I. In hindsight, I think I may have thought of that line later, but for the sake of this particular story, let’s just say I came up with it right then and there.
II. That one I did say.
III. I like it when the name of a food is also the recipe for making it.
Music is fodder for my soul. Without it, I could not have gotten through heartbreak. I could not have traveled so far. I could never have loved the way I do now. Music taught me that. It eased my pain. It has been my lifeline.
The Prince and the Pauper
ONE GOOD THING CAME OUT of my breakup with grace. I lost a girlfriend, but I gained a band. Remember Caleb, who helped me try to win Grace back? We started a two-man acoustic band called the Prince and the Pauper. I was the Prince (cuz I called dibs), and Caleb was the Pauper (slower to call dibs).
Both Caleb and I were coming off an emotional time in our lives. He too had just had a falling-out with a girl he loved, and we bonded over our similar breakups. Also, we were in college in Portland, Oregon, which makes us legally obliged to sing weepy melancholy songs that can be best described as emo. Emo is basically short for “emotional rock.” We had the emotional part down.
Our very first tune, a little ditty about Grace, was titled “She’s Mine.” It began:
I woke up this morn’
Drenched in love potion and lipstick
And then the chorus, wait for it:
She’s mine
She’s mine
She’s miiiiinne
Yup. Thaaaaaat kind of song. In retrospect our sound was Radiohead meets Justin Bieber. But, you know, in that moment it was the greatest song that we had ever sung, or that had ever been sung, because it was about Grace.
We played “She’s Mine” on campus and it was a hit. By “hit,” I mean that we played in front of thirty friends—an audience who would applaud even if we sang an off-key version of “Happy Birthday” in our tighty-whities. But still. People did sing along with the chorus.
She’s mine
She�
�s mine
She’s miiiiiiiine
Let me tell you, when you have thirty people singing along to a song that you wrote, that’s really all you need in life.
“Maybe we should take our show on the road?” Caleb said.
“Like play at . . . real venues?”
“Off-campus.”
“Um. Okay. I’m in.”
We started by scouring the paper for open mics in the greater Portland area. We were also writing more songs—six more songs, to be exact. Moody numbers that included gems like “So I’m Lonely Again” and “Misery” and “The Taste of Your Tears.” We jammed hard. We practiced. Hard. We were serious.
We found a venue that seemed suitable for our world debut: a coffee shop called Java Bean. In fact it was across the street from where Dziko and I used to drink coffee and play chess, and they made an incredibly good coffee milk shake. We walked into the coffee shop and asked the manager, “Can we play music here?”
He looked at the two of us. Skeptical. “Do you have guitars?”
“Yes.”
“All right, bring them in and play for me. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Right here?”
He shrugged as if to say, Any better options? And so, about thirty minutes later, we returned huffing and puffing from taking the bus all the way back to campus to get our guitars and stood right in the middle of the coffee shop, surrounded by the clanking of dishes and the hiss of the espresso machine. And we sang—
She’s mine she’s mine she’s mine she’s mine.
Silence.
The guy had a poker face.
Finally he said, “Not bad. Why don’t you play on Thursday evening, say from five to seven?”
We felt like kings. We printed flyers announcing our show: “Prince and the Pauper: playing Emotional Love Acoustic Songs.” We put them up all over the university, hoping to draw a big crowd, and of course we texted, emailed, and called all of our close friends.
On the day of the “concert” we felt like a real band. I wore torn jeans, a faded red Coca-Cola T-shirt, a white denim jacket, and yellow Converse sneakers. We were Portlandia before there was a show called Portlandia. We tuned our guitars and set up our mics, watching as our friends trickled into the small cafe. First just two or three. Then ten. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Then the cafe ran out of chairs. Then thirty. Soon the entire venue was packed with at least forty-five theater kids. Who cares if it was a crowd full of only our friends? It was a crowd nevertheless, and they were all there to see us.