You were always so shy, that's what I first remember. The shifty smiles, the passed notes, the endless collages and mix tapes, we had to start somewhere. Somewhere between calculus and chemistry you handed me that first mix tape, and continued down the hallway. I didn't see you for the rest of the day. These days were before our infinite phone calls, punk rock proms and car trips; these were our first days.
In every class that day, I carefully read over and over the tracks written on the back in your crooked printing, not recognizing half of them. I studied the collaged cover for secret messages and meaningful pictures, but found nothing but David Bowie's smirking face and George Bush's senseless quotes. At home, with my textbooks opened, I slid your cassette into my stereo. Song after song I listened. I must have listened to the tape 50 times that day, imagining you in your room filled with posters, guitars and computers recording each song on for me. Carefully hidden between tracks by Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead was a song I'd never heard before, a song that started with "I fell in love..." I rewound the song over and over. The track list said it was "Sleepwalking" by Modest Mouse. I listened to the song in my best friend's car as we drove too fast on the snowy streets of our empty town. I'd listen to it while falling asleep, or while getting ready for school; it was the perfect soundtrack for anything. I listened to it until it began to sound slightly warped.
Things escalated from there. Our lives began to warp. Things turned from smiles in the hallway at school to cautious phone calls to picnics in the park and trips to Canada. But every time I hear it, on the radio or on a CD, I think of that time right before I really knew you. I think of us, half-asleep wandering through the loud hallways at school, each searching for someone or something that would complete us. We must have been looking in all the wrong places.
"I fell in love and/ I needed a road map/ to find out where you lived/ so excited now." Maybe I didn't need a road map, but I needed a hint. A hint from your overwhelmingly self-conscious mind to clue my insecure subconscious that this wasn't a one-way infatuation, but that there was more. I was so excited.
Our convenience stores were filled with the white trash boys, and our nights were filled with raiding liquor stashes. We were finally alive. You filled my sleepy days. You were something so powerful I finally felt awake. For weeks every time I thought of you I would hear those first opening notes, so awkward but so sweet. The song, a living tale of the part of ourselves we finally found. Lyrics so meaningful to me wrapped up in a simple melody that never stopped the words from meaning less. I've bought some of their CDs, but never the one with that song. I've heard thousands of bands that sound similar to Modest Mouse, but it's never the same. Nothing quite compares to the day I first heard this little song hidden on your cassette.
I don't have the cassette any more, somewhere between living and moving I must have misplaced it. But, I still have you taped on my wall, on the other end of my phone and in my mind. My days of wasting time, of waiting for you, before I knew who you were, are over. You've woken me up.