Classy and Shit

I listened to the aforementioned Joe song on repeat thanks to a mix cd from a frenemy back in 2001 on my spring vacation to rural mexico. My dad was having a post divorce meltdown but I didn’t know it at the time; I just knew he was sort of losing it at the airport when we didn’t have notarized permission from my mother to leave the country. It sort of crushes my core to remember him clutching his green binder which he had diligently filled with every other important document and chewing his lips into mush. The Irresponsible Parent. 

2001 meant the year my parents divorced and my freshman year at Franklin High School, which really meant being a white loser with no friends. I had friends, actually. Two friends. And one frenemy who leant me this cd. 

Anyway, listening to this song reminds me of what it was like to wonder about sex and falling in love. The end of this song vaguely tugs at the parts of me that have mostly dissolved in adulthood. I don’t wonder about what Sex will be like. I occasionally think about what sex with a particular person might be like but Sex has been checked off the list, lost its mystery, done. Sex means penis in vagina (but first, vagina on vagina), ingrown pubes, spit or swallow, fuck I have a UTI, is he gonna call me again, etc. Sex means good things too, but I didn’t consider how real shit gets during sex in 2001. 

Fuck I miss that anticipation. I can just about feel myself on that beach at 5, cautiously wearing a linen shirt that showed a little stomach, closing my eyes to that song and thinking how great it must be to fall in love and be made love to. I could picture how it would look from the outside (albeit with a lot of buttery light and probably Justin Timberlake) but I didn’t know what to expect on the inside. I have always felt things in my gut, and this stuff about love and sex and shit beat against my stomach so hard. Having sex though, more often than not, beats wondering about sex. But thanks Joe. I needed that.