Last night I told Elysha that I had a song stuck in my head. She asked me what the song was. I told her that she wouldn’t know it. She assured me she would.
“Fine,” I said. “It’s I’ve Never Been To Me.“
“I know it,” she said.
Of course she knows it. The woman can’t find west if she’s driving into a setting sun with a compass on her lap and a flock of geese visibly flying south overhead, but she knows just about every song ever written.
She asked me how this song could possibly be stuck in my head. I explained that it was on a CD that I would throw in at weddings if the dinner was running long. Before my DJ partner and I could burn our own CDs. “I heard it today in the supermarket,” I explained. “It’s been trapped ever since.”
I also told her that a quick Wikipedia dive revealed that the song had tanked in 1977, barely scraping the bottom of the Billboard chart, but it was re-released in 1982 after some insane DJ in Tampa began playing it and his listeners – also clearly insane – liked it.
“I can’t believe you know the song,” I said. “You even know the ridiculous spoken words in the middle?”
“Yeah…” she said. “What were they?”
“I’m not saying,” I said. “I don’t want the song any more stuck than it already is.”
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to play it.”
“Don’t.”
“I will,” she said, smiling.
“Don’t.”
Then she did. She played it, And sang it as it played, To me. Smiling the whole time. Looking beautiful and joyous in a way that only she can. Speaking the words from that ridiculous spoken-word bridge (which is wisely absent from the Youtube version of the song) like she was speaking them to me. Cementing the song in my mind.
“I’ve been undressed by kings and seen some things that a woman ain’t supposed to see,” she sang.
“Yeah?” I said. “What wasn’t she supposed to see?”
“Ugly penises.”
I laughed. She’s annoying and cruel, but she’s funny, too.
More than 24 hours later and the song is still jammed in my head. She tried to tell me that research indicates that the best way to rid yourself of a song it to play it all the way through. Beginning to end.
Nonsense, of course. Or at least nonsense if the person you love is singing along.
Now she’s sitting across from me again right now. Same song still playing in my head. It’s so awful, and it’s going to be with me for days.
I’m not saying a word to her. She can sit over there and think that my mind is empty of subtle whoring (yes, a line from the song) and Marlow in Monte Carlo and ugly penises.
She can’t be trusted.
