Of Mixtapes and Psycho Exes

On the way home from Chooch’s piano lesson on Saturday, some Queen song came on the radio (it was probably “Another One Bites the Dust,” but I can’t remember exactly right now).

Chooch is oddly interested in Queen. Not in a “LET’S BUY THEIR WHOLE DISCOGRAPHY!

” sense. But, he does like to ask questions about them. Once, I played him the “Radio Gaga” video, because I was OBSESSED with that song when I was around his age (there’s even a video of me dancing to with curlers in my hair years later—I think jerk Lisa filmed it in my mom’s family room when I wasn’t paying attention) and he was fascinated.

This time, he started asking us questions about Queen’s popularity and seemed kind of surprised when Henry and I told him that they had lots of big radio hits. We started naming some of them and I had a quick audio flashback of senior year of high school. I had never been a super big Queen fan, so I never really sunk into their deep cuts. But then I started dating Psycho Mike, and the one good quality about Psycho Mike among the layers of shitty attitude, rage disorders, and fiery jealousy was that he really loved music. None of my prior boyfriends really seemed to give a shit about music, let alone that all-important relationship token: The Mixtape. I would make them for people all the time: friends, penpals, unworthy boyfriends—but it wasn’t until I started dating Mike that I ever got one back from a boy.

And it was fucking legit.

It was through Mike that I learned about Billy Bragg (whom I finally got to see live at Riot Fest last September!), Neutral Milk Hotel, Syd Barrett, and Radiohead (Mike was going to see them back when they were opening for bands at tiny Pittsburgh clubs like Metropol), some of which were included on the mixtape he made for me during the winter of 1997. I spent so many nights laying on the beanbag in my bedroom, lit only by a ridiculous collection of neon water sculptures and Christmas lights bouncing off of my foiled wallpaper…it was just a few nudie posters short of being a home-version of Spencer’s, a headshop without the bongs and nose-pinching stench of patchouli. And this is how Mike’s mixtape was best experienced: half-devoured by a giant bag of beans, awash in psychedelic lights, absolutely nothing distracting from the words and music seeping into the system like some supreme cocktail of opiates.

During our Queen conversation on Saturday, I pulled up “You Don’t Fool Me” on my phone and, before it started playing, I explained that it was my favorite Queen song of all time.

“It was on this mixtape that Psycho Mike made me,” I mumbled.

I hadn’t listened to this song in at least 15 years, and as soon as I heard those opening notes, I was back in my old bedroom again, and I felt so calm and peaceful, even with Chooch’s mouth chattering away in the backseat of the car. Over the weekend, I listened to some more songs that I remembered from that tape, “Marooned” by Pink Floyd, “Bad As They Seem” by Hayden, even Pachelbel’s “Canon” was on there. Side B ended with a 10-second recording of one of our phone calls, unbeknownst to me at the time; I thought was incredibly adorable and romantic back then, me sounding all sleepy and him teasing me with a deranged lilt to his voice.

Listening to these songs made me feel warm, safe, comfortable: none of the things Psycho Mike ever made me feel.