A Mighty Long Time
A 1960s love song and edited versions of lost loves
I enjoy segmented essays and songs that put me in a trance. Barbara Lewis’s 1961 hit “Hello Stranger” is so seductive yet innocent. Hearing the song in the odd Netflix show Obsession (don’t get me started) and then playing it on repeat too many times, I was hit with a memory process we (or maybe just I) go through when daydreaming about others. We welcome concocted forms of past intimate partners as I way to reminisce and cope, so we can push blame away from ourselves and/or recall only the good aspects of flawed people and experiences.
Because we can’t quite forget them completely, right?
“A Mighty Long Time”
The trance begins as I hear the organ opening of “Hello Stranger.” I bite my lip as Barbara Lewis welcomes old love with “shoo-bops” and a desire for this stranger to stay put.
I sway as I seduce the clothes out of the hamper and indulge in a fog of memories.
My fingers match the beat as I sort laundry, caressing fabrics. I flip skirts and tops and run my hand up seams in search of care instructions.
Giving up, I toss everything into the washer.
In the 1960s, Barbara Lewis may have salvaged all sentimental ephemera--rare photos, crisp, folded letters, and addresses on the back of hotel bills--in order to recall those snagging lovers.
Who did she think about when she sang the lyrics of “Hello Stranger”?
I delete remnants of nostalgia (i.e., pics and texts and phone numbers) when relationships reach their expiration dates.
But I'm vicious. Or maybe I purge out of self-preservation. Out of sight, out of mind.
In this world of online obligatory connection, I indulge in the power to make history abruptly fade. I want to test the strength of memories filed away in my mind.
Prove to me you weren't a flippant infatuation.
***
I yearn for the long-absent paramours in my life, but if I'm being honest, I miss modified versions of these characters that do not exist in reality.
Among mental scraps, I curate tightly hemmed tapestries of their best attributes and our favorite inside jokes, a mental patchwork which includes “The Look,” the one where I knew I harnessed their intrigue. Reminiscing, I adorn myself with these appliques of pathetic attachment, adding to my internal interfacing of love at its most brittle.
Or it's a version of how I wish they were, providing lyrical rewrites to our dreamy songs. I offer them impactful lyrics with my preferred meter. I prompt them to sing in a different key and work on their pitch to ease my crying and craving and curiosity about why they just couldn’t fucking behave.
Shame on you for not signing our ballad the correct way.
***
Flawed muses are at the core of all love songs.
The young blonde who entwined easily around my limbs.
The male nurse who lingered on my words.
The gym rat with a fragile heart.
The farm girl with misplaced affection.
The English teacher with the seductive stories.
The businessman who reached for my hand within the first few minutes.
Sort the laundry and look over the care instructions. Wash away the dark and inconvenient. Bleach the troubled and self-seeking.
I will choose to forget, my darlings. With time, it’s easier to edit you down, down, way down.
Fair well, stranger.