Wish You Were Here (Extended Version)
The jock, the creative, and an odd request.
Content warning: reference to sexual assault
Sure, this one isn’t a warm and fuzzy piece, but I am so proud of it. The flash version of “Wish You Were Here” was published in Hearth & Coffin in March 2023. I always wanted to expand on it with more songs and how the story between us, the jock and the creative, continued. I doubled the word count to about 1550 and submitted the extended version to my last short story workshop for grad school. It made an impact on my classmates, and I thoroughly enjoyed making it come alive for our recorded reading assignment.
I submitted “WYWH (Extended Version)” to only one publication. After receiving the rejection, I became very possessive about the piece. Feeling cranky and impatient waiting the three months for the rights to revert back to me from H&C, I intended to place it here on Substack. With a new recording below, I’m still amazed that I wrote this story, that it came from my core and was lived wholeheartedly and recklessly by me.
He forgot THE SONG.
I rarely asked for anything. But what should I expect from someone I allowed to be so spoiled?
He got:
My smooth, tight body straddled over him.
My mouth on crevices prone to chafing.
My willingness–always mine, never his–to drive 250 miles through the fickle weather of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest to meet up.
My body frozen in stills that symbolized how much I yearned to close our distance.
I can't blame him. I even created excuses:
Excuse #1: We barely knew each other when I offered this revelation and the follow-up request. How could I trust him with my burden, encased yet adorned in sarcasm and bold flirtation?
Excuse #2: He was technically at work when I brought it up—even though he still encouraged me to tell the story behind THE SONG.
Excuse #3: It's just a fucking song. I mentioned so many songs.
But this was THE SONG. The one that haunted me. The one that played on a loop while men explored my body during a coke-filled weekend when I was a freshman in college many, many years ago. I welcomed this dissection because I couldn’t quite numb the memory of being drugged and raped earlier in the semester, a hole that stretched and grew within my core. So among strangers, I asked for THE SONG on repeat. It was a cry, an anthem, my personal party theme where I was the only woman present. Wishing someone would rescue me. Still, just 18.
I had hoped to gain the power of THE SONG back with his help. I wanted to play it within the safe confines of coherent intimacy, remaking it into my own. Not turn into ice when it popped up on my music stream, taking me hostage for three minutes and thirty-three seconds. I was reluctantly lured by it, always stuck on repeat to punish me… but enjoying how it mesmerized me, a reminder that I deserved that pull into the past.
Like a nervous pre-teen calling the radio station to hear her favorite song. Like a divorcee on her first night out at the karaoke bar, overanalyzing what tune she will write on a slip of paper for the DJ.
I, too, had my one uncomfortable request:
I wanted to have sex with him while THE SONG played. This was the only thing I’ve ever asked from him.
And, of course, he graciously agreed.
***
Maybe it’s because so much of my adulthood was spent in small groups at church and women’s accountability circles or the fact I can be a brutal Enneagram Type 8, but the ongoing wounded female complex disgusts me. Worth derived from always being in need of repair.
It reminded me as a kid when I would use cassettes to record songs from the radio and how I was tempted to sometimes pull the thin tape from inside the cassette. At first, I was entranced by what looked like a shiny mess of brown party streamers, but I then cursed myself as I meticulously wound the tape back into the cassette with a pencil.
Pulling out a mess of words and meaning and then composing oneself into a tight reel, only to do it over and over again.
Just play your song and move on, lady.
Don’t get me wrong, vulnerability and “letting it out” are healthy and normal, but this showcase with women I grew to dislike was on a regular cycle in fellowship halls and living rooms, hashing and rehashing the same shit week after week. These women just enjoyed being heard; to be fixed would mean having less spotlight next time.
Better to stay broken.
***
My norm was to patch anything threadbare, even a thin air-hole leading to my secrets, but his gentle kindness, reciprocating sense of humor, and unpredictable depth made me willing to be properly hemmed, though fully bare, before him. I enjoyed being unwound and then tangled up repeatedly.
His pain drew me in like a melody, a summertime earworm. Hearing his self-deprecation about his “football brain,” a nod to his college football career, and his unworthiness of love, I was hungry to nurture and apply salve on his darkest secrets and deepest wounds. In return, he told me how smart, funny, and pretty I was.
You’re so important to me.
I hope you know how much I care about you.
You cast a heavy spell.
This was supposed to be a fling, but those words made me float. I despised that.
One time, he sent me “Woman” by Mumford & Sons, so I responded with “Woman” by Wolfmother.
I wanted to ground him, but he wanted to keep me high and elusive. I was his dream girl, an escape, as he peppered me with his growing wants and dumped his wreckage.
He was a quiet, reluctant sabotager while I was a quick and deliberate one.
The jock and the creative. We made a toxic duo but a damn good playlist.
***
Weeks later, we bantered and flirted over text as I organized my life with colors and asterisks in my planner, giving the trivial of this life more weight than it deserved.
Then THE SONG played, interrupting my paltry thoughts and good mood. The draw to get lost in it still revealed my frailty, so I sought safety in reminding him about THE SONG.
He casually mentioned he liked Pink Floyd.
I responded wrong song and corrected him with THE SONG from THAT OTHER BAND.
He texted back: oh that one’s good too.
Apparently, to him, our exchange was comparable to an evening sipping beers as older millennials, reminiscing about songs from 2001.
My mind went blank in a flippant swipe. Shut down, I stared at words that began to blur.
I coached myself, desperate to stay in the present, an incantation of whispers: Stop this right now. You’re not going there.
I forced my body to reboot and searched our text thread to confirm I didn't make the whole thing up. (Because that’s what women do. Because I was making a big deal out of nothing, right? I mean, look at my planner.)
No, it was all there.
I wanted to scream… or tap on my phone in anger:
Check our texts on November 20th!
I never ask you for anything!
You're right, I do spoil you!
But I didn’t, and I also couldn’t go back to witty texting because I questioned if he was ever really there. Were my words as fascinating and worthy as he made them seem?
I thought I felt secure with him. I craved his dissection. But my one request, with its redemptive purpose, was either too much or too little for him to unravel and restitch with me.
To stay in the here and now, I could have prepared a playlist that included:
“Uninvited” - Alanis Morrisette
“You’re a Cad” - The Bird and the Bee
“Optimistic” - Radiohead
But no, at that moment, I pulled the tape strings from my heart and let them decorate the darkness of my bedroom.
THE SONG remained on repeat.
***
We stayed close and in contact with a few spotty fallings-out for another year, but I never mentioned THE SONG again.
He sent me songs like “Kisser - Rii Remix” from Step Rockets and “This Must Be the Place” by Talking Heads. In other words, I got songs that reminded me that I was there to pick up his pieces and to fill dedicated voids.
Sure, I did the same, but it slowed to a trickle. I reserved songs like Zero 7’s “Dreaming,” with an early 2000s Sia wooing her lover to move on, for myself on early morning jogs. Even though he received the sunrise eleven minutes before I did, I was always up while he still rested in sweet slumber. At that point, I was delighted to have a head start each day. A way to seem more put together compared to him.
Wanting to hold on to what was comfortable but with overwhelming indifference, I started making plans to meet up in Baker City, the halfway point for us. In the meantime, he obsessed over finding a woman to join us for a threesome.
We should part ways, I texted. He wanted to talk about it, but I became candid and nonchalant. Later, I sent him a message explaining myself, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
***
I don’t know if I miss him, but I know I missed me. Maybe we could’ve been good friends minus the physical aspect of the relationship.
But no, like the over-saturation of a catchy one-hit wonder, our song had run its course. I needed something else to fill the air. I craved something more substantial. Not a tired hook that lost its seduction.
Now when I think about him and the gravity of the request, THE SONG sounds different. Its pull, once irresistible, is now brittle and frail.
“Wish You Were Here” was never a song about my need for someone else; it was my need to show up for myself. To be in the moment, advocating and repairing and exploring the depths within me.
Each new day, a new song. The cassette tape wound, ready for me to hit play and to delicately gather myself on the next spool.