Category Archives: Relationships

It’s Record Store Day! And we all love record stores, right? They’re magical places filled with wonderful albums and equally wonderful people who want to help you find those albums! They’re where those of us who had no lives and friends (or at least no friends who weren’t Smiths records) spent most of our formative years.

But they’re also places of heartbreak. I learned that for myself as an overly naive 19 year old. You see, there was this lovely young man at my favourite record store. I called him Record Store Boy, because I am creative like that. He was serviceably cute, he liked all of the right music, and he talked to me. And so I spent almost two years nursing a ridiculous crush on him that led me to do stupid things like buy a Coldplay CD because he told me to and wear a PVC dress to the store in one of my more bizarre effort to impress him. When I was 19, I finally made my move. I went to the store, I gave him a copy of Chart Magazine that included my first ever feature story and I gave him my email address.

I never heard from him.

Overcome with heartache and unfocussed rage, I wrote a free verse poem about him that references Eugene O’Neill and long-repressed fantasies about the stars of Gladiator, among other things. And, in honour of Record Store Day, I would like to share it with all of you.

Long night’s journey into pms

do not trust the boy at the record store

(okay, you can probably trust scott, but that’s a different story)

he will smile his cute (in an aryan way) smile

and talk you into buying coldplay records

and will be charming just so

you’ll buy lots of shit at his store

so you’ll buy videodrome on DVD

(which is kind of cool because you’ve wanted it for years)

and act like an ass

you know it’s the Dr. Pepper slurpee’s fault

but he can’t see that

he thinks you’re tingly

which you are

but really you’re shaking because you had a slurpee for lunch

but the record store boy isn’t that special

ooh coldplay… didn’t see that obscure reference coming

and so yeah, they’re fabulous

but if you hear yellow on the radio one more time

you’ll vomit (and it will all be yellow)

and that manic street preachers stuff he was saying?

how original

they’re a socialist band

on a corporate label

the irony of it all!

i’m so impressed

at that stunning insight

looks like his two years

of political science

at the university of

fucking toronto

have really been worth it

does he live in that sloan shirt?

and can you ever forgive him for

never having heard

joni mitchell’s a case of you

when he loves sloan’s sloppy cover of it?

dork

he’ll be the one feeling like an ass

when you’re all infamous and shit

with your booker winning novel

in which you’ve henry carr-ed his ass

(sorry for the obscure James Joyce reference,

but it’s a really fucking good shot)

and then he’ll meet you at

some book signing

having realized

what a fool he was

to let such a saucy and sexy

second coming of truman capote

go

you will laugh at him

and inform him that

you would never dump

your boyfriend george

for him

especially after george

was so understanding

after you were caught

in that bathroom stall

with joaquin phoenix

and his lover

russell crowe

“sorry, chicken shit indie boy,”

you will say

“take your aryan smile

to some other lonely indie girl

who won’t think that

over worn, washed out

sloan shirt

is past its peak.”