True story: I bought this because a cute boy told me to. And then I threw it at my mother.
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.”
Risky Fuel 