The Mixtape

The year was 1995 and I was in art school. Jonah was the ex-best friend and roommate of my ex-boyfriend. He taught me to play chess in the lobby of our dormitory and watched The Simpsons with me while Adam was cheating on me with various girls who did not skateboard or listen to Pavement.  

Jonah was punk as fuck but also had an emo-boy sensitive side. One night, the last night of sophomore year, he came to my dorm room with a bottle of Jackand a mixtape titled “Making lemons out of lemonade." This was before a mixtape was just a tattoo hipsters wear on their forearm; this was a carefully thought-out message. He was declaring his love; I was totally clueless. 

That night, we just had some drinks. I told him I liked Texas is the Reason and asked him make me more mixes. He did.   

Eventually, I caught on to the fact that Adam, my boyfriend, was a perpetual asshole and we broke up. The next fall, I ran into Jonah at a strangely serious screening of a Russ Meyer film and whispered it was my birthday. He pulled a bottle of Jack from his messenger bag and we killed it during the film. I dropped the empty and we laughed as it rolled, loudly, down the aisle of the auditorium.

I had turned twenty-two, but I didn’t have an ID because I didn’t drive and never went to bars. So after the film, he took me to a townie bar and pulled me through the men's-room window. I did my first shot of wild turkey. We played The Cure on the jukebox, and he was the first boy to tell me I was beautiful. We stumbled to his apartment and hid from his girlfriend, who lived next door to him. We opened beers, and he told me he had been in love with me from the minute he saw me in a Husker Du T-shirt on move-in day.  

I kissed him. He said, "Wait," and ran to turn on music, Jawbreaker’s “I Want You” on repeat. It was the first song on the mixtape he'd made me the year before.  

He was a sculptor and knew how to use his hands. We made love all night, and he talked about all of the things we could do together. In the morning, I snuck out while he was sleeping, finding cast-off clothes and leaving socks behind.

He never really forgave me for running away — I was banned from the house shows he threw for the next two years. I’m still sad, mostly because I lost a friend. — Kelly