016: Which song is ours?

I was eavesdropped on the train the other day. Thjis girl and this guy were talking, and she says to him, "It's funny how you can't remember smells until you smell them again." And that's not true. It's mostly true, but it's not completely true.

There are two smells that leap immediately to mind. Before Oakville Place was renovated, before we had HMV, there was Music World, which was originally Sam the Record Man. In both incarnations -- but not its current life as West 49, to the best of my knowledge since I don't shop there -- it had this distinct smell, this stifling, proper, New Car Library odor. I can't put my finger on it. I might never smell it again, but I'd know it in an instant if I did.

The other one that leaps to mind came as I was reading old blog entries. I was reading back my old posts from early 2005, when I was young and cynical, but too young to have anything serious to be cynical about (and thus way more cynical than I am now.) I was reflecting on my high school experience up to that point, and it triggered a memory in me, not of the grade 12 days from which the post originated, but of an even earlier time, of Grade 9, the smell of the auto shop.

In the post, I was bitching about how, in Grade 9, I had the disadvantage of bringing along all my baggage from Grade 8 (and oh boy was there a lot) and being shunned by the Montclair kids who were mostly insular. River Oaks kids were pretty insular too, which wouldn't have been a problem without my baggage.

But this is a false memory. A fabrication, or at least a stereotyping exaggeration. I remember my tech rotation class, which had very few River Oaks kids (I think it was me, Becky, and Kenzi, and then the rest were Montclair kids; Hilary might have been there too.) In between the two factions was Josh W., who had spent most of his grade school time at River Oaks, but in Grade 8 transferred to Montclair. And because he was a ridiculously personal, charismatic kid, he was friends with everybody. And luckily, he had a good enough impression of me to form a sort of three-man group in that class with me and Spencer, who was also in my drama class at the time, thus opening up the doors considerably.

It was also in that class that I made many feeble attempts to talk to the girls. Then as now, there was a difficulty accessing that smoothness, that magnetism that all the really, um, successful dudes have, but back then it was worse. I remember trying awkwardly to strike up conversations with both the girls I had known all through grade school and the ones I had just met (who all seemed to have a much greater degree of sexual maturity, since I hadn't known them all this time.) And I remember that room, the auto shop. I remember the odor of motor oil and heavy iron machinery and drills and cement floors and bad ventilation and worst of all pent up adolescent sexual frustration practically bursting at every moment.

The girls mostly humoured me, I was a harmless presence until I started writing creepy poetry (yep.) There was one, though. I think her name was Megan. She left after that year. If it weren't for the fact that she was at one time dating someone who ended up being a very good friend, and that there wasn't enough time to erase that fact (it was high school after all, things change quickly) we could've gotten on well, oh, what might've been.

Things happened the way they did. A lot of it is recounted, through the cracked lens of my own perspective and commentary, here on this blog. amazing how, reading wrods I wrote 5 years ago, I think "I said that? I can't believe I said that, and yet I totally believe I said that."

I have two conflicting visualizations of myself expanding back the 5 years. One is that I didn't know anything and was an inexperienced young naive fool. The other is that I was exactly the same, overthinking everything the same way I am now, only now my frame of reference has expanded to the point where little things mean less, which is nice. I guess that's what they call maturity.

The truth is probably somewhere in between. I know more, have seen more of the world,. have lived more, and put less stress on each individual relationship I have; living more or less like a drifter has enabled me to understand the way people come and go in one's life. In early 2005, grade 12, I was existentially troubled by a lunchtime schism in my group. Now it wouldn't even faze me. also have one very strong, consistent friendship that isn't contingent on having a shared time and place such as school or work. Many people aren't lucky enough to get that in their lives. I remember when Cary stayed over in the summer and asked if I had any plans for the next day, and I mentioned I had my standing coffee date with Manda, and he said that was neat that I had that. I think it's really had a positive effect on my life in the last 3 years or so. IN all of this time I have been constructing an identity, a narrative about myself, and modifying it as I go, as needed, as convenient, sometimes inadvertently. You cna probably draw non-inaccurate conclusinos about who I am -- if you know me or if you don't -- by what gets written here, what doesn't get written here, and how whatever I write gets written, and how I deal with the things I don't appear to be writing.

Michael Cobb would be proud. Maybe.

So I was re-reading those Jan-Feb 2005 posts, mostly stressed out bummer stuff. I did this and deliberately reminded myself of a girl for whom I carried a torch. I didn't know her well. In all we only met a few times, I knew her through Reach. Somehow we just kept running into each other at those things and talking and I thought maybe she was into me and maybe I was into her, and I always wanted to ask her for her MSN or something. I was often funny around her, I was often the person I like being but found it hard to be in those days. After meeting up with her again in December that year, I was really looking forward to seeing her again in February. Then February comes, and we're at Reach, she's nuzzling up on some dude on her team. And I don't know. I took it bad. Then she wasn't in the final. That was potentially the last time I ever saw her.

I saw her one more time, randomly, I was walking to he comic store and she pulled up alongside me in a van and asked if she could give me a lift somewhere. Feeling too cool to say comic store I said pizza place (which is where I would've gone first, per my routine at the time.) We talked a bit. She said that there were girls (girl? girls? I can't remember the exact quote) on her team that would've wanted a piece of me. When I was in my zone at Reach, I was something else, something I didn't have access to in normal life. I rolled my eyes, though. What a postscript.

Later, I Facebook stalked her to find her last name. Didn't add her or anything. Hardly ever think about it. But I did tonight, for nostalgia's sake. The link on her Facebook profile is a PornoTube channel, and I clicked it out of curiosity, because hey, what if I got to see this girl I like doing nasty stuff? Yes, it's horribly perverse, even moreso when the girl isn't anonymous. But whose blog are you reading anyhow?

Well the link didn't work, which leads me to believe it was probably a joke. All for the best, too.

Guy comes into the store. Older guy, in his 40's or so. This was over a couple weeks ago, because Cait was still there, I think it was the last time I worked with her, her second last shift. Guy comes in and asks for the White Stripes. "Yeah man," he says, "I just got Icky Thump and I really wanna hear their earlier stuff, do you have Get Behind Me Satan?" "Sure, it's right here." "Okay, he says, mind if I give it a listen?" "Not a problem, but this is a very different record." "How so?" "Well, he doesn't use electric guitars as much on it, it's a lot softer, a lot more acoustic, piano, even marimba." "But it was Blue Orchid on it, doesn't it?" "Yeah, but the rest of the album's not like that. Here, give White Blood Cells a listen." "Hold on, I want to listen to Get Behind Me Satan first, I don't have much time."

He takes a few minutes to skim through the songs. "Yeah, you were right about that. Can I get a listen to White Blood Cells?" "Sure, here you are. This is their best album," I say, having not listened to either of their first two albums, but confident my assertion can't be refuted concretely. "Lots of great songs, lots of hits." "I decided I really like Jack White's music," he says, "Loved Icky Thump, loved the Raconteurs album." "This one is more like that." I maybe could've given him Elephant too, but for whatever reason I was feeling like White Blood Cells and he didn't have much time.

He gives it a listen, again skimming the tracks, and then stops abruptly. "Nah, not this one either." And then he leaves. I'm left scratching my head. How do you not like White Blood Cells? Some people, man, some people can't be helped.

That's it for tonight. Interesting stuff is not really going on lately, and this post has taken way too long to write. Trying to get some productivity in. Maybe do my dishes for once.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto