No Prince For You!
Isn't that sweet like... queso?
When I had to start tightening my belt earlier this year, I let my Spotify premium subscription lapse. I tried listening for free, and it was a terrible experience. The algorithm added songs I did not like to my playlists; I couldn’t skip them; and the ads were intrusive and jarring. So I stopped using the app. I was gone long enough that they sent me a heavily-discounted offer– something like 3 months for $11.99. I can’t remember it now, but I think I had about $20 in my bank account at the time and accepted it.
This offer caught me at the end of a… challenging summer. I didn’t really feel like myself, and I’d started seeing someone who did not care for me the way I wanted him to. I was trying to come to terms with the idea of leaving New York while feeling relieved that this would be the perfect excuse for me to end things once and for all with him. Then Sabrina Carpenter’s album came out. I was vaguely aware of her Nonsense outros and I didn’t pay much attention to “Espresso” at first until I saw a tik tok of someone breaking down the lyrics. I thought she was saying something about queso, but when I listened to the full song and not just 15 seconds of the chorus on an app, I was like “I like the cut of this young lady’s jib.”
Anyway. Sabrina Carpenter’s album came out during a time when I realized I was slapping an orgasm-sized band-aid on my loneliness with this dude. Let’s call him Lil John Wick. No need to know why. And I felt really sad and pitiful. I had regressed in my relationship healing, or maybe I wasn’t as healed as I thought I was. I was repeating patterns from 20 years ago. I felt really fucking stupid. So I allowed myself a few days of self-pity. I figured since I’d regressed so much, practically back to my dumb 20s, I’d close the loop by listening to some sad songs on repeat. And that’s how I ended up with “Don’t Smile” as the top song on my Spotify Wrapped.
“BedChem” also reminds me of him because when I saw one of his pictures of his profile, I knew he’d wreck me.
I wasn’t surprised to see Sabrina Carpenter on my Wrapped, but I felt like I’d let myself down because Prince wasn’t listed. In case you’re new to my world, Prince is my favorite artist of all time. Ever in life. I even hosted a podcast about him. But this was such a hard year for me, and I try not to taint his music with sad moments. I don’t want to be reminded of bad times when I listen to Prince, which is also why I try to avoid attaching his music to lovers.
A few years ago, I tested my resolve and played “If I Was Your Girlfriend” for The Hippie, who is ten years younger than I am and was not exposed to much from His Royal Badness. It’s my favorite Prince song from my favorite Prince album. While explaining why it moves me so, I got emotional and had to stop myself from crying. I felt a little silly. Then I worried The Hippie would think I was sending him secret messages about feelings so I realized I needed to stick with my mandate of never sharing Prince with a lover. No one deserves to be connected to him in my memories.
Lil John Wick didn’t deserve me. He asked me a few times why did I treat him so well, what did he do to deserve my kindness. Maybe he wanted me to say I loved him or that he had dickmatized me or maybe he just needed any kind of validation. I always shrugged off his questions, but that’s how I knew, for sure, this was a mistake. He knew he had not earned the goodness he was getting from me, but I was dumb, and I needed a distraction from the impending crash of my life. It wasn’t all terrible, but I let him take advantage of me.
When I told him I was leaving, and his face crumpled in disappointment and something almost like hurt, I savored it.