Thanks to A.J. for the space. My blog is here, free to sign up.

According to one ex—a devoutly unsentimental woman from Roxbury, Mass—I’m the bastard who cries at the movies. She didn’t directly accuse me of being a phony, but sometime in her youth she memorized Holden Caulfield’s quote: “You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart.”

She wasn’t wrong. Back then, I only cried when I wasn’t confronted with an angry or sad human in front of me, like at the movies or when listening to music alone. Music in particular transported me to another time or place, reliably giving me the permission I needed to feel. That’s often true today, the way scent can be transformative for a lot of people. 

As a young jerk, I didn’t understand how anyone didn’t have a similar, visceral reaction to the right song, wondering if they had souls at all. One ex had a CD rack full of guitar wankery like Dream Theater, Joe Satriani and Symphony X, because that’s what her previous boyfriend listened to, and while she learned to enjoy what I was into instead, I viewed that emptiness as a character flaw, rather than just another form of mood alteration.

All this to say, the power of an old song overwhelmed me this week. I’d be happier if it hadn’t.