WWOZ‘s on in stereo
string of flowers haloed ’round your head
candlelight, the ceiling fan
curtain blows away and back again, back again
don’t wake me; i think i’m in a dream…

if you’re a certain kind of dreamer, with a certain kind of experience, the best nights are the hot and sticky kind, the ones in late july or august along the gulf coast. the breeze rolls in off the gulf and keeps the air breathable. it’s preferable to have access to a porch on these kinds of nights, a drink or two with a few good friends. or maybe just that one good friend, the one you want to be more than a friend. either way, the moon is high, the stars are out, and just about anything’s possible. but on those hot, sticky summer nights, all the pieces of my heart align themselves, and it’s right again, if only for a minute.

a long, long time ago, much longer ago than it seems, i knew a boy with a discman. this was a highly fascinating development for me, given that music was my entire reason for living. i was half-heartedly learning how to play the bass guitar. i was going to be the frontwoman of an alterna-teen punk-rock trio that sang loud three-minute songs. we were basically going to be silverchair, except with a girl instead of daniel johns. but as thrash-core bad-ass as i invented myself to be, i had also fallen oh so very hard for three boys from LSU whose trio skewed a little more melodious. and in the summer of 1996, they released an album with a little love song to the kind of night i loved so well, even back then. so to have a friend with a discman, which at the time required a lot of monetary investment into loving music, was a grand thing indeed.

occasionally, in mobile, if the weather was juuuuuuust perfect, i could catch little snips and snaps of the gloriously nawlins-y WWOZ. i can’t really do this station justice; it’s just too indescribable to sum up in words. and it was the love of music like that, distinctive and clever, that brought me into a friendship with the boy with the discman. his parents had money, so he had things. he had a nearly-new mercury when we were teenagers, and we’d cruise that thing up and down the roads of mobile county for recreation. it was a lot of faith that my father put in me, i guess, by giving me that much autonomy. and in the fall of 1996, the boy and i, along with a number of our friends, went on a school trip to the wilds of central alabama. far be it from me to understand why a statewide meeting of mock-congress kids needed to happen in the middle of the woods, but it did, and we went.

in the van on the way up, he lent me his discman. i listened to the album by the boys from LSU. i let the warm, comfortable tendrils of this song wrap around my all-to0-fertile imagination. the boy with the discman was a crush of mine, as well as a friend, and i imagined what it would sound like if he sang the song to me. but as with all those high school crushes, it just never quite clicked. the boy met a girl; i met another boy. we stayed close, but the dreams of those nights faded back into the mist. every so often, though, he’d sneak back into my subconscious. and for a night here and there, i’d let him braid those flowers into my hair, smiling in the candlelight, feeling the kind of completeness every lover seeks in another person. don’t wake me indeed…

letting go of your fear
let’s grow old together
find a place along the way
let’s reel through the years
each makes the other better…
needed a lifetime, but maybe i’ve learned
maybe i’ve learned…

and then the boy with the discman and i grew up. these things tend to happen, i guess. he and i evolved together, my bosom buddy through thick and thin. and it came to pass that there was a long, long patch of thin for both of us. we found ourselves together one hot, sticky summer night on the mississippi gulf coast, sandwiched neatly between our hometown and our beloved NOLA. WWOZ comes in stronger there, but it still takes the right kind of night. we sat at a table near the gulf, pensively sipping drinks and saying next to nothing. his trouble was loneliness. my trouble was trapped-ness. and out of nowhere, the two of us were no longer alone. a sense of tense, nervous possibility joined us at the table, along with the sense that a threshold was about to be crossed.

he cleared his throat. i looked up. he said, they’re playing that song we love. and sure enough, they were; the strains of mandolin were faint, but clear as bells in my heart. and as the voice sang to us about letting go of our fear, we locked eyes. we didn’t quite know how to get out of the places we were in right then. but in that moment, on that kind of night where the pieces fit again, we saw the means of escape in each other. for the first time in a long time, he smiled.

***

i knew all along, i think, that the boy with the discman was meant to be part of my life forever. i am not one of those predestination kind of people; i don’t believe in fate, in rom-com meet-cutes, or in a plan set in motion by a supernatural force  that doesn’t exist. but i don’t have an answer for how this all came to pass that doesn’t start sounding an awful lot like, well, all of those things. the man and i have the kind of history, the deep, burnished comfort in one another, that only a lifetime together can bring. he and i will grow old together, reeling through the years, and the way it happened is simply inexplicable. when i hear that old song, the pull on my heart takes me back again to the porches, the beaches, the summers of my youth. i remember the boy with the discman, and i smile.

sometimes when i look at the man, i see him at seventeen, always driving that mercury with the windows down and the CD player blasting. i feel the wind blowing through the car, and i remember thinking how much all of it meant to me. i remember thinking, don’t wake me; i think i’m in a dream…

i am lucky beyond reason, and so very grateful, that the dream is real.

WWOZ’s on in stereo…
well it’s on in stereo…
well it’s on…