On Mix-Tapes, Playlists, and a GBFF

Ten years ago today, my gay BFF told me he was dying. I had wished him a happy 40th birthday, he got indignant because he was only turning 39, and decided that this was the perfect time to let me know that he would never see 40. His name was Jim, and he was the most sardonic person I have ever befriended, so I of course thought he was joking when he told me that I - three years his junior - would turn 40 before he ever did. Realizing that he was serious, I made one last request of him: a mix tape.

In addition to being Goth before Goth was cool, Jim was also an incurable romantic; it is what first attracted me to the slightly built, dark haired boy with the brown eyes that could pierce your soul or melt it, depending on his mood. I was just turned 14 when we met, and fell instantly in love. He was 17-and-a-half and wondered what evil he had performed to be cursed with the presence of this "bubble-headed blonde creature". In every way we were night and day. Dark and light. Void and radiance. In time, we became Yin and Yang. What brought Jim and I together was his sense of humor and my love to laugh; his vast knowledge of hauntingly beautiful love songs and my secret love of easy listening. I was - and always will be - a "headbanger", and this was a secret that Jim delighted in keeping if only to taunt me with the threat of revealing it...via one of his famous mix tapes.

Jim and I "grew up '80's", which is to say that we were surrounded by an eclectic mix of peers, a veritable Breakfast Club, which you may have noticed does not have one single gay character.  Nor did any other '80's teen comedy. As art imitates life, so life can imitate art and Jim played the role of "Duckie Dale" to absolute perfection, romancing women but never committing to more than the chase. A part of his charm - and the reason women were forever chasing him - was that if he liked you enough he would create you a mix tape of songs that reminded him of you. These romantic mix tapes were not what some crudely call "F*** Me tapes", but rather a compilation of songs that told the story of your friendship - how you met, what he first thought of you, a song that was playing at a pivotal moment in your relationship when you realized, "Did we just become best friends?"

Those who were born post-1985 will never know the work that went into creating a mix tape, as digital playlists have replaced them. They will never know the sheer agony of having to express yourself in only 10 songs - 12 max, if they were shorter, 8 if you included anything by Meat Loaf, Led Zeppelin, or Lynyrd Skynyrd. While a Spotify playlist will allow you to pour out your heart for hours and drip gallons of honey-sweet words into the ears of your beloved, '80's kids were stuck with the limitations of Memorex technology and a prayer that it wouldn't wear our before we were tired of listening to it.

How did you express your feelings for someone within the space of one hour's recording time? You needed to do some serious editing, and for that there was one simple rule:

Never use songs by the same artist twice. This rule would never fly when making a Spotify playlist, because as soon as you choose a song you are inundated by the rest of the artist's work and much of it is stuff you either love and cannot live without (so you add it to the list) or hate (and you spend an hour trying to convince Spotify's algorithm of that fact).  In the '80's, rather than put hours of music on your playlist, you spent hours deciding what songs to actually include. The dedication to the project was why these tapes were so cherished by the women who received them (we now realize that to the guys who gave them, it was simply an effort to get laid in this pre-Tinder era).

Jim, as you have probably guessed, was not looking to get laid by the female population presented with his mix tapes. In fact, after he came out to me (three years into our friendship) he would describe in great and unfortunate detail his fear that one day some woman would actually try to have sex with him and how such an episode would unfold. He would end each rant with the words "full body shudder". His goal, as it turns out, was not to hide behind a façade of heterosexuality; it was simply to tell the people he cared about how much they meant to him. I had never received a mix tape because I was one of the few people Jim spoke to openly about his feelings...one of the few to ever hear him utter the words "I love you".

The shock of discovering that Jim was actually dying left me in complete denial. Jim's alter-ego was that of a vampire, and vampires don't die! But something inside of me knew that he was preparing to walk out of my life and into the light. And so I selfishly demanded a mix-tape. And Jim selflessly provided me with one last "I love you". Below is our story arc:

1. I Hate Everything About You (Ugly Kid Joe)

2. Don't Come Around Here No More (Tom Petty)

3. Mickey (Tony Basil) Jim always called me a "cheerleader"; I think I was growing on him!

4. Clouds (the Hayley Westernra version)

5. Sometimes When We Touch (Dan Hill) I still think of this as "our song".

6. Music of the Night (Michael Crawford) Phantom of the Opera was Jim's obsession

7. How Am I Supposed to Live Without You? (Laura Branigan) Jim was devastated when I went away to college so shortly after I had become "an indispensable part" of his life

8. Love Song for a Vampire (Annie Lennox)

9. Who Wants to Live Forever? (Sarah Brightman version) Jim first heard it in the movie Tuck Everlasting, but I thought it great of him just the same to include this Freddie Mercury gem

10. Stay With Me (Shakespear's Sister) He haunts me still.


KJM
01.23.19