Cheesy Song Lyrics, Summer Flings, and Fleeting Moments

#6

Don’t fall in love with the moment and think you’re in love with the girl.

I already know what you’re thinking. We’re not even twenty words into this stream of consciousness, and you’re already wondering where I stole this clever-yet-cheesy quote. Did he swipe it from a canvas sign as he was strolling the aisles of a Hobby Lobby? Or perhaps he randomly opened a superficial romance novel found on the top shelf of an airport fiction kiosk, and took the first witty line he saw. No, it has to be from some obscure, Victorian Era poem that was once part of his high school English curriculum.

I won’t beat around the bush any longer. The truth is that my source of inspiration for this essay comes from a more obvious and accessible source. If you have not figured it out by now, this one-liner (and I cannot believe I’m admitting to this) stems from a song lyric by the polarizing British glam rock band known as The 1975. I have no shame in admitting that. Say what you want about the quartet, but at the very least they provide half-baked, thought-provoking ideas in the form of sappy, romantic lyrics (albeit ones that are more likely to appeal to teenage girls rather than grown men).

(Side note: believe it or not, there are plenty of these thought-provoking one-liners hidden in the verses of modern-day pop songs - not that I would know from experience. Just as I’m writing this, I have another one in mind that would make for a great essay topic - we will save that for a rainy day though.)

But let’s back up for one second. Let’s take a quick look under the hood of my writing process (if you even want to call it a “process”). The original intention was to write about summer flings, and how they relate to these “moments’’ that the song lyrics allude to - in fact, the original title for this wandering stream of consciousness was “A Tribute to Summer Flings”. It was going to be a flowery, magniloquent, ode-style soliloquy about the short-term romantic encounter that we all know and love and hold dear to our hearts.

I even had a classical prose-style opening paragraph queued up for all you dreary-eyed, heart-throbbing readers out there. It went something like this:

Mountains of snow covered the barren, arctic wasteland that was once a thriving city. The sweet summer child trudged through the densely packed mix of sleet, snow, slosh, and sludge. As he marched on, he dreamt of the times when the landscape was not frozen and ice-covered, but instead sultry and smothering. When the refreshing beads of cool sweat rolled gently down his back. When the sweltering sun kissed his olive skin. When there was a fleeting, unhindered feeling of love in the air, like an infectious disease sweeping across the ravaged countryside.

But that style of writing didn’t feel right for this particular essay. No, the style for this essay feels more like the style that would come from a heartbroken, hopeless romantic who just polished off his 5th glass of bottom-of-the-rack red at happy hour. Who then proceeds to step outside of the bar to the unofficial official smoking area and think about all of the times that were. To reminisce on the rose-colored days as the ashes fall to the pavement. Who then walks back in the bar, orders another round, and proceeds to scribble his downhearted, incoherent thoughts into the black journal with frayed pages he carries around in his coat pocket.

With the idea, source of inspiration, and style of writing in mind, I was finally ready to sit down and start crafting my next stream of consciousness. But somewhere along the lines, it all went wrong.

Long story short, I committed the cardinal sin of essay writing. I ended any hope of confidently delivering my message when I chose to instead plug the topic into a search engine before typing a single word of my own, in search for some last minute idea generation for the sake of juxtaposition. Within a minute, I was already turned off (literally) by the idea. I found myself scrolling through a Women’s Health Mag article demonstrating to impressionable young ladies how to actually have a summer fling in the most literal sense, even suggesting one should plan the entire relationship out from the onset (what a ridiculous concept, although I suppose men have access to similar forms of bad advice in the form of pick-up artistry and “game”). I got my laugh there, and then further continued down the rabbit hole to Hell by stumbling upon another ranked search article - this one was a pros and cons list. How fitting. Harvard Business Review diagrams meets 21st century dating. Perhaps I should next perform a SWOT analysis of potential prospects.

Stumbling upon the wasteland known as “Contentlandia” was frustrating, demoralizing, and discouraging. But it also made me have a bit of a “Eureka” moment during this whole process. You see, what I was after was not the “summer fling”, but the feeling associated with it. The feeling of being in a fleeting moment. The moments where the Earth’s rotation stands still, time comes to a screeching halt, and there is no such thing as a past or future - only the present. As my mind wandered as I scrolled through these depthless articles, I came to the realization that these fleeting moments are everywhere we look - and they are not just limited to the months of June to September.

Yes, those fleeting moments are still hanging out at the rich girl’s mansion, lurking in the trees and watching us chill in the pool. Two weeks prior, you weren’t even on my radar. Fast forward to the present moment, and here we are, playing the guessing game, playfully dunking each other in the chlorine treated waters, while everyone else watches the Cavs play the Warriors in the Finals. The dimensions were only 20 feet by 40 feet, but we might as well have been the last two humans left on Earth, peacefully drifting around in the middle of the Pacific, thousands of miles away from the nearest piece of land.

The fleeting moments are still hanging out at that sketchy, beaten down nightclub in a questionable neighborhood, watching us dance the night away. They are sitting in the back of the bus, casually looking onward as you force feed me one ounce shooters of Fireball and Smirnoff. You were kind enough to make sure I didn’t get any vomit on my off-the-rack suit as I was keeled over in the back of the sorority house parking lot. You even thought it was a good idea for me to walk home by myself, drunk as a skunk, stumbling like a boxer who just took an unguarded right hook, only to call me back while I was halfway home on my phone that had 5% battery. I barely made it back in time, and you were nice enough to let me stay the night, even if I had to sneak away to the bathroom for one more round of demon expelling in the middle of our drunken shenanigans.

The fleeting moments are still lingering in the notes and beats of that 80s pop song I listened to on repeat as I made the quick drive out to the suburbs. I felt guilty. Ancient men have killed for women this far away. Wars were started. Armies were raised. It would’ve taken the Achaeans half a day on foot to reach their prized possession. Now, Helen of Troy is just a straight shot down the innerbelt. I knew I was making a bad decision. The vibrant club music was to cope with my poor choices. As a way to counteract the devil, like a vial of anti-venom conveniently located in the next room over from where the serpent bit me. I kept thinking horrible, gruesome things were going to happen to me. Like I would show up, and you would end up being a serial killer. When the time was right, you would gut me like a pig with a kitchen paring knife. You used it to chop strawberries and celery earlier in the day, and now it’s slicing through my perfectly sculpted washboard abs, as I lay there gurgling blood. Gut wounds are slow bleeds, so I will have plenty of time to ponder my short time on this planet before she eats me or throws me in the dumpster to decompose next to someone’s wounded Lean Cuisine from the previous night. But then I walk in your door, I smell the vanilla bean candle burning, we drink some white wine purchased at the Speedway down the road, and all is well and good.

As you can see, these fleeting moments are alive and well in my mind, still as vivid as the day they first occurred. And I am apprehensive about speaking about the past too much at end - I fear that I will come off as washed-up, heartbroken, bitter, and cynical. You often see commentary about how people who constantly bring up the past have peaked, and are reliving their best days. And I agree - for the most part.

But what those commentators fail to realize is that the past can be a reminder of what is possible in the future. Those fleeting moments that live inside our heads are perfectly preserved in a block of Carbonite, waiting for us to unthaw them when we need them the most. They are not going anywhere. And when push comes to shove, it’s all we really have as a form of record-keeping (that and actually writing them down, as demonstrated above - hopefully none of those past companions of mine are subscribers to this Substack).

Unfortunately, I don’t have any grand finale for you all. I’m just a humble wordsmith still trying to figure this all out myself. And I don’t know when these fleeting moments will show up - that is one of the great mysteries of life. But I can tell you that I will continue to chase those fleeting moments as if it is a life or death situation - it’s what any authentic hopeless romantic would do. I will continue to carry around those past moments as a key to the future. I will never stop falling in love with the moment. And maybe, just maybe, one day I will… well let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Onward,

Tony

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Afterthought: There is no doubt that in a few years I will look back upon this essay and laugh manically at my past self for writing this. Perhaps I will be writing the quotes for the Hobby Lobby signs at that point in time. Or reading airport romance. Whatever the case may be, this is a reminder that it is all part of the writing process. Mostly this afterthought is a note to my future self to go easy on the past version of Tony, because he doesn’t know shit about life, just like his own father constantly tells him.