[This Oh, For God's Sake originally appeared on October 18, 1979 - editor]
Can I Really Be Falling In Love With A Chick Who's Into Journey?
Can I really be in falling in love with a chick who's into Journey? I know it's superficial to let a rock band keep me from falling in love, but I just never thought I'd go for a girl who liked Journey. I mean, "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'?" Come ON!
Other than Journey, Mary's record collection is impeccable: She's got Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, CSN, Crosby, Crosby & Nash, Stills, Stills & Young, and Young. And fuckin' Journey. Ugh. I mean, I'm crazy about her but she actually likes "When the Lights Go Down in the City."
I'm sorry, but their best lyric is "na na na na na na na na na na na."
And don't get me started on Steve Perry. His voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard. And he's butt-fugly: the hair, the schnoz, the skin-tight leather pants. Jesus Christ. OK, rock stars are supposed to be scary looking but this is going too far. Can Mary really like this guy? While also liking me?
Sure, we all own records we're not proud of. I'll admit to owning a Kansas album and, OK, Styx' Equinox. But they're in, like, mint condition. I probably listened to them twice.
So here's the thing: we're in her dorm room and we get to talking and the hours just fly by. Her roommate Yvette is at work and we have the room to ourselves and we are completing each other's sentences and shit. It's just incredible.
We have the same philosophy class -- ol' Dr. Matthews' Philosophy of Man. And we get to tripping over his secular proof of the existence of God. It's intense! And so we're talking about it and figuring it out and I'm, like, all down with the Causal argument and the Causer of Causes and how everything had to be caused and shit and then she goes all Bertrand Russell on me -- GOD, it's just SO adorable how her brow gets all serious but her nose and lips are just as cute and relaxed and inviting as ever -- and she goes, "...but then who caused God?"
Hell if I know, but whoever caused Mary was an artist. Anyway, so while we're talking, we're playing albums and Fogelberg's Souvenirs ends and I get up to put on a new record and I start flipping through her albums and wham! there it is: Journey. Infinity. And the thing is, it's, like, totally worn out! She must have played that dog a thousand times. So I hurriedly flip past and put on some Stephen Stills and we get back to philosophy but frankly I am a little shaken.
And then I get to thinking that maybe it's Yvette's album and it just ended up in Mary's stack. I know I shouldn't but I ask, all casual, "So, whose Journey album?" and that's when she confesses to loving "Lights." Next week, ol' Dr. Matthews is going to prove an oyster has a soul, I keep telling myself over and over to get Journey out of my mind. Journey! Not many bands can bludgeon the lost-love rock ballad and completely fail to rock out, all while still mysteriously exuding bombast. Their music would be a minor miracle if it didn't Suck. So. Bad.
I mean, I know it's crazy. It's not like she's into something monstrous like Ronald Reagan or Gene Snyder or Marble Hill or Jerry Falwell or disco. It IS just Journey. And so I start to think of everything great she's got going on, how she's really perfect in every way, how she's so pretty and smart and funny and how her hair is like the sun shining on autumn itself (plus it smells so great like Flex shampoo mixed with patchouli incense on top of an underlying scent of Maryness) and how we can't stop kissing, and even Stephen Stills' backup singers are going
do do do do do do do do
do do do do do do do do
do do do do do do do do
do do do
do do do
Love the one you're with
And so I guess yes, I am totally in love with a chick who's into Journey.
I do, however, draw the line at Boston.
[It worked out. -editor]
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