As I prepare to leave Los Angeles, people keep asking me why I’m leaving. I keep giving the same answer.
“My love affair with LA is over,” I tell them. “It’s turned into an abusive relationship. I keep getting beat up and we never have sex anymore.”
With this analogy fixed firmly in my vocabulary, love songs have taken a completely different meaning in my life. I hear break up songs and I think of her. I hear make up songs and I wonder if we still have a chance. I hear love songs and I remember the early days when the sex was great and uncomplicated.
But as the song fades, my melancholy and reminisce fade as reality washes them away. It’s over. I tried. I really tried to keep it together. But it really is over.
Tom Waits, Chris Isaak, Sarah McLachlan and the Big O are all singing the same thing over and over again. But Randy Newman keeps my head above the water.
I ran out on my children
And I ran out on my wife
Gonna run out on you too baby
I done it all my life
Everybody cried the night I left
Well almost everybody did
My little boy just hung his head
And I put my arm put my arm around his little shoulder
And this is what I said:
“Sonny I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
Honest I do honest I do, honest I do”
The time to leave is coming soon. Sooner than even I know. And I think, “Maybe I’m breaking her heart.”
Then I hear a voice remind me, “She broke yours first.”