Prompt: "A song that probably should have been playing the first time you had sex"
Selected by Joe
"Bigger Than Your Boyfriend"
Washington Social Club
Bigger Than Your Boyfriend, 2008
I talk a big game about always having music on and music being "my whole life" and how I let music fill in the cracks of every single moment of the day, but there are actually a few regular occurrences that I purposefully do not listen to music, either because it doesn't feel right or it adds risk or both. To the Top Five list!!!
Joe's Top Five Life Occurrences That Happen Without Music
5. Reading a book — you gotta take literature seriously and you gotta give it your full attention
4. Mowing the Lawn — this might sound insane but I'm legitimately afraid that the blades of the mower would slice my earbuds accidentally; plus, the earbuds keep slipping out from the ear sweat and that's annoying
3. Running — like getting whipped by a dominatrix, running is a feels-good punishment, and there's no need to distract myself from the pain
2. Biking — if you think I'm going to get murdered by a truck because I just need to listen to the 2010 EP All Delighted People by Sufjan Stevens on full blast, then you're sorely mistaken
1. Cumming
I've been firmly anti-music-while-having-sex ever since I had my first orgasm in the vicinity of a woman. I think there was a Puke on Your Birthday post about this at some point in the early days, right? Yeah. The Top Five Songs to Have Sex To. I didn't write that. The thought of trying to keep it up while listening to the creepy droning of Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" is insane. Insane!! There is no good "get it on" music, not even "Let's Get It On" (especially not now that that dirty imp Ed Sheeran got his greasy little fingers all over it). The only thing I want to hear while having sex is dirty talk and moaning and maybe the pounding of a neighbor's angry fist against the adjoining wall because we're being too loud.
The prompt asks specifically about the first time I had sex. The words "probably should have" were written by me, probably because I unconsciously assumed that everyone was like me in that they too are not going to be blasting Minor Threat's 1984 self-titled EP when they are attempting the missionary position. If you had sex for the first time while listening to music, then that's good for you. I hope the sweet sounds of Tell All Your Friends by Taking Back Sunday helped you not blow your load in the first two minutes.
I first had sex in silence. It was also dark. I think. I was pretty drunk, which is not surprising if you knew me at any time between 2005 and 2023. Any memory I have of my first time is purely hypothetical. I assume it wasn't good. My partner knew I was a virgin prior and I hope that she also assumed it wasn't going to be good. Like, I hope the proper expectations were met, is my point.
I lost my virginity in her dorm room in the AM hours during an April weekend of my freshman year spring semester. Even if the circumstances were different, just the fact that we were in her room meant that it was totally her call what music we would have listened to, if any. I don't give a shit what you're doing—kegger, intimate candlelight dinner, pizza party, having sex—if you walk into someone's personal space, then it's that person's prerogative what the soundtrack is. So in my mind, in order to answer this question, I would require my then-partner's input on picking a song for today, June 10th's Summer Song Challenge's obligation.
I haven't spoken to her since 2017, which was even then almost nine years after we had broken up, and also I was pretty drunk when we hung out (it was at a wedding, is my flimsy excuse), so I don't know, man. I'm sure we left it on good terms, there was no reason not to in 2017. I don't know if it was weird that I texted her last week about this. It was probably weird. But look, I'm used to being weird for blogging purposes. I feel like I've developed a really good conversational style and tone via text that comes off as properly self-deprecating and underplays the task at hand so as to not make anyone feel uncomfortable. You tell me, how does this sound?
"Hey B******! It's Joe K***. Long time no speak, hope all is well. I have a quick question for you that I promise is innocuous and only a little weird."
See, when you're texting people you haven't seen a million years for blogging reasons, you don't wanna hit 'em right away with the request. That's weird. If in my first text I had said "WHAT WOULD YOU PLAY ON iTUNES IN APRIL 2008 WHILE I WAS HAVING SEX WITH YOU" then that would be really off-putting and uncomfortable and would guarantee a non-response.
But then the flipside of that is that sometimes you don't get a response anyway, which was the case here. Totally makes sense. I know that blogging isn't important, and I live with that fact. Not everyone I've ever met wants to participate in my hobby. That's okay! There was a 50% chance that it wasn't even her number anyway, the PoYB contributor I obtained it from having not talked to her since the same night that I had, back in 2017. The other 50% chance is that she purposefully ignored that text, which I totally am comfortable with too. If the situation was reversed, I probably would've run it by my wife first before responding. And I know from back in 2011 that her now-husband might not necessarily be the type who is comfortable with that kind of thing. Like I remember at the end of undergrad we happened to be going to the same time share weekend thing with some mutual friends and her then-boyfriend apparently had a huge issue with my presence, even though it had already been over two years since I lost my virginity and I was going to be there with my now-wife (and on top of that, I wasn't the only person that weekend who had had sexual relations with her at that point, and he didn't seem to have any issues with the other person, so I dunno what to tell you). I'm saying that it's likely, and also totally understandable, that B****** checked in with her husband because of their mutual trust and that they collectively decided that allowing Joe K*** back into their lives, even in this miniscule blog-related way via text, was just not the best decision at this current juncture.
The follow-up text would have been just as benign, by the way, had I been able to send it. I even wrote it in advance, just so I could work on the wording and have it ready if I needed it.
"Haha thanks. So I am doing this thing called a Summer Song Challenge in which I have to pick a song every day based on a list of prompts. Each day has a different prompt, like 'a song that reminds you of your childhood' and shit like that.An upcoming prompt reads 'A song that probably should have been playing the first time you had sex.' Since it was your dorm room I thought it would be funny and also make sense logically if you pick the song.Also totally cool if that is too weird and you'd like to ignore this text, I won't be offended."
The important part, I thought, was to keep the fact that we had had sex implicit. Instead of "since I had sex with you," it's "since it was in your dorm room," and let the "it" stand for the act itself. That softens the blow of having to suddenly remember the awful memory of having sex with Joe K***.
Notice that I'm not even using her first name. I don't want to offend anyone. I'm trying to be respectful, or at least as respectful as I can be in this context, which is... well, not very respectful, I guess. I actually remember that she had a blog too, briefly, way back in the day, but also maybe six months or so after we broke up. I remember very clearly that there was something written about me, also without using my name, but it was very clearly me you could tell, and the words "silly boy" were used. Which is pretty funny, in retrospect, seeing as how much I was offended, at the time, being called a "silly boy." But also I couldn't make a scene at being offended because that meant I was taking a blog seriously, and as someone who has run a blog for fifteen years now, I can tell you that rule #1 is never let anyone know that you take a blog seriously. Plus, I was a silly boy. (And now I'm a silly MAN goddamn it.)
Okay now it just feels like this blog post is spinning its tires. I'm sorry. I think maybe it's because I've already wrung all the emotionally important stuff out, publicly on this blog, and there isn't much left. I have already performed the autopsy. I have also discussed the music that I listened to in that dorm room, during those moments when I wasn't orgasming. I think it would've been a nice fitting conclusion to the long-dead saga if she had answered my text, but it's all good. I know enough about music and even about my friends from a very distant past to be able to make an informed decision on this front.
As you already saw because you clicked the second hyperlink in the previous paragraph, B****** told me about Washington Social Club and let me rip a couple of their albums. You also saw in that hyperlinked blog post that the song that I'll remember from that time in my life was "The Breakup," and song that we both liked a lot from that one WSC album and yes I have already noted the irony. No need to rehash that joke by choosing that song as today's song. Plus there's a funny line in that song about Al Jolson, and I have this thing where whenever I think about white 1920s comedians in blackface I just can't seem to maintain my erection.
So let's instead go with the title track, "Bigger Than Your Boyfriend." In the song's lyrics, "bigger" means, like, fame and status and importance, but I think that B****** would have the type of humor that would appreciate the sexual double-entendre, were it to be used in this context. Like you could say "bigger than your boyfriend's" in a sexual context, is what I mean. Like penis. My penis is bigger. Bigger than your boyfriend's penis. And now I'm killing the joke. Which is part of the joke. Plus it's funny too because it doesn't even work entirely, since it's not like she had a boyfriend when I lost my virginity to her, and I wasn't her boyfriend yet either, and wasn't, not really, even all of the subsequent summer, it was kind of like an open-relationship-type thing? Either that or my mind has over the past twenty years tricked me into thinking we had agreed to that so I don't have to suffer the guilt of having cheated on her throughout the summer of 2008, which started like two weeks after we had sex for the first time so no, I don't think I'm making that up, and I don't think I cheated, technically, though we broke up like four weeks into the next school year anyway so why does any of this matter, I don't know, I'm just typing as much as I can because I've already embarrassed myself enough and maybe if I keep typing you'll forget all the embarrassing stuff I typed before this.
Okay, is this blog post over yet? Can we move on to the next prompt? Surely that can't be worse than this. Right? Right?! .....right?
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