Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 168: Joe

Prompt: "A song about traditions"

Selected by Joe

"Good Time"

Carly Rae Jepsen and Owl City

Kiss and The Midsummer Station, both 2012

Just an absolutely terrible fucking song. Atrocious. One of the worst that's ever been made. Yes, I say this as someone who loves Carly Rae Jepsen. Her and the firefly guy really shit the bed with this one. You ever see the video? The cinematography makes it feel like a car commercial. And their idea of flirting is letting the slushie machine overflow their cups? That shit looks messy, and is not something to giggle about. This type of dance-pop bullshit has always gotten under my skin. It's too sickly sweet, kinda like that slushie that Carly left all over the place. Maybe the Owl City dude looks too gooberish. Sometimes I wish I was just a little bit bi so that I didn't have such adverse reactions to seeing the faces of men. I see too many of these dudes and just feel this insane desire to punch them in the face. Maybe if I was a little bit attracted to him I wouldn't feel this way. Unfortunately, I am too straight. I'm the straightest man alive when I see Carly Rae Jepsen and the punk-ass owl guy together on the screen, singing their dumb song. Singing it with their mouths slightly after I hear them sing it, since the video I watch every morning has the video and audio slightly out of sync. I think this is why I thought it was a car commercial at first. I heard my gal Carly and saw the early-'10s generic festival kid attire on the models hired for this video and thought that there was no way that these two things were related. But they were. I saw Carly singing and realized that the video was just fucked up. The caption on the left of the video screen gave me the title and artist and everything. I could and can see it from the treadmill that I'm running on. I'm at the gym. I'm at the gym with a paid membership for the first time in maybe seven and a half years. A different gym than last time. But all gyms are the same. The equipment is just painted a different color, blue and silver at my Crunch gym which differs from the purple and gold at the old Port Richmond Planet Fitness. It's 5 AM. It's a Tuesday morning. The gym opens at five, sometimes a few minutes beforehand. Jenna opens the doors. She's always wearing a warm winter hat and mittens, I guess from being stationed near the door that's always swinging open and letting the 5 AM winter blasts of cold air in. I don't ask though. I just give her my phone number. I need to give her my phone number because I don't have the app that everyone else uses to check in. She's noted at least twice that she will eventually memorize my phone number. I don't think I'm her type but I don't ever know these things for certain. Maybe one day I'll get a text from the Crunch employee with the botox-injected lips making some coy joke about not needing to look up my phone number. Or maybe I'm just the schlubby guy who bothers her every morning at 5:02 AM. She called me "young man" the other day, and despite the fact that I am relatively confident that I am slightly older than her, it pretty much drove me wild. This is all happening in the minutes before the playlist begins. Always the same songs, in the same order, every morning. "Good Times" is first, perhaps an opening salvo that intends to be half-ironic and half-sincere, lifting heavy objects to cause small tears in the body's muscles that will eventually heal and be made stronger is not on its face a "good time," but, ya know, the hope is that the "good times" will result in being healthier and yadda yadda yadda. I'm running to the song, or, depending on how my left ankle feels, cycling on a stationary bike. "Espresso" is next. I'd never seen the video for this song and now I've seen it a bunch of times. Did someone already write on the blog about how silly it is that Carpenter covers her eyes to hide from the cops when they are about to arrest her? That feels campy in a self-aware way. I like it. I also like the video for the obvious reasons. I'm not horny on the treadmill but I'm not not horny. I only run for ten minutes. This is just a warmup. Otherwise I'm lifting weights. "Lifting," etc. Insert joke about how light the dumbbells I'm using are *here*. I found some beginners thing online, 24 different exercises spread out over three days, and just kinda going through them. Lots of dumbbell action, lots of staring into the mirror as I try to stay still and don't arch my back too much. I don't harbor inhibitions of getting jacked. I like the idea of being healthy. I also remember my doc saying to do one healthy thing, and to focus on that. So that's why I'm here. Thinking about Allison and Nate at their separate Ys, and finding inspiration in their writings here about their journeys. Thinking about Gilson writing about going to the gym to lift weights just because it was something to do, and following his lead. Waking up at ungodly hours every single day and hitting the treadmill just as Carly Rae hits the one TV in the corner. After "Espresso" is an Imagine Dragons song called "Wake Up." It's as bad as you'd assume, and more on the nose than you can possibly, um, imagine. That takes us pretty much to the point when I'm cooling down for a minute before hopping off. The last song I see on the screen is "Replay" by Zendaya. No fucking clue what Bridget is talking about in that blog post from April, Zendaya is looking great up there (maybe Bridget is also too straight). I thought it was Rihanna for a while, took me maybe six treadmill miles to realize that that was the chick from Euphoria or whatever. Zendaya is hot. Almost as hot as her boyfriend Tom Holland when he dressed and danced like Rihanna. Shit, am I actually a little bi? Does it count if the guy is dressed very convincingly as a woman? Does it count if, given the choice, I would still probably say the masculine-dressed Zendaya in that lip-sync clip is more attractive than the feminine-dressed Tom Holland? It's all very confusing. The treadmill is no place to be confused about young attractive gender-busting Hollywood couples. The treadmill is just a warmup. Also a good place to people-watch. It's the same people every morning. You could probably guess this. There is a certain type of insane person who gets to the gym at 5 AM, and we're all gathered there together. There isn't anyone who just wakes up at 4:15 AM to go to the gym occasionally. It's an all-in-or-all-out sort of proposition. I like seeing the same people. I like traditions and rituals like this, however small. Even if no one really says anything to each other. That's kinda how gyms work, I've been finding out. No one is concerned about anyone else, we're all just doing our own thing. Solitary, together. There were times during the first couple days when I thought someone was hovering because I was in their way. No, it's just someone doing something else near me and they are standing there staring into space because you need to take a breath in between sets. So that means when I'm in the moment I'm not looking around too much. Just doing my own thing. But I also can't help the observant eye sometimes either, especially on the treadmill. Slightly elevated, in the back of the gym looking out, just observing. The same fucking people. I recognize the one guy—back when we used to play softball on summer Tuesday evenings at Fox Chase Rec, pickup games with friends and beer, there was always this one rando who would ask to play with us, and he took it maybe a little bit more seriously than we did but he was nice too so it was all good, and I'm pretty sure this is the same guy, in here every morning. There are fewer women but there is one who is there all the time and she's fucking jacked, the biggest muscles I've ever seen in person on a woman, and it's great, I'm really into it just like I'm into most body types for women (the curse of being straight), it's not like I'm staring but I notice her on the Smith machine only because I'm observing the whole room and everything in it. Anyways, maybe a week into my stay, and softball guy and muscle mommy walk in together and kiss, and it was really endearing, to know that lonely softball guy isn't lonely anymore and muscle mommy found a match for herself and that they spend quality time together (apart) at the gym every morning. Having a good time, ya know. Their little tradition. I can close my eyes and picture at least fifteen other people quite clearly, just from being in the same room with them every morning. I sometimes wonder if I am being observed in the same way. Like if these Northeast Philly / near-suburban folk who have been coming to this gym for years have noticed the potbellied tall guy who is all of a sudden there for 60 minutes every morning. I have no idea, and I'd never ask nor ever know. Either they do and they feel the same warm unspoken kinship toward me that I do them now, or they don't and I'm in the wrong place, a writer who can't help but observing his surroundings where they shouldn't be observed. I don't yet know if it's a skill or a flaw that I find myself in certain situations in life and my first thought is "I should write about this." Obviously at some point I said that to myself while on the treadmill. You tell me. You've read 1600+ words about it already under the guise of a Carly Rae Jepsen blog post, how's it working out for us? It doesn't matter. The outcome of the writing inspired by the gym outings doesn't matter. The workouts matter. Not the specifics or the outcomes of those either, just the act of going. Doing something. Feeling like I'm taking active measures in the course of my own life. I don't know how long I will keep it up. Maybe a few more days. Maybe forever. I don't go every single day. I can't on Sundays because it doesn't open till seven on the weekends and I'm already leaving for work at that time. I didn't on Thanksgiving, for obvious holiday-related reasons. Every day other than that, though. Saturdays I'm there at seven but I try to get in and out as quickly as possible, since that's cutting into family time at that point. Shoutout to Pam who is cool with me doing this and trying something new to improve myself. It's a whole different thing on Saturdays. Different playlists, different people. I don't like it. I hate "Good Time" but I miss it when it's gone. Though I recognized someone else on Saturday who I had never seen there on any weekday. My train crush. You ever have this type of crush on somebody? It's the person you've never said a single fucking word to and probably never will and yet you see them every single fucking day on public transportation and you can't help but grow a little fond of them in an obscure sort of way. I trace the phenomenon back for me personally to the school bus I took every morning. I'd have to travel with all the Rockledge kids to Abington H.S. and then catch another bus from there with all the private school kids. My freshman year I rode the bus with twins who lived around the corner from me. They were a little Northeast Philly-style trashy but that shit is catnip to me, and I was into it. I'm sure they aged about twenty years in the three years they were smoking cigarettes at the Rockledge Pub before I myself turned 21. They disappeared from my life long ago, but I'd still have a crush if I saw either of them nowadays, guaranteed. But all that was just a warmup for Jessica, who was a year younger than me so I didn't ride the bus with her until my junior year. I had it bad for Jessica S., whose last name is generic enough that I haven't been able to find anything online about her and you probably wouldn't either if you knew it (I'll initialize it anyway). I didn't say a single word to her for two years. She lived right up the street from me. I could practically see her house from my bedroom window. Just a terrible, terrible bus crush. I'm talking writing-awful-strained-poetry levels of crush. The funny thing is, a year and change after I graduated high school, I ran into her at a La Salle party. The swim house. She was sitting out front. I said hi, for the first time in my life. I was probably a little drunk but not enough that I made a fool of myself. Just enough to be courageous enough to say hi. It was a little sad for a few reasons. First, that there's no way that someone like that can live up to the expectations you built up in your head. She was nice. She was a little boring. Average sorority-type girl. She is very pretty and she was very nice and I would not have had a crush on her if I had ever heard her talk while in high school. Second, that I was with my friend Mike C. at the time, and those two totally hit it off. Right in front of me. I barely said three words to her before she was flirting with another guy right in front of me. I get it. Who knows how I looked that night (possibly sloppier than I remember). Mike C. was a pretty charming guy. He apologized to me later that night, after I confessed to him that she had been my undying bus crush for multiple years. He didn't have to apologize. Bus crushes are just a silly little thing. Innocent, not meant to be taken seriously. I've had a few more over the years, but public transportation traditions have been spotty since college. I rode my bike a lot when I was Port Richmond and then worked from home a decent amount and only recently have gotten back in touch with my commuter life. The train is crowded but not overwhelmingly so. I see my train crush most days. She works in my building, I am assuming as a lawyer or something. I don't know why I assume that. Because she dresses sharply, maybe, and seems smart in the brain too. She looks fit but not in a muscly sort of way. Slim, and tall. And never smiles. Always looks miserable. It's fucking endearing. It's like a miserableness that is obviously borne from waking up early to look good for the train ride into work. I think I have a crush on these types of women because I keep thinking along the lines of "I can change her." I can be the one who makes her smile! This is all pretty innocent stuff. I would never articulate any of this to anyone outside of the blog and my wife if she asked. It's all in the rich daydreams of my addled brain. She's fit in the way that you can tell she's always on the treadmill and doesn't go near the weights. This is probably why I thought I saw her on the treadmills when I was finishing up my shit on Saturday and was all the way on the other side of the gym doing my post-workout stretches. I looked over and there she was. Probably. Whoever it was, her or not, they had their hood up, which made it difficult to determine one way or the other. It was a little far away. I looked over twice and both times it felt like she was looking back at me. I took that as a sign that I shouldn't look over there anymore, because, like, I'm not imagining that she's looking at me for the same reasons that I'm looking over at her. Quite the contrary. I get nervous when I see that she is staring at me because then I assume that she is looking at me because she thinks I'm an ugly little creep whom she always catches staring at her. So I don't, or at least try not to. When I finally chanced another glance, a few minutes later, she was no longer on the treadmill. I looked around but didn't see her anywhere. There's at least a 40% chance that she wasn't there at all and my brain was soupy enough from deadlifts and lunges that I completely hallucinated. I haven't seen her on the train this week. That's the point, I suppose. To not be creepy about it. Hopefully she was there on the train and she saw me not seeing her, and she found my not-looking a comfort. Her boyfriend is on the train too, by the way. Not always, but sometimes. I've seen them kiss, which is why I'm assuming boyfriend, though maybe not. Sometimes they sit in different seats. Sometimes she's next to him, one time with her head on his shoulder. I usually see a rare smile from her when that happens, when she is with this guy, which is nice to see. It's a nice smile. It's kind of watery, like she's usually made of stone but her partner brings out the gooey side and she's all grinning because she's happy. Train crushes aren't real and so they aren't necessarily destroyed when the real-world circumstances reveal themselves. This is a lot to think about. I think about it at the gym. I think about it at the gym because I'm there a few hours a week and I haven't thought to bring my iPod yet. So instead, I listen to the bad pop music and think about how good it feels to be there by choice. And I think about other shit too, because what else is there to do when you are lifting a dumbbell above your head over and over and over? I don't know. Nothing else. Nothing besides just thinking about life, man. What led me here. Where I wanna be after I spend enough time here in this space doing this thing. Who are the women on the far fringes of my life and what they mean to me. Whether my left ankle is hurting today or not. Whether I can do this tomorrow. Whether this is going to stick. Whether "Good Time" is my least favorite song of all time. I don't think it can be. Not now, anyway. It's an integral part of the tradition. The new tradition that I'm trying out, and kinda liking.