Tom Waits brought us together: We were the only people in our class who stayed late to watch Waits’ performance in a screening of the 1982 documentary Poetry in Motion. Josh drank whiskey, smoked clove cigarettes, and carried rolled-up paperback books in the back pocket of his Levi 501s. He is the only man I’ve ever met who wore a porkpie hat without irony. He was obsessed with Tom Waits.

I met him again later at Bogies, a trashy college bar that accepted chalked IDs and catered to Italian stallions with manicured eyebrows. It wasn’t my scene, but it was one of a handful of bars that allowed an underage clientele. While our respective friends did the bump and grind, we sat in a dark corner booth and talked about poetry, music, and our shared passion for Mr. Waits.

Josh told me he was wearing his dead father’s brown corduroy blazer. This might elicit sympathy from unsuspecting coeds, but I was a cynical single girl who’d always been just one of the guys. I had years of knowledge under my studded belt.

“It suits you,” I said. He smiled and placed his porkpie hat on my head.

“You suit me, Kate.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Several beers and a couple of Kanye raps later, I found myself waiting at the coat check for my jacket. When the coat check girl failed to show up, my beatnik boy jumped the counter and grabbed my jacket. He held it open as I slipped my arms into the warm embrace of Army-green wool. I had never known anyone who would usurp the power of the coat check.

Riding high on a fit of gusto–or the Jameson–Josh plucked my petite frame off the ground and carried me out of the bar. It was two in the morning, and the sloshed collegiate gangstas and their ladyfriends didn’t even notice. My arms were wrapped around Josh’s neck, and as I looked into his green eyes, my mind registered the shock of finding a man I actually liked. This was a guy who wouldn’t cut and run from a workaholic academic who loved her record collection more than any man she’d met so far.

Josh put me down outside the bar, but he interlaced his gloved hand with mine as we walked back to campus. He recited a Waits monologue from the Nighthawks at the Diner album along the way. We kissed in the cold February night as snowflakes blanketed the grimy city streets.

Our courtship progressed at a leisurely pace. It was comfortable, like a well-worn plaid flannel shirt. One fateful evening we attended a poetry reading and returned to his dorm room, which had all the trappings of a typical college hipster. A bass guitar stood in the corner. Music and movie posters served as makeshift wallpaper. There was a moderately swanky stereo system that could blast our your eardrums or seduce your latest love. I was in for the latter.

I sat on his bed with my nervous hands as Josh put an unmarked CD in the player. I knew when I heard the husky “One, two, three” that proceeded the first stroke of a piano key that I was listening to Tom Waits’ 1973 debut album, Closing Time. It’s my favorite Waits album, and one of the top five albums on my list of desert island discs. I had mentioned this to Josh very casually several weeks ago, told him how I was trying to track it down on vinyl. I was amazed that he remembered.

We danced to the first track, “Ol’ 55.” It was a slow, clumsy sway that didn’t cut the rug, but left an impression. The scholar in me never saw it as foreshadowing. We exposed ourselves to the winter chill that slips through the cracks of the most insulated of walls, and we tumbled and fumbled our way in the soft glow that radiated from a string of white Christmas lights. When he looked at me with those bloodhound eyes, so mournful yet earnest, I knew I was his Rosie and that, without me, he’d be lonely, lonely in my place.

The album played on. I wanted to believe that the tenth track, “Little Trip to Heaven (On the Wings of Your Love),” suggested how I felt about Josh. I wasn’t in love with him, but I really liked him. There was potential. That’s what’s great about “Little Trip to Heaven”: It’s a love song that never uses the phrase “I love you.” I wanted to imagine that we embodied that song’s spirit, but if anything, we were the trumpet solo on the album’s eponymous instrumental closing track – an ellipses of uncertainty.

It all had to come to an end. I suppose the time I paused in the middle of a makeout session to discuss an article about Waits in the May 2007 issue of MOJO magazine wasn’t endearing, but it was always easier for me to talk about records than romance. I was awkward with the sentiments relationships require; they tumbled clumsily from my lips. Yet I could wax poetic about my love for Closing Time.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when I saw him sitting on the quad that spring, basking in the glow of a beautiful woman. I told myself that she probably didn’t own a turntable, but then again, she didn’t have to. She was a knockout – dark curls cascading past her shoulders, a million-dollar smile. And if their public displays of affection were anything to go by, I doubt she had any trouble in the intimacy department.

“Hey, isn’t that–” my friends started to ask.

“Yeah, that’s him,” I replied.

* * *

I spoke to Josh one last time. I was sitting at a picnic table on the campus green, preparing a lesson plan for an undergraduate course on city narratives. I looked up from my books and saw him walking across the lawn. He was alone. He nodded in my direction and made his approach.

“Kate! How are you?”

“I’m all right, Josh. You?”

“Good. Real good.” He paused. “I’ve finally found the right girl.”

“That’s great, Josh. I’m really happy for you.” It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. It was too perky. He might have thought I actually meant it.

“How about you?”

“Oh, well, you know–” I waved my hand over the books and papers spread out over the table, as if the clutter explained it all. I was dedicated to my work, but I could have made the time. Truthfully, I did make the time. The men I dated just didn’t make the time for me.

* * *

In an attempt to exorcise my demons, I’ve listened to Closing Time in its entirety several times since. It doesn’t take long – the album clocks in at under an hour. I turn out the lights and stretch out on the floor, closing my eyes as free association sets in. I don’t always think of him. I think of lots of things. Road stories. Marlboro men. Harvest moons.

Now it’s me behind the wheel of that ol’ 55, forever driving miles between one man and the next. It’s me who’s lonely, lonely in his place, remembering how we used to fall asleep while this record unfolded. I still can’t listen to track 10 without thinking of him for three minutes and thirty-eight seconds longer than I should.