There are moments in life when things change from insignificant incidentals into objects full of import and heavy sighs. For me, this song changed like that, growing shades, sprouting elusive allurements – just like the man who first played it for me.

When I met him that fall I wrote him off. I might as well have made a giant X across his forehead for all I thought of him. He was cute, yes, and earnest; but I had no interest in earnest, I had no interest in geeky, no interest in someone who tried too hard. Still, there he was: presenting himself and calling and asking and hoping and wishing. For me! And on the other side, nothing but my wounded pride and my wounded heart from a very long relationship that imploded on the steps of graduate school. Nothing left but a nauseating blur of confetti. Hardly a party.

For months I kept him like a canary. I tapped his cage so he’d sing. I danced around and laughed at his insecurity, his inexperience. I touched him and thrilled at his captivity. Mostly, I watched him sweat. He was only a rebound, after all.

But I also sat and watched him cook for me. I watched the way I fit in and did the dishes, the way I didn’t care what we were, the way we were ourselves, the way it was easy to be just that. And I watched his body in the blue light that came from his apartment window. I heard the helicopters up above us and I touched his back, thinking how to keep this moment, find a way to stay still in the blue, roaring silence.

So something changed, shifted, started to slide. After a few months he broke up with me, rightly so. I tried to stop him, confessed I’d grown to care, but he went. When his other thing didn’t work, we got back together. Unsurprisingly, he went on to hurt me as badly as I’d hurt him, treating me like an expendable piece of his life, a nothing-special accessory. After that we
existed in a delicate balance, equally hurt by the other.

Later that summer, after the turmoil had finally worked its way out, we were driving in the car and a song came on his cd player. It was Rob Dougan’s “Nothing at All.”

I learn as I go / to float far away into silence / and just watch your face / and find some kind of grace in that quiet bliss / Can I stay and say nothing at all?

The sun was coming in, reflecting off the river next to us. The windows were open and I was happy. He said, “I listened to this song a lot when I first met you. I like that part ‘Can I stay and say nothing at all… just watch your face.’”

It was startling to think of someone listening to a song and thinking, dreaming, hoping for me. I knew then he’d really wanted me, sincerely. Now he wanted me less, it was clear. He’d given me the Dougan cd in a batch of others and I’d never listened to it. That night I went home and listened to the song, trying to imagine him. I felt intense regret.

And though I tried later to explain that how I felt about him now was different, that the way I’d acted then was a by-product not of my views of him, but of my own sour, sorry state, he balked. The damage that we’d done to each other couldn’t be fixed.

He left me to roast in my own earnest feelings. I walked around the same places where we used to walk and listened to music. I always had a mix of my favorite music for the moment, and I’d put “One and the Same” from the Rob Dougan album on one of them, rather randomly. Before, I had thought the whole cd was not my type of music, and normally I would have scoffed at any song that included the lyrics “we’re two birds / adrift on the wind.”

But that day, walking on the edge of the city, thinking of him and the mistakes and the feeling of wanting that had turned my whole body into nothing but longing, I heard it and wanted it to be my choice from the album. My song to go with his song.

Well, I keep on waiting / for you to say / your wait is over / let’s keep believing we’re one and the same.

I felt the hook of the small voice saying “all right” at the beginning of the song, felt the way the strings soared. I felt every cheesy word of that song, felt it everywhere at once, because that is how things change, without foresight, without preparation.

Now, if that song comes on shuffle, I may switch it off or I may listen, but I am always filled with regret and anger at myself, sometimes at him. I’ll never feel as strongly for him as I did that day, I’ll never want him that much again; now, I see how wronged he was, how wronged I was, how wrong we both were so much of the time. Things change and they become irrevocable.