Last time up in this series, Jonny the Friendly Lawyer presented us with Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event, recalling it as a song that took him back to 1985 when he found out his girlfriend had been cheating on him.
It got me thinking about a song I’d long been considering, reluctant however to bring it forward as the lyric is just too brutal in so many ways to make for a ‘great’ story. But, as JTFL was able to point out, when it comes to songs, the subject matter doesn’t have to be all sweetness and light to make for a great lyric.
This one is as far from a love song as it is possible to get. It is prose rather than a lyric.
You’d already been about half an hour with your pre-clubbing shower. I had always planned to have a look in your special Winnie the Pooh book. The place was marked, and it was there in blue and white. It just said simply, “Paul stayed last night.” Next I was on the bog, and you got down on one knee. You were protesting your innocence, and you started to cry just as I started to pee. You said, “I didn’t shag him, he slept on the couch in the kitchen. He might as well be a girl, he’s a good for a laugh, and he’s good for bitchin’.” You said you’d never be willing or able. And he looks like he was made on a fucking table. Although, to be fair, I think he hides the bolts quite well, but as soon as he opens his mouth you can just tell. I had just assumed you’d completely gone off shagging, and I can just see you with your new Uni pals, standing bragging. Now he’s your boyfriend and I know you were talking shite. But you still denied it when I met you at someone’s birthday party the other night. You said, “I didn’t shag him, he stayed on the couch in the kitchen. He’s just like one of the girls, we have a good laugh when we’re sitting bitchin’.” The words that you used to think turned me on just made me laugh. “Do you want to suck my cunt?” in real life just sounds naff. And when we were with your friends, I just as might as well have been no one. And you can’t get over your dead dog – well, it takes one to know one.
mp3: Arab Strap – Piglet
Pain, disbelief and then the visceral anger in dealing with the inevitable break-up. I reckon we’ve all said things in the heat of the moment that we later regret and acknowledge as having gone too far.
From Philophobia, released in 1998. It’s an album packed with incredible short stories.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 