The Greatest Mixtape Ever Made

My senior year of high school Melissa Metts gave me the best mixtape I had, and still have, ever heard. I was in love with Melissa Metts all year long and I never told her. She still doesn't know. We were in the same AP Calculus class, and she sat two rows over from me. The person who sat between us was my friend Kevin.

I mean I guess Kevin was my friend. We both played on the varsity soccer team and always cracked each other up in Calculus by doing impressions of our teacher, Dr. Krueger, and I helped Kevin study for the AP Exam (I don't think he passed). But Kevin and I weren't like "real" friends. We didn't hang out much outside of school, or call each other, or tell each other we were in love with Melissa Metts. So Kevin's sitting there was definitely an inconvenience for me.

Melissa was about 5'3" with brown, sort of wavy, short-ish hair. She was undeniably "cute," which I don't think was necessarily something you tried to cultivate if you hung out with the people she hung out with. She was a total smart-ass and had the best smile ever. Something happened over the summer before my senior year and that whole Grunge/Seattle-Glorification thing started happening. It seemed like when we got back to school half the girls had gone out and bought striped knee-socks and mini-skirts and dyed their hair so it was darker--and less innocent-looking maybe. Melissa hung with that group of people. They all tried to act hardcore and hardly any of them really were.

Melissa's best friend was Lindsay. Lindsay really was hardcore. She had black hair, wore big "I will totally fuck you up" boots and ripped jeans, drew fake tattoos on her arms with ballpoint pens, had a pierced nose, and made her own t-shirts by taking white undershirts and a Sharpie marker and writing something on the front like "think for yr self." Lindsay did not approve of my soccer-playing, cornfed whiteboy ass. She sat behind Melissa, which was also hugely inconvenient for me.

Somehow during the school year Melissa and I started passing notes across the room. We inevitably got on the subject of music, which led her to realize I didn't know any of the bands she liked. She offered to make me a mixtape. Having this girl that I was obsessed with make me a mixtape was obviously a huge coup and a great sign, and if I'd had any skills or any clue about how to act with girls I would've immediately made her my little grunge lovergirl. But no. All I got was a mixtape. But it was, as I have said, the best mixtape I've ever heard.

I'm going to list the songs and let that be the end of this blog (by the way, it might be obvioius, but I still have this mixtape after all this time). The songs are great, and this tape was how I got interested to a bunch of great bands (most prominently The Pixies, which changed my life...seriously) that were totally different than anything I listened to at time, but the best thing about the tape was that in between every other song or so Melissa had recorded herself talking and making little jokes and being just about as cute as a person can stand to listen to. I know, I know...now it seems obvious how into me she was, but if you can believe it, I had absolutely no clue then. You can slap me the next time we meet.

SIDE A:
Here Comes Your Man - Pixies
Broken Face - Pixies
Time For Livin' - Beastie Boys
Allison's Starting To Happen - Lemonheads
I'm Waiting For The Man - Velvet Underground
Head On - Pixies
Suggestion - Fugazi
Jane Says (Live in Japan) - Jane's Addiction
Sunday Morning - Velvet Underground

SIDE B:
Lightening - Ultra Vivid Scene
Caribou - Pixies
I Been Tired - Pixies
Dollar Bill - Screaming Trees
We Are Each Other - Beautiful South
Bone Machine - Pixies
Waiting Room - Fugazi
Sweet Misery Blues - Violent Femmes
Black Girls - Violent Femmes