**I couldn’t find a Tullycraft youtube video link for this so, I’m putting up a cover version done by a band I’m in.
I can’t remember if this was the last tape, second to last or third to last tape of twelve or thirteen mixtapes that Ashley gave to me before we broke up. It was freshman year, 1997 at Norview High School in Norfolk, VA, when I met Ashley by means of desk grafitti. We shared the same desk in different periods of English and I forget what she scribbled on the desk that prompted me to respond but it was funny and I could tell by the shape of the writing that the author was a girl. She probably wrote some gibe on Ethan Frome or our teacher Mrs. Mayfield who had coke-bottle glasses, an Eleanor Roosevelt haircut and insisted on calling the photocopied class materials ‘mimeographs.’ I wrote to Ashley, she wrote back and we continued to do this for a few weeks until I got ballsy. I wrote my phone number on the desk in code using the tracklist for OK Computer as the key. We found out we were in the same orchestra class. She played viola and I played the cello. Ashley wore a subdued punk rock getup (a Dandy Warhols t-shirt, tattered stone washed jeans and Chuck Taylors.) She had dirty blonde hair that went a little past her chin, blue eyes, an eyebrow ring and a face like a young Gillian Anderson, complete with freckles. The first hellos were as awkward as one could expect but we started writing letters to each other and she asked me if she could make me a mixtape… I said yes!
The first mixtape Ashley gave me opened with Pavement’s “Stereo” and lead into the Red Aunts’ “Detroit Valentine.” I would come over to her house and we’d listen to vinyl and one day while sitting against the wall of her bedroom I kissed her. She scurried away against her bed frightened and confused. She said, “Um, I thought you were gay.” I replied with, “What?” I had long, girly hair and put it in pigtails from time to time and I had/have a lisp. I asked her if that was why she looked so scared and she claimed I tried to use my tongue. I remember the exact movement which was a kind of swoop with closed lips to a slight opening to pull on her upper lip. I didn’t try to explain this but I suspect she mistook my gargantuan lower lip for an overeager tongue. We had the “I like you/do you like me?” conversation and so began a three year romantic relationship.
When I wasn’t at home or with my friends David and Alex, I was with Ashley. I taught her how to play guitar and bass and she introduced me to a world of music she was exposed through penpals from people across the country that she’d found on the young internet (AOL.) We watched a lot of MTV2 and Space Ghost and Pete & Pete and I joined Art Club and Model UN because of her. We went to a few rock concerts, Warped Tour and even started a bedroom band called ‘The Quadratics’ named after the high school band from Todd Solondz’ “Welcome to the Dollhouse.”
With the lack of appropriate personal time and space, I became the insecure, needy boyfriend around the year mark. Things weren’t “fun” all the time and sometimes we were ok with that and sometimes we weren’t and sometimes it was a shit storm. My critical personality became overly critical. Ashley was thinking about college and I didn’t really give it much thought as I didn’t know anyone that went to college. She got a job at Bennigan’s and started meeting older, mature people while I just couldn’t keep up on my bicycle with her in her Celebrity Eurosport. Things ended badly, with a lot of bitterness on both sides. I threw out most of the mixtapes. I held on to more than a few.
I applied to VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) because Ashley thought about applying to VCU because of their art program. I drifted through senior year with a passable GPA for VCU and got in. Ashley went elsewhere.
I’d like to think in the first couple of years of college that I grew a lot and became more of my own person. Still, every few months I would have dreams about Ashley. They were incredibly normal, usually of us just walking through cityscapes that were amalgamations of Norfolk and Richmond, VA. In one of the dreams she was pregnant and were just having a nice chat about life. Roughly two years after our breakup, Ashley came by my parents house while I was at school in Richmond.
We got in contact again. I remember being back in Norfolk for vacation and Ashley came over and we just talked. I remember feeling happy and I remember seeing happiness in her. It wasn’t a romantic longing to get back together. We were just happy to see each other again. Throughout the rest of college we became better friends than we were while boyfriend and girlfriend. We talked every so often over the phone and we’d hang out in Norfolk or she’d come visit me in Richmond and sleep on the couch. We went to see the band Pedro the Lion in Charlottesville, VA and Chapel Hill, NC. We saw Yo La Tengo at Alley Katz in Richmond and Shonen Knife at the Black Cat in DC. After college, I stayed in Richmond, played in a couple of bands, worked at various restaurants as delivery driver and then got a job in an office doing graphic design. Ashley worked through out school and after undergrad went to grad school in Kansas for philosophy.
The last time I spoke to Ashley on the phone was a year and a half ago. I was making preparations to move to California and she told me about her recent engagement to a colleague of hers at Kansas University. I disappeared into the California wilderness to find a job doing something with movies. Ashley’s married now but I know we’ll always be friends. I’ve got a phone call to make.
Jared Sosa is a video-editor of yoga lifestyle videos for bighappyday.com. While in Richmond, VA he played in the bands Hot Lava and A Roman Holiday. His astrological sign is Cancer.
