It started with a cake. I'd been calling in sick to work on an almost daily basis. I'd spend hours at the park reading these vegan cookbooks that Sarah bought for us as a step towards a healthier lifestyle. When I found the perfect dessert, I trekked back to Greenpoint Avenue, gathering up ingredients along the way. To pass the time of baking & waiting, I started a mixtape. My days were consumed with skipping work, seeking out cake recipes, and making a mixtape for my girlfriend. It was almost springtime, and I was twenty-two.

Moving in together wasn't something we really planned on happening, but given the shitty circumstances of Mother Nature's way, our home of New Orleans wasn't exactly an option anymore. We looked for something new -- new opportunities but more importantly new bands to discover, new bars to haunt, and new cute girls to stare at in the coffee shop. We landed in Brooklyn.

She ordered this electronic drum kit, and days before it arrived in the mail, we'd already named our band and tried to figure out what songs we would cover. My friend had just sent me a mixtape in the mail, and the first track was the original "Hangin' on the Telephone" by the Nerves. I cursed Debbie Harry for having gotten to it first. Sarah threw a bass in my hands & taught me the four chords to "Just Like Heaven". It was decided. We spent each & every night making dinner, watching Jeopardy then practicing, her on her drums and me on my bass. We never wrote any songs of our own. Well, she did, but she never let me listen to them. (Once I found a tape of her playing guitar and singing a song she'd written called "You Broke My Little Gay Heart (Into a Million Pieces)", and I think it made her nervous. I loved it.) She only played for me covers, any one I'd request or some I'd never heard. She knew how much I loved Modest Mouse. I told her a story about how one night close to my high school graduation, I put in The Fruit That Ate Itself and kept replaying it. I just drove & drove and before I knew it, I was in Florida. I came home to her one day practicing "All Night Diner". It was lovely. I could've repaid her by playing that same damn Cure song repeatedly, but instead, I decided to repay her in mixtapes.

Everything she did & was made me think of songs. Some songs I never wanted to hear much less spend the time taping to subject to someone else. Other songs that made me think of home, New Orleans, bike riding two on one bike, or shows where I'd her before we were officially friends. The third track on the side A was "Butterflies Are Free" by the Free Design. It scored its place on the tape not only for obvious reasons that Sarah gave me butterflies in my stomach (gawsh!), but my friend was playing it at the record store where we worked once & Sarah walked in. Right when they hit the high note on "free". It was a scene from a John Hughes movie. It was stepping off of the last step right as the G train arrives. It was too perfect.

She always teased me that I was too cool for a nerd like her, but I secretly wished I'd heard of bands like Delta 5 & Huggy Bear before she played them for me. I always enjoyed her excitement in response to my ignorance. Nothing could top the time she was talking about Germ Free Adolescents and I looked at her and said, "Huh? What's that?" She could barely contain herself as she rummaged through shelves of CDs to find X-Ray Spex. She really was happy, and I was happy, too. One day, Sarah came home from work to me with a cake in one hand & a broomstick microphone in the other, dancing around to Tommy James' "I Think We're Alone Now". This alone is was proof that "cool" isn't really the right word to describe me.

This was our life. We baked cakes & made tapes & sought out recipes & played the same songs to each other every night, and we were content. We were lost & confused in the big city of New York, but with each other, we were home.