Head on the Door

Every single time I listen to The Cure’s Head on the Door, I picture myself standing in my bathroom at my parents’ home when I was a teenager. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was listening to the album on repeat while I was rewallpapering, repainting, and retiling it; it seems like I might have just been sitting in there, though, on a hamper full of dirty clothes, singing along with my eyes shut. I liked the acoustics there.

Then I remember singing lines of “Sinking” to my cousin as he parked outside my parents’ house after my brother’s wedding rehearsal. His pickup truck was parked in the mud, and I felt my dress shoes suction to the slop as I foolishly jumped from the cab without regard for my apparel. 

I remember walking up the steps of a subway as sunrise, stepping over piles of litter and vomit, watching for my friend the one-legged pigeon, listening  and singing softly along to The Shroud cover of the same song I had sang my cousin.

And then oddly, even though it’s on Disintegration, I think of the bathroom again, listening to “Love Song” play on the radio, advertising the band’s upcoming tour date. I didn’t go to the concert. Then, the memory changes, and it’s the first night I hung out with my soon-to-be wonderful friend and future roommate. I drank copious amounts of rice beer, we discovered our mutual obsession with Megatouch, and then, in the midst of the most godawful game of 301 on a cheap electronic dartboard, we sung along – drunk and merry, if not entirely awful at darts – as a live reggae band covered the song. 

Fuck it. I’m going to listen to The Cure on shuffle while I sketch out a new idea for a painting for The Foreigner. I will paint for him, and I will not dwell on the loss of so many paintings recently. “Pictures of You” starts playing as I carry my iBook upstairs to my studio. I used to play the song on guitar around the campfire and sing it with my friends in high school. 

This is going to be a very, very odd painting. 

Screamed at the make believe
Screamed at the sky
And you finally found all the courage
to let it all go…

Did I really just eat an entire box of Girl Scout cookies??? Fuck me.