There Is This Song I Like

There is this song I like. I like it a lot.

I heard it first when we were cleaning an apartment that was lent to us so we had a place to live. The apartment had furniture, old furniture that might have been great a long time ago, but now was outdated and dirty.

I was nine or ten; I could find out, but it wouldn’t change anything, and I was cleaning a big, gray chair. It was solid, heavy, bigger and heavier than I was, and was upholstered in a vinyl that resembled elephant skin. It wasn’t the color that resembled elephant skin, but the texture: It was thick, dry, as I imagine elephant skin would be. It was also hard to fold, and rough on the skin. The texture had these deep lines that were full of dust and sweat from years of cigars, whiskies, and deep conversations that stretched into the night, like the ones my mom would have later with her friends.

I scrubbed that chair for a long time. I probably did a mediocre job at best, but got some praise from my mom all the same. I don’t remember what my brother was doing while I was fighting stains and decay on the surface of the chair. I also can’t recall who else was in the apartment with us, helping. I’m sure there was somebody else; I have this vague feeling of a fourth, nondescript person.

My mom had bought a tape player from a friend. A cassette player that her friend had brought from a trip to the US. She was moving to the US soon and was selling her stuff. She was moving to Miami to be with her boyfriend. I guess he already had a tape player, and that’s why she sold it to my mother. She probably sold it to her at a ridiculously low price, as we didn’t have any money…
The player was simple: it had one big speaker that sounded ok, but it was our player.

Mom was listening to a tape by a band she really liked; she’d listen to it several times in a row, never tiring of it. I’d do the same later in my teen years. I guess that’s where I got it from.
One of the songs caught my attention. It was a song about a guy who was really bad at stuff, and yet he was singing to his woman, calling her “my queen and princess.”

We lived in that apartment for several years. It was actually a penthouse, but I didn’t know or care about that; I was just happy my mom seemed happy.
I shared a room with my brother, but it was big and had windows that opened onto the crown of a big, old tree on our sidewalk. The sun would get through it and light up the room. We’d play on the wooden floor with our toys and my cat.
I don’t remember listening to the song while we lived there, but I’m sure Mom played it many times.

Like her friend, one day I found myself selling my belongings to move to the US. Miami, too, was my destination. In Miami, I had a job. In Miami, I bought a house, a car - and many replacements - had kids, got divorced.
I visited my mom’s friend, and when my mom visited us, we would all go to visit her friend together.

During those years, never, not even once, was there a mention of that song. We never played it. Nobody made an effort not to bring it up; no one avoided listening to it. We just never talked about it. It was like a soft presence in the depths of our lives, unnoticed, forgotten.

I met a woman a few weeks before my mom came to visit, and we started dating. It was between my birthday and Christmas. We dated for almost two years. There was a point in the relationship in which I felt she was my queen and princess. I mentioned the song to her, and she immediately claimed it as hers.
It felt right; the song was about this guy who wasn’t great at many things, but still managed to be in a relationship with an attractive woman. Not long after, we broke up.

My mom passed away a few years later, a few years ago. The song that had been, once again, forgotten, resurfaced, bringing back the dusty apartment and the memory of our broken family working together. It brought back the feeling of my mom being close, in the next room, but out of sight. It did not bring back the hope of a future that - we knew it! - was going to be great.

Lately, I’ve been listening to the song regularly; that album is now part of my playlist. Every time, without exception, it takes me back to that dirty apartment, to the feeling of my mother in the next room, listening to the song as we all cleaned a new future for ourselves.

I had other girlfriends over the years, but the song never came up as an appropriate way to show my feelings for any of them.

Even if I had felt that strongly about any one of them—and I did not—would it have been right to give her the song I had already given to another woman?

I worry about how she would feel if she discovered the song belonged to another loved one before it became hers.
I worry about whether I’ll find another one I could love as much as I loved the previous owner of that nice, low-mileage song.
More than anything, I worry that even if I do, that song has been reclaimed by my memories of that dirty chair I was cleaning, excited about a life we were starting. A life with no limits and no end in sight.