For Mikey, who played the entire eight and a half minutes of Oh Comely at a 2009 open mic while it was still culturally relevant for sad boys to enjoy the music of Neutral Milk Hotel

and how a woman at the bar said oh there’s more and I didn’t want to tell her how much 

and how it’s a song about the holocaust but most of the sad boys listening are actually just sad about themselves 

and how I didn’t really have a notion of radical tenderness or tender masculinity or properly caring for someone other than myself

and how at some point in that eight and a half minutes the hall warden was going to have to listen to this eighteen year old sing about the smell of semen 

and how snakebite-and-black only ever comes in a plastic cup

and how I was drinking so much that I’d throw up in my wet room en suite about once a week 

and how nostalgia bludgeons the edges of the past until they’re smooth

and how Mikey and I were never really close

and how there are all these cultural touchstones that tell us a bit about who someone is 

and how Neutral Milk Hotel is one of them 

and how in particular which song from that album tells us something, you know? 

and how my favourite song is King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 because I imagine the sadness of it occurring over breakfast

and how we’re all bored of sadness now so everyone listens to pop

and how we spend our time making jokes about the particular flavour of sad boy we used to be

and how we were soft but not kind

and how I still think the most romantic thing someone can do is pick vomit out of your hair

and how Mikey sang 

and how I sang 

O! song O! sadness O! comely

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Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts