Kevin didn’t say “shut up” exactly, but that’s obviously what he meant and I shouldn’t care because he can’t understand since he’s never had a real girlfriend and he’s never been in love with anybody even though Laurie always says he’s totally in love with me which can’t possibly be true —
we’ve been friends forever.
I’m sitting in the little room with the radio on. Bryan Adams is playing like he always is because the government says that over 30 per cent of all the music any radio station plays has to be Canadian now. They can do what they want, but it’s not going to make most Canadian music suck any less. And stupid AM radio station is hardly going to play any good Canadian bands like D.O.A. or Skinny Puppy are they?
I flick the dial to the university station and think about how Kevin and I talk about this Canadian content thing all the time. Now I don’t know if I should be talking to him at all. He “can’t hear” me talk any more about Mark whatever that’s supposed to mean. Just because we broke up doesn’t mean we’re not going to be in each other’s lives. He still has a bunch of my records so I need to talk to him to get them back. And if Kevin and I were really friends he could deal with the occasional mention of Mark. He’s completely exaggerating when he says I talk about him all the time.
*
Image: Bryan Adams, MTV: Who’s Who in Rock Video, Zomba Books, 1983.
Welcome to the Little Room is a series of 250-word re-imagined vignettes from my ’80s youth with a focus on music and style. It appears weekly on periodicult.com.
