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Baltz to the Waltz

from Jawkward by Jawkward

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about

The music for this was written in January 2011, right after the events of the song. The lyrics didn't come until a year and a half later.

lyrics

I turned over and looked through the skylight of this unfamiliar bedroom. I could see dead trees through the glass, unfocused and harshly backlit like old family vacation photos. It took me a moment to remember where I was. There were many parts of the room I didn't see when I first stumbled in here a few hours before. My eyes made their way down to the girl sleeping softly by my side. She lay there, breathing quietly, tender and fragile. I sat in bed motionless and smiled softly, too afraid or too excited or just too content to disturb her.

Our eyes first met—well, first met in any significant sense—only 10 hours before as we sat in a circle playing some stupid drinking game, choking down shots on the tile floor. The host took his Jesus Christ Superstar record out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable (I must confess I was jealous of how nicely his table sounded. The cartridge in the table I had at home was starting to come loose and, with the slightest provocation, the needle would skip until I got up and moved it).

So we danced. And oh, how we danced to that music. We were full of holy spirits that descended into our stomachs in tongues of firewater.

Somewhere in the movements of our nubile bodies I perceived an acute sense of self-awareness. We were dancing carelessly, playing dumb drinking games, breaking glasses, and doing all sorts of dumb stunts. This was exactly the kind of high school party we scorned when held by popular kids. But it felt different—more meaningful—to us. This was our send-off to the final days of 2010.

I felt pretty good so far that evening. I had made enough significant glances and casual conversation to begin to think that I could possibly muster up enough courage to eventually approach her. But as I re-entered the room, I saw her face pressed up against another, lips locking messily.

I knew I she wasn't mine—I never bought into the possessive patriarchal crap long enough to ever get the concept of the doggone girl being mine ingrained in my mind—but that didn't stop my heart from sinking. I was dying to be him. I could've been a boy scout from all the knots I tied in my stomach.

So I wandered off into the piano room and tickled the ivories for a bit, drinking more out of obligation than out of any real desire. I sat amongst the comic drunk, the creative drunk, the touchy-feely drunk, and the drunk drunk, tinkering out what little I knew on the instrument. So, I thought, these are the characters we play. Was I the underdog, put down now, but building up the strength to come steal her back in the third act? Or was I just a loser, too scared to even try in the safe zone that is a drunken party? I certainly knew which one I felt like.

Somewhere in the chaos of the night she and I ended up on the back porch outside, our breath and smoke mingling in the cold December air. The backyard was smothered in a virgin blanket of snow, with only a spot of semi-frozen vomit just over the railing marring its perfect surface. In the ice age we spent on that porch, the closest our lips ended up was on the bubbler and cigarillo we shared between us.

The next few minutes blurred by, spinning slowly like the empty bottle in the game we knew we were too old for but played anyway out of tribute or irony or for some lost sense of missed opportunities. I knelt on the ground there, silently praying to the gods of physics for some coefficient of friction that would grant me the closure I needed before I could end my night. And I got it.

We exchanged the customary faux-bashful looks before meeting lips. Her breath was warm and comforting. The sweetness of the flavored cigarillo and the sting of alcohol meshed into one calming aroma. I was kicking myself for not manning up and approaching her earlier, but that soon subsided into a sense of contentment. It didn't matter what I hadn't done all those hours earlier, but only what I was doing now. And now we were in the hallway, against the wall, together.

We were pressed against that wall for an eternity, held together in the most earnest display of messy teenage feelings, animal in the simplicity of its desire, but so tenderly human. I didn't care about the gawking or the catcalls around me. For that one moment, we were alone. For that one moment, I had nothing to prove.

She was still sleeping to the right of me by the time I woke up. I wanted more than anything to put my arms around her and just sleep, but my courage had silently left with the night. Only the dull sting of morning awkwardness greeted me now. Eventually, she rose and fixed herself up without making eye contact.

I knew it was over. I knew it hadn't meant anything in the first place. But I liked it that way—the way our desperate, youthful vigor enchanted all of our actions with a fleeting significance before returning them to pumpkins of juvenile hedonism in the morning. But as much as I loved our destructive cycle, it still left me feeling kind of empty. Accepting, but empty. So I sat there with a pit in my stomach and I watched her walk to the door. She turned the knob, paused, and turned her head and met my eyes with a knowing smile. A glass slipper.

credits

from Jawkward, released August 2, 2012
Music and lyrics by Dan Parshall

Dan Parshall: guitar, bass, piano, clarinet, vocals
Zack Reinhardt: drums

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Jawkward Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Dan Parshall (guitar and vocals) and Zack Reinhardt (drums). Twinkle punk ranging from the goofy punk ragers to the melancholy crooners. What up.

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