jonwow: Someone to Call My Lover

I thought I'd use the occasion of everyone up in the Bay going to the Janet concert to reminisce about my Janet experience. Not that I'm jealous or anything.

May 2001, back in Ann Arbor to see the new seniors graduate. After a long night of Mafia, it had been decided that it would be a fantastic idea if everyone came out to New York to watch Janet's All For You tour in August. Three of us were going to stay up in order to get the pre-sale tickets at the break of dawn. A few hours in, there were only two of us still awake and after experiencing one of those getting to know everything about you all nighters, Marie and I set off across campus to the computer lab after picking up coffee and bagels. We sat there hitting refresh on Ticketmaster and trying to buy as many tickets as possible. In ten minutes we ended up with four seats in one closer section and twelve in another, slightly further away.

Lynn and I had been living in Jersey City for about a year already, in a luxury waterfront community with a pool, tennis and basketball courts, and a rumored member of the Wu Tang Clan on a top floor. With all the excitement of a New York trip and a concert, we convinced even more friends to come through. Even a handful of San Diego friends flew in, and we were so kind as to leave them waiting at the airport for two hours as we finished up at Cheesecake Factory. I still bring that incident up now and again, to apologize profusely. Only in true friendship can you say "Hey, we're at dinner, pick you up in a few hours. Just chill out for awhile."

Fully assembled, we crammed twenty or so people into our two bedroom apartment. Someone slept in my little walk in closet. The living room was packed in sardines style. We spent the weekend singing, dancing, Dr. Mario-ing, BBQing, attending a friend's housewarming, and finally going to see Janet live. That was the fun part of it all.

The not so fun part. My girlfriend, Angela, lived across the street in a highrise but she wasn't there for a lot of the hang out times at our house. Part of it was because she wasn't entirely comfortable around everyone, even if they were all nominally familiar. Part of it was me. From May till August, I had been in constant contact with Marie and even though we hadn't ever talked about it, Angela had been well appraised of our mysterious friendship by our mutual friends and she wasn't very happy with the particulars. When I chose to sit with Marie at the concert instead of with Angela (justifying that we had bought the tickets together so we should sit in the closer seats), shit hit the fan and it was the last straw in a relationship defined by fighting and the constant specter of break up.

A week after Janet we officially ended the relationship. A week after that I was back in Ann Arbor to celebrate my birthday. A few days later, back in Jersey City, 9/11 happened. With the World Trade Center going down, it was no time for being apart from anyone. Angela and I drifted back together for another few months of denouement, finally cutting things off when I moved away from the East Coast. I just so happened to have started my journal this particular Janet weekend. Here's the first entry:

"I'm trying to collect my thoughts from the past few days together and it's really hard. I feel like I hit this rational and emotional wall and I really want to explain and organize things in my head but I can't."

I'm making progress on my Top Ten Janet songs. So far the list looks like this: