zesticle.com

Ann-

Hey, long time no see. Remember me? I’m the guy you sang about in your All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You song a few years back. Okay so it has been… let’s see, Wikipedia says that song came out in 1990, so… 17 years. Wait, is that right? Has it really been that long? Jesus.

How’ve you been? Good? I hope so. I guess. Actually, I don’t really care; that’s sort of what I’m writing you about.

I mostly wanted to let you know that I think you’re an exploitative whore. Wow, does it feel good to say that. I’ve been bottling that up for a long time, and I probably should have let it go years ago, but now it’s right there on the paper in black and white. My therapist suggested that I should write you this letter and not send it, just to help verbalize my feelings and give me a sense that I had finally told you how I felt, but I fully intend to shoot this your way as soon as I put my signature at the end.

If that last paragraph makes me sound angry, it’s because I am. Not because of the one-night stand, as I’m pretty much always down for some strange when I can get it. No, I’m mad because you had to go and write that terrible song about the whole thing. Let’s take a look, shall we?

It was a rainy night
When he came into sight,
Standing by the road,
No umbrella, no coat.
So I pulled up alongside
And I offered him a ride.
He accepted with a smile,
So we drove for a while.
I didnt ask him his name,
This lonely boy in the rain.

First of all, this makes me sound like a homeless guy or any other brand of transient you can come up with. I was in a Kroger parking lot (not standing by the road, whore!) and my car wouldn’t start. You were coming out of the store and were parked in the spot caddy-corner to mine and sat in your car watching me try (unsuccessfully) to start mine. For, like, five minutes. It was honestly a little creepy, you just sitting there staring at me, eating what looked like Pringles that I assumed you had just bought at the store. Chip after chip after chip into your mouth, and you not taking your eyes off me for a moment. Weird.

So I finally popped the hood and got out to see what was going on under there. I’m not sure why, really. I don’t know shit about cars, so as long as all the major pieces seemed to be present (they were), everything would seem A-OK to me. I was standing there in the rain, staring at mechanics that may as well have been for a UFO, when you started your car, pulled forward roughly five feet, and asked if I needed any help. Since it was the mid 80’s, I didn’t have a cell phone and I didn’t have any change for a pay phone, so I said, “sure.”

I should have known that any woman who volunteers to give a strange man in a dark parking lot a ride was going to be trouble, so I guess all of this is sort of my own fault. But it was raining and I didn’t feel like hoofing it home. I’m aware of that, so you can save it (not that you could write me back anyway, as you will notice I have not included a return address).

Fate, tell me its right,
Is this love at first sight?
Please dont make it wrong,
Just stay for the night.

If I had been able to read your thoughts while we were driving and this is what I heard, I can assure you that I would have bolted from your Caprice at the first possible stoplight, and possibly even lunged out of a moving car if the traffic gods had chosen not to grace me with a red light. I promise — PROMISE — it was not love at first sight. I just didn’t want to walk home in the rain. What’s the matter with you?

All I wanna do is make love to you
Say you will
You want me too
All I wanna do is make love to you
Ive got lovin arms to hold on to

So we drove for a few minutes, although you immediately went the opposite direction of my house. I tried to tell you that you were going the wrong way, but you said you didn’t want to drive to a potentially bad neighborhood in the middle of the night. “Fair enough,” I thought, and I figured you were taking me to a place where I could use a free phone.

And then the dirty talk started.

I was a little caught off guard at first, but you were good at it and while you were far from hot, you were definitely doable. I wasn’t convinced that you were being serious until you reached across the bench seat and grabbed my thigh. At that point, I had never been happier to have a car refuse to start for me.

So we found this hotel,
It was a place I knew well

“We” did not find a hotel. You found it. You didn’t really “find it,” now that I think about it; you just drove to it. Do you “find” your mouth every morning when you eat breakfast? And calling it a “hotel” is like calling your average house in Fallujah a “fixer-upper.” It was a seedy little shithole motel in a horrble part of town (so when you said you didn’t want to drive to a “potentially bad” neighborhood, did you mean that you only wanted to head to one where we were almost certainly going to get shot?) that rented rooms by the hour. When the clerk greeted you by your first name as soon as we walked in the door, I was admittedly a little concerned, but I hadn’t had sex in seven months and wasn’t going to let your apparent sluttiness stop me from dipping my wick.

We made magic that night.
Oh, he did everything right
He brought the woman out of me,
So many times, easily

I have no beef with this section of the song. Thanks for the props. And YOU are welcome.

And in the morning when he woke all
I left him was a note
I told him
I am the flower you are the seed
We walked in the garden
We planted a tree
Dont try to find me,
Please dont you dare
Just live in my memory,
Youll always be there

I cannot begin to express to you how happy I was when I found your note; more to the point, how happy I was when I didn’t find you there. After some of the freaky shit you said and did the night before, I was thrilled not to find myself hog-tied on a tarp in the middle of the room. Don’t get me wrong, I like sexual experimentation with random strangers as the next guy, but you… well, I don’t think either of us need me to mention details, but suffice it to say that I’ll never look at a rotary phone handset the same way again. Yikes.

I was happy to think that I never had to worry about seeing you again, but your painfully obvious symbolism suggesting that I had somehow potentially impregnated you was somewhat disconcerting. I ran to the bathroom garbage can, and sure enough, the condoms I had used the night before were gone. To this day, thinking about what you must have done with them after I fell asleep that night makes my skin crawl.

Oh, oooh, we made love
Love like strangers
All night long
We made love

You and I have very different ideas of what “making love” means. We definitely had intercourse, but we did not make love. Maybe it’s just how I was raised, but where I’m from, making love does not involve a cigarette lighter.

Then it happened one day,
We came round the same way
You can imagine his surprise
When he saw his own eyes

Substitute “surprise” with “abject terror” and “his own eyes” with “me” and you’ve hit the nail on the head. I didn’t even notice the kid until it was too late to hide from you (I was frozen solid with fear) and I didn’t even consider for a second that the little pup could be mine. “Oh my God, he has brown eyes, I have brown eyes — we must be father and son!” Not so much.

I said please, please understand
Im in love with another man
And what he couldnt give me
Was the one little thing that you can

Okay, hubby’s shooting blanks and you needed some swimmers. Based on the clerk at the hotel, I am sure there are dozens of guys that could be the father of the little bastard, but if you think it’s me, then whatever. It’s been long enough that you can’t hit me up for child support (I’m suddenly much less bummed about the 17 yrs), so I suppose it really doesn’t matter at this point if he’s mine or not. Here’s hoping you raised him with better morals than the ones you exhibited that night. Whore.

But like I said earlier, I am not angry about the sex. I’m mad about that song. That horrible, God-awful, nausea-inducing song full of lies. You made a pretty penny off it, I’m sure, but I don’t want your money. I want my friends to not tease me relentlessly every time it comes on. I want people to not leave snippets of it on my goddamn answering machine. I want to be able to enjoy Arbor Day again. But mostly I want you to suffer as much for this song as I have.

Or, if you’re not busy, maybe meet me for one more go at it? I’ve got a rotary phone I can bring. I’ll call you.

Yours,
The Guy In That All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You song