An Ignoble Exchange

Kelly and I decided to go record shopping that day. We went to a store we had not been to in a while. The store was small, full of classic rock, and run by three metalheads who dressed all in black and constantly discussed which recent Catharsis Records release was the most “brutal” or some such conversation incomprehensible to me. I was flipping through the S’s – Steppenwolf, Stevens, Cat, Stevens, Jeff – when she finally said it.
“Do you make out with all your friends,” she asked me, “or just Melissa?”
“I don’t make out with you,” I said, not looking up from the records, “so I don’t see how it’s any of your business.” An orange record sleeve one box over caught my eye. It was Louder Than Bombs, a record sorely missing from my collection for some time. It was only seven dollars. I had struck gold.
Kelly was flustered. “When two of my best friends start hooking up, I think it is my business. Are you embarrassed or something? Why do you want to keep it a secret?” I pulled the record out of the sleeve to check for damage. My own face looked back at me from the shiny black vinyl, flat and expressionless. Side 1 was fine, though a little dusty.
“Clearly,” I said, turning the record over, “it’s no secret, unless what I had for lunch is a secret too.” Side 2 was clean as well. There had to be something wrong with this record, or it wouldn’t be so cheap. I put the first disc back in the sleeve.
“It’s not like that, and you know it. Come on, Gordon. Why didn’t you tell me?” Side 3 revealed to me the album’s fatal flaw: a small scratch across “Golden Lights” and “Oscillate Wildly.” I can live with that.
“I was afraid you’d get jealous.” Kelly called me a liar in that pissed off (not pissed off) tone girls are so good at. She was right. I didn’t tell her because I knew Melissa would blab anyway. “There’s not much to say,” I tell her, tucking my new crown jewel under my arm. “We were both lying there, listening to music, and I wanted to kiss her. Then I kissed her. It wasn’t anything amazing, nothing fantastically passionate about it. It was nice. It was a nice kiss between friends.”
“A kiss with tongue,” she corrected me.
“Yes, it was first base between friends.” I gave the record another once-over. I was very happy with it. “Are you ready to go?”
“No, I’m not done yet,” she said. She was deciding between Peter Paul and Mary’s first and second albums. “Do you want to be her boyfriend?”
“I don’t know.” I thumbed through the “New Arrivals” box. Hey, Let’s Get It On for five bucks! “I’m open to it, I guess. I’m in no rush.”
“Gordon, you can’t just make out with someone for no reason.”
“Can’t you?” I said. I was getting tired of this conversation in a hurry. “Come on, are you ready to go?”
I paid my seven dollars and left. Outside the sun was shining. Birds were chirping. There was a single white cloud above us.