you're the one i think about most every time.

i go to read my friend blacklisted's journal today and it says only,

"IT PUTS the lotion..."

which flashed me back to freshman year of college with a quickness: my roommate and i struggling to get our cheap vcr paused in the right spot so we could record that line of dialogue from the silence of the lambs (and the "..on its skin, or it GETS THE HOSE again" that follows) as our outgoing voicemail message.

(it's fun to remember how, back then, such a passing absurdity commanded my full and unabashed attention. i was meticulous. would not blink before spending 2 hours to concoct a voicemail message even when i knew that only like one other person would think it funny, and then only the first time they heard it. as valentine's day approached that first year, i took proper stock and determined that i had 12 crushes, 5 of them serious. so i had lunch, ate a baggie of chocolate-covered espresso beans and went to the library, where i spent the next 9 man hours making 12 exact copies of the red-heart-and-lace valentine that calvin gives susie one year---she opens it and reads: "dear susie, i hate you. drop dead. calvin.")

later in the semester i came across a tape of the (one) milli vanilli album, and when i showed him the cover my roommate had a near-epileptic freakout. he had some...rather unsavory memories associated with that record, apparently. he did not want to talk about it. so the next morning, he goes to class and i go straight to the stereo; spend the next while re-recording our outgoing message, from the spoken intro to "girl you know it's true." the first voice is female, the other belongs to milli:

"so what are you doing back?"

"well, i sat back and thought about the things we used to do. It really meant a lot to me. You mean a lot to me."

"i really mean that much to you?"

"girl, You Know It's True."