Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,20

Harry Connick Jr. for me, please?”) while they tried to not make fun of me.

If you’d asked me what my dream job was back then, “disgruntled music store employee” would have been at the top of the list. Nothing was more glamorous to me than the idea of tearing open boxes of new releases before anyone else got to hear them, or having the power to subject an entire store full of patrons who were trying to just stop by and get the new Kenny Lattimore on the way home from work to my very eclectic music tastes. All I ever wanted—shit, all I still ever want—is a cool-T-shirt-appropriate job where I can eat snacks and sit around talking shit with my friends all day while hiding all the good CDs behind the counter for myself. I wouldn’t even care what corny music you came in to buy as long as you don’t care that I am softly crying to Patti Smith’s Gone Again as it plays in perpetuity.

The last mixtape I got wasn’t even a tape; it was a CD from a dude I was dating who didn’t bother to do anything cool, like decorate the dull side with some abstract doodlings or write all the track names on the insert so I could stare at his handwriting in a totally not-creepy way while I was alone in my apartment waiting for him to call me. The night he gave it to me, I went to Cara’s house and she poured Absolut into pint glasses full of limes, and we sat on her couch parsing every single track choice. This is what passes for an acceptable Saturday night activity for two women who were definitely thirty-plus years old at the time. The mix kicked off with the song “You” by Raheem DeVaughn, and I remember Cara turning to me with this grave look on her face and saying, “Oh, girl, this is true love.” It ended up not being shit. But at least I was provided a soundtrack to grieve to.

B SIDE

“Explain It to Me,” Liz Phair

You don’t get to be from the Chicago suburbs circa 1993 and not be a fan of Liz Phair. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules, I just abide by them. You could plug in almost any song from either Exile in Guyville or Whip-Smart (ahem, “Shane” is the best track on that album, in my opinion, even though people will argue that “Supernova” is, because they are morons), and I will know enough of the words from memory to be impressive, if you have low standards for things that impress you. I don’t know shit about the Stones, so I definitely don’t understand the correlation between this album and their Exile on Main Street, because, honestly? I don’t have to! It’s clear at this point that I live for a downtempo jam, and this is one of her best. I still have my well-loved, scratched-up Exile CD, and it skips when she sings “piece it together / it’s like weather,” which reminds me every single time that I don’t really understand what the lyrics to this song mean.

“Undenied,” Portishead

I did not understand Portishead when they first came out. Everybody loved that “Sour Times” video, but I didn’t feel like I was cool enough to understand it. I’m still not cool enough for a lot of things; for example, I have not made more than one attempt to suffer through Breaking Bad. During my one miserable year in college, I was sustained mostly by soap operas, ice-cream sandwiches, and a copy of Braveheart on VHS, but also the occasional care packages sent by my friends. That year, my only joy came from Delia’s catalogs and boxes of CDs my friends in cooler college towns sent me. My friend Jon sent me new music every week and one week he sent me, at the behest of his girlfriend, a jewel case wrapped in paper with a bunch of stamps taped to it, and inside, miraculously unharmed, was the second Portishead record. I will listen to anything that has been recommended by exotic women who don’t shower or wear bras, so I spent a week not going to class and weeping silently as Beth Gibbons sang directly to my pain. I was taking Prozac, really leaning in to being a clinically depressed person, and a