People give me so much shit for having the gall to break Adele’s heart.
Nobody ever asks about my side of the story, because I don’t have pipes of gold and the only instruments I know how to play are the recorder and the skin flute (someone had to play the latter, because my ex-girlfriend NEVER did). Instead they just listen to pop radio and assume I’m a dick.
My one pal was like, “Dude, what did you do to that woman and why in the hell did you do it? My girlfriend sits around listening to that ‘Someone Like You’ song incessantly, and I’m starting to get the feeling she wants to break up with me and then convince herself to completely blame me for it just so she can identify with that song.”
And I’m like, “Yeah man, look at what happened to me. Some manager found out she could sing real well and signed her, but she was against other people writing her shit for her, and he said, ‘Well nobody wants to hear some crooner singing about how goddamn happy she is,’ so she manufactured this whole thing where I was some kind of huge prick and used it as inspiration.”
She admitted it once. (I wish I had a recording.) So that’s why I asked her for money. I said I’d file a defamation suit, but she called my bluff on that one. She knew that in my capacity as Piercing Pagoda kiosk manager, I wouldn’t have enough money to hire an attorney.
I’ve endured “Rollin’ in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” and pretty much every song on that 19 album of hers. One would think someone creative enough to write song after song about a completely fabricated break-up would be able to come up with better album names than the age they were when they recorded it, but I digress.
I’d let all this go, trying to stay out of the limelight while women call me a “bloody wanker.”
But yesterday, a girl threw a Frosty at me, so I need to take a stand.
By addressing some of the lyrics from her latest lyrical pity party, “Set Fire to the Rain.”
I let it fall, my heart, and as it fell you rose to claim it.
One can never be sure, but I suspect this is an allegory for the day we met. I was at the mall on my break from National Record Mart when I caught sight of this broad with a huge rack and decided I would stroll in her general direction, passing her slowly while I stared at her jugs, because who wants to actually talk to girls?
But then a little kid ran right in front of Adele, startling her so much she flung her Auntie Anne’s pretzel in the air. I dove and caught it; it was a split-second reaction because I love breasts and also pretzels. Three weeks later I was taking naps in her bosom.
It was dark and I was over, until you kissed my lips and you saved me.
I’m awesome at making out. I watch The Bachelorette and have been practicing on the back of my hand since I was eight. But my kisses don’t have saving powers. If I’d have known she’d taken our snogging session so seriously, I would’ve bolted before things became as serious as they did.
My hands, they’re strong, but my knees were far too weak.
BJ < HJ.
That’s what Adele always thought; that handies were better than their more exciting counterpart that sometimes includes, depending on the setting, being on one’s knees. This was occasionally a point of contention that ultimately produced a sizeable rift. She’d get upset when I’d remind her I could give myself an old-fashioned without her assistance.
Oh and my knees would be weak too if I were carrying around 25 pounds on each side of my sternum.
But there’s a side to you that I never knew, never knew/ All the things you’d say, they were never true, never true/And the games you play, you would always win, always win.
She constantly accused me of lying to her, even though I never really did. And she was always mad that I would beat her at Monopoly every single time. What was I going to do? Let her win?
But I set fire to the rain, watched it pour as I touched your face/’Cause I heard it screaming out your name, your name.
You ever see this chorus on a girl’s Facebook status and think, “Whoa, she might be a little bit crazy?” That’s because it is an inherently crazy thing to say; it makes no sense. You cannot set rain on fire. It doesn’t even make sense as a metaphor. It’s physically impossible. And, if I suspend belief long enough to allow that my ex is a witch and did set the rain on fire, I wouldn’t be just standing outside in it while she fondled my face and water spoke my surname.
When laying with you, I could stay there, close my eyes/Feel you here, forever.
I was almost fired from my job because Adele would try and make me stay in bed while she just laid there long past the time I was supposed to be at the Pagoda.
Sometimes I wake up by the door/ Now that you’ve gone, must be waiting for you.
She’s not talking about her door. She’s talking about the front door of my new apartment. Where I found her wailing one morning not too long ago about how she wanted to play the skin flute and was sad about me losing my job and that if we got back together we could get matching cartilage piercings and everything would be great again.
“We could have had it all!!!!!!!!” she wailed.
I slammed the door in her face.
Follow FlipCollective on Twitter.
For more from Scott…
Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow him on Twitter.
To befriend him on Facebook.
To send him an email.