On Trading Music with My Husband

He says he's glad he waited to listen to Disintegration -- If I'd heard this at 17, I probably would've been an emo kid -- isn't keen on "Lullaby," thinks "Pictures of You" is lovely, has no opinion on the title track since I forgot to copy it. Introducing him to The Cure is a triumph. He would have gotten to it, eventually, but he doesn't know the album like I do. Has no memory of a boyfriend's kiss during "Plainsong," the push past no through "Lovesong," the fuck you of "Fascination Street." How I couldn't listen for years, how the opening of "Prayers for Rain" made me vomit. When I finally bought the album, I declared myself cured. The pun is nauseating now, & when he calls -- You should write about this -- I know it's worth it, the filling of a hole. Because we can talk without comment on taste or sex, because he promises to find the music I've lost, because he'll listen to every song I play at least once.

T.A. Noonan is the author of two hybrid-genre collections, The Bone Folders and Petticoat Government, as well as the chapbooks Darjeeling and Balm. Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, Ninth Letter, RHINO, Phoebe, Harpur Palate, and many others. "The Trouble with Correspondence," her essay on the intersections of witchcraft and body image, was named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2011. Currently, she lives on Florida's Treasure Coast with her husband and serves as both the Associate Editor of Sundress Publications and Managing Editor of Flaming Giblet Press.

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