I shake off the thought.
Anyway. As far as coming up with the “love” verse in the song, Riff and I decided to work on ideas separately, drawing on our past relationships (the good parts, of course) and reconvene once we both have something ready to share.
I have a folder on my laptop full of half-written songs I figure I might be able to borrow lines from (with some tweaks for the applicable meter), so I start with that.
Sitting here, wanna breathe you in,
Taste your smile and touch your skin,
Don’t try to tell me it’s a sin
To want you
Fear of the unknown—
And that’s you,
I thought it was something I’d outgrown,
That’s so untrue,
But here, like ultraviolet, long overdue,
The light is starting to break through
Clock ticks and I wake from my sleep, you
Always get me in way too deep, you
Smile and I just wish I could keep you
Reading these words again dredges up emotions from the murky depths of my mind. I try to focus on the moments that inspired these partial songs, the few good things lodged among the hurt, as inspiration, but I struggle not to think how short-lived those moments were before everything fell apart.
Kelton Roth, for example. I met him while I was working on my second album—because we had mutual friends—but I’d always thought he was sort of immature. Then he went to Europe for a while, and when he got back, he messaged me and asked if I wanted to hang out. He seemed to have grown up during that time, and then made his feelings clear when he kissed me on my balcony. The sudden shift in our dynamic was enthralling—until I realized almost everything in his life came second to getting attention online. Curating his posts, documenting his outings and activities, responding to comments for better engagement. We hung on for a while, despite the growing resentments between us, and when he suggested we “take a break” I said, “No, let’s just break up.”
Then came Luke Onstenk. He’s eight years older than me, which was intimidating at first, but also an advantage. He was mature; he had life experience; unlike the couple of TV actors I’d dated before (one from Nickelodeon, one post-Disney), he wasn’t scrambling to try and “make it” since he already had it made (which gave him a calm and confident demeanor). Being less famous than him at the time, Luke's attention made me feel extra special; he knew how to turn on the charm that made everyone else fall in love with him onscreen, but I often had it all to myself. Except, in dating a skilled actor, I failed to consider the fact that he could be anyone he wanted whenever he felt like it—and that he was convincing to the point that I sometimes wasn’t sure what my reality was. When it suited him, he donned a very genuine, down-to-earth persona that made me feel like he was letting me into his private world. Whenever I expressed that I might eventually want more from him than a casual relationship, though, he donned a patronizing, authoritative persona that made me feel naive and desperate and pathetic. Then there was the … incident. The thing I never tell anyone about, and which I don’t dare think about because, even years later, it aches in a way I don’t know how to address. I wrote one very cryptic song that holds that memory for safekeeping, and chose to leave it there for good. Eventually things ended with me in tears on Christmas Eve, leaving him a voicemail apologizing for being “too much,” and never, to this day, hearing back from him.
In hindsight, I see how the period after Luke was the worst possible time I could have met Andy Gaccione, who, being an athlete, didn’t raise any red flags for me in the lies-for-a-living sort of way (because “Acting is the art of lying well,” according to Mel Gibson). He seemed straightforward, not like he was playing some elaborate game to manipulate me, and even better, told me everything I wanted to hear, validated all my feelings. But as youmight have guessed, he turned out to be an even better actor/liar than Luke, since he ended up the subject of “If Your Car Could Talk.” Daisy Malloy was right; it’s a very Carrie Underwood song (I certainly wanted to go at that car’s headlights with a Louisville Slugger).
Dylan Wentz, lead singer of the British band Bleak Sons, seemed like a decent guy until the band had a major breakthrough and started filling arenas, and suddenly he found me too “distracting.” Because of me, he wasn’t putting in as many hours with the band, because of me he was too tired to perform, because of me he wasn’t growing as a musician. It wasn’t exactly my fault, though, he said, it was because he was couldn’t trust himself to make good decisions.It’s not you, it’s me.He broke up with me, but assured me it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do—as evidenced by him sleeping with me one last time, and no, I’m not proud that I allowed this. Then, when he came back to L.A. a few months later, he wanted to see me; I was hesitant, but he implied he wasn’t over me and that he might want to try again. It took time for me to open up to the idea, after months of feeling like I hadn’t been “enough” in all the ways a young woman often does, but I wasn’t over him either, so the answer was easy: Yes. Except he pulled away again, citing the same concerns as before and a few new ones (he worried my feelings for him were stronger than his were for me, which was overwhelming, apparently). I realized he didn’t want to fully let me go, but he was never going to be all in. In a rage, I told him he couldn’t have it both ways, which offended him to the point that he never spoke to me again. Within two months, he was engaged to someone else.
There was also bassist Josh Villefort, who was great when we were alone together (attentive, doting, praised my music, worshipped my body), but talked down to me whenever his bandmates were around. In his own feeble opinion, I was cooland my work was noteworthy, but because his bandmates valued more sophisticated artists, he had to act like I was just some girl he kept around for the hell of it rather than a person he actually respected or cared about.
So, even considering the good feelings I had for these guys in the beginning, I’m struggling to extract inspiring words from my overall experiences with them. I guess I simply don’t want to send any good vibes their way.
Ironically enough, the memory that won’t leave me is the one where I’m strolling through the Pinkfeather habitat with Riff. Maybe because it’s fresher, and not fully tainted by all that happened afterward. As frustrated as I’ve been at times, the feud hasn’t been a pain point for me; if anything, it’s opened new windows in my creative mind, stretched my skills. I never did let Riff in enough to hurt me the way other men did.
I’m sure that’s all it is, though—the memory being so recent, the disses so lighthearted.
Still, the urge to dig more deeply into who Riff is—to look at him more closely, as I failed to do before—nags at me.
What can I do though? Short of calling him up to ask, and knowing I am going to be skeptical of anything he tells me, I can only follow the threads of his online presence, which I’ve already done—with negative results. It’ll be the same bro-country videos, the same sexy magazine covers, the same interviews where he’s talking like a Southern ranch hand.
Even so, I catch myself typing his name into the search bar.
But I get to the first f in Riff and I freeze.
No, not “Riff,”I think. Of course typing “Riff Hurley” will get me what it got me before. What I hadn’t thought to do was to look upGriffinHurley. His real name, and his region.
