Why?

Because you’re the one who assaulted me. 

The fucking end.

I really should not have kids, like ever.

He wakes up before she does, jerks and flounders for a grounding from the grey dreamlessness he has just emerged from, feels the heat of the day penetrate through the curtains that shield the two of them from the harried rest of the world. Carefully he slips out of bed, goes and brushes his teeth, and he grins wryly when he tiptoes back into to her room and sees that she has not moved an iota. Despite his nervousness at being here, with her, he still finds amusement at observing the truth of what she’d told him, all those months ago, when he’d caught her nodding off over her students’ papers: I just don’t sleep. So when I crash, I crash hard and sleep for days. He hadn’t believed her, of course, had thought she was exaggerating – who doesn’t sleep? – and it is only now, as he lifts the covers and moves towards her, that he is able to see for himself the breaking of the sheer exhaustion that is constantly in flux under the surface.

Yesterday morning she’d slung her bare legs over his lap and told him not to be afraid, and he’d touched her knees and nodded, breathed deeply and told himself to let it go, and he had learned that when she speaks of them, of them together, the graveness in her eyes mimics the ellipses in her speech, which usually tumbles loose and disjointed, so different from his own. After over a year of experiencing whatever this connection it is they share, he’d thought there was nothing new he could learn about her, that he knew her more intimately than he ever thought possible, in the same way she knows him. Yet she has managed to surprise him, still, in the course of the past few days together, with small tidbits of her life that he is now privy to. He’s learned that even if she begins the night curled up next to him, she will eventually turn away and sleep on her side, facing the wall; that although variously perfumed shower gels adorn her shower she favors plain Dove soap; that her wardrobe is indeed resplendent with color, even if all she ever wears are black t-shirts and blue jeans; that underneath the tough outer layer of cynicism lies a mess of yearning for things she can never bring herself to ask for.

Today, now, he presses his mouth against her shoulder blade, wants to rouse her as gently as possible. There is something about this that pulls at him, pulls him toward her; he knows what it means that she has welcomed him in, trusts him enough to be with him like this. She had said once to him, over the course of their friendship which had mostly taken place during late night study sessions, that he looks different when he sleeps. I don’t know, she’d shrugged easily, picked up her glass of the cheap red wine they’d purchased at Longs, pooling together the change scrounged from her purse and his car, ostensibly to aid in their cramming in preparation for final papers. I can’t explain it, but you look different. He combs back the tangles of her hair, the softest touch, and sees for himself what she had meant – because she, too, looks different, in some inexplicable, surreptitious way. It is not only that her face is unadorned, the mascara and blush she indulges in washed off the night before, but also that she simply looks younger, looks sweeter, even though she would sneer at that particular adjective. Her lips remain compressed even as she sleeps, but in exchange the furrows between her eyes, so prominent when she is awake, are smoothed out, invisible, as if the girl who lies next to him, naked and asleep, has never had a day’s worth of worry or heartbreak in her life.

She looks nothing like the girl he loves, and this scares him.

The fear is banked, never completely extinguished. He has lived with so many manifestations of it that it now croons through his blood, and he looks at her and wonders if she knows just how much he fears for her, for himself – but if pressed for an answer he would be unable to pinpoint, exactly, what he was afraid of.

He knows the precise moment when she drifts from unconsciousness to awareness; her breathing is thrown askew even before she drowsily murmurs a greeting, even before she opens her eyes and shuts them again, burrowing into the blankets in unhurried protest. He slips his arm around her and feels the sun-warmth glancing off her skin mixed with the warmth emanating from it, a veritable slumbering furnace, shuts his eyes, loves her, loves being with her despite the warring factions and fractions within his mind, and is thus floored beyond measure when her words break the tranquil and measured cadence of their being together this winter morning.

You’re still here? The minute, upward-curling lick at the end of her sentence tells him that it’s a question, not a flat, assessing indictment as the three words themselves would seem to indicate.

Of course I am. Where would I go?

There is a pause; her spine straightens.

Are you going to break up with me now?

He lifts his head, moves to rest it on his hand, tries to catch a glimpse of her face, but she tucks her chin protectively down and retreats from his inquisitive, puzzled eyes. This is an unconscious gesture on her part, and the very ease of it, the often-used practicality about it, hurts him. He knows what she means, of course, even though he doesn’t want to.

What? he asks quietly.

We’ve slept together. So. Are you going to break up with me now?

One night, still in the burgeoning stages of their friendship – although, to be fair, there really had not been any sort of slow blooming, really; they had simply met and then went spiraling downward and inward together – they’d talked about sex, all artifice cast aside, and she’d told him how she felt about it, that the first one had meant too much and consequently the next ones had had to mean nothing at all. She made this comment with complete candor sitting outside of a café, her fingers deftly breaking a blueberry scone in two for them to share, a fundamental juxtaposition from her usual wise-cracking banter regarding the subject matter at hand. That’s just how it goes, I guess, and they’d looked at each other, frankly, her eyes equally bitter and bewildered and blasé. He’d been at a loss for words except to call her ex-boyfriend a bastard, and she’d neither agreed nor disagreed with him. But she had offered him the bigger part of the scone, as if the ratio of her gratitude at his rallying support could be directly tied to the amount of foodstuff handed over.

No, he says. Why would I break up with you?

Because. Her reply is immediate, and he feels her stomach underneath his hand, the slight swell of it that he knows aggravates her with its constant presence, feels the steadiness of her inhales, her exhales, feels them slow, and knows this mean she is preparing herself for the worst. Do you regret it? She asks this in a voice he knows well – a carefully modulated tone which vacillates between calm and resolve, and he realizes that she has already prepared herself. He wonders if she had lain there, her overheated body cooling down while he slept, unaware, preparing herself for this inevitable conversation, or, worse, if she had started preparing herself while her arms were still twined around his neck, while the imprints of her teeth were still visible on his shoulder, while his name had still been leaving her mouth on a seeking momentum of breath.

He wishes she would look at him. No, he says, and wants to emit all of the tenderness that had been lacking the night before into that single word, all the tenderness that had been eclipsed by a ferocious kind of madness that had overtaken both of them. No. I don’t regret it. He means to reassuringly stroke her stomach but instead finds himself awkwardly patting it. Why would I regret it? Don’t be silly.

Her body subtly shifts; the muscles tense, discreet, and he wonders if he has said the wrong thing, for four beats of simple silence he wonders if he has said the wrong thing, but suddenly her rigid posture crumples and she rotates in his arms before rising. She pushes herself off of the bed and heads to the bathroom; he hears the water running. When she returns to the spot she has claimed next to him, she drapes her arm over his chest, the side of her face against his shoulder, and he feels her kiss the spot that she’d bitten just hours ago, smells the faint minty tint of toothpaste on her breath. I like my body when it is with your body, she says, and he smiles, glad, and continues, it is so quite a new thing, looking up at the ceiling which the previous owners had left unpainted; the walls, in contrast, are periwinkle blue. He hears her silently skip to the end of the poem and finish, and possibly I like the thrill of under me you quite so new, and he feels the fond smirk in her voice more than he hears it, and I’m happy, she says.

For a moment he is confused – that is not how he remembers the poem ending, but then he realizes the last two words belong to her, are intended for him. Really? he asks, his cheek nuzzling into her hair. God he loves her hair, the texture and weight of it against his skin, his fingers, the way it looks now against the cream pillowcase on her bed. He remembers that the night before she had pulled her hair away and back from her face, twisted it into a coil over one shoulder held in place by one hand, before leaning down to kiss him, both of them moving leisurely and secure in the protection afforded them by the darkness of her room. It’s me, she’d whispered against his lips, it’s just me and I love you, and he’d felt something inexpressible, incalculable, break inside of him. It had felt as though she had whispered directly against his heart, injected stones sinking to trembling depths that had stilled at her words.

Yes. We were together and you’re still here. I’m happy.

He pulls her in closer, puts both of his arms around her as she comes, willingly. Her body is different this way, he realizes, and not just from the other people he has been with. She is bigger, taller than they had been, is bigger than he is, wider in the shoulders, but in this drowsy morning she feels very small. Perhaps it is because before last night – when he had hastily undressed her, pulled her shirt up and over her head, felt the tension between them escalate as he’d touched her at her pleading request, pushed himself into her, felt her hand scrabble at his chest and heard her voice telling him to wait, to let her get used to it, to go slow, that she wanted it slow – he had never seen her carry herself with anything less than jaunty confidence. She walks and moves with her limbs loose and free; she is someone who gives of herself, her arms and her laughter, wholly over to those around her, someone who exudes warmth and sometimes a kind of liberating, liberated lack of self-awareness in her body. Even last night, she had been uninhibited, giving to and taking from him exactly what she wanted, yet as she lies next to him, her admission of happiness undresses her even more, melts the strong sinews and complexity of her capable movements from her and leaves her bare, a corpse of pathos and vulnerability.

It bothers me, he sighs, it bothers me that it takes so little to make you happy.

He wants to say This shouldn’t be out of the ordinary for you. He wants to say You deserve all of this and more, you’re wonderful. He wants to say Don’t sell yourself short like this, you know? He wants to say I wish I could give you everything.

Maybe it is because he knows she won’t believe him that he refrains from saying any of it; maybe it is because he knows if she were the one saying the words to him, reciting these incantations of devotion, he wouldn’t believe them, either.

No, baby, she says, that’s just how life goes, you know? and he wishes he could push the words out anyway, offer them to her as a tribute, a rebuttal. She stretches; her toes reach down past his, her arms above her head, and now her body is limber, now her body is malleable – he realizes that she is trying to force her body to genuflect at the altar of her faith, that her body in this moment, and always, is a descendent in the house of Iscariot, ever ready with a crown of thorns for sale. He catches her gaze, troubled, and she raises her eyebrows, looks no more perturbed than she would asking him what he wanted to get for dinner, before giving him a sunny twist of the mouth that is a hesitant caricature of her usual smile, before shifting so that her back is to him once more. At that moment he realizes that the hurt she carries is much heavier than he had originally thought; he realizes that the hurt she carries has the potential to break them both because she does not see it as a malignant tumor that must be removed, but rather as a natural affixation to her being, a child she perversely nurses on the blood of her past. She has been like this for so long, and he feels, keenly, the years of history she no doubt amassed before the night they met dig cruelly into his side.

He does the only thing he can think of, says the only thing he can think of; he shifts closer to her, fits the curve of his body around hers, mirrors her and moves her back flush against him. I’m happy, too, he says simply, reaching for her hand. There is nothing more he can say, really, and there is nothing more she will hear.

They lie like this without speaking, his hand and hers touching, lifeline pressed to lifeline, playfulness that transmits a tangible promise; their breathing is the only intermittent sound in this room, in this sector of existence that belongs solely to them. In the silent lassitude of their first morning spent together as lovers they allow no one else in – it is simply, as it has not been for so long, the two of them. It is only when he hears the slight rasp that is suddenly present and alive, rubbing against the grain of stillness that enshrouds them, that he understands that she is shaking from an effort to keep her crying from him.

Panic drops like a blanking veil, and he wants to ask her what is wrong, to tell him what’s wrong, but – no; hatefully he recognizes that what he wants, really, is for her to reassure him that he has done nothing wrong, for her to look at him, tell him that he is not the reason she is lying in her bed, under a comforter that smells of fabric softener and her fragrance, while her breathing slows to an adagio tempo, while she forces her hand to remain unclenched in his. Yet part of him, masochistic and sly, wants her to tell him it is his fault, whatever it may be. Blame is a familiar acquaintance of his; they’ve partaken in the breaking of bread together, and it is far easier to greet like an old friend than her steady, unquestioning love for him.

He can read her well enough to know that her answer would satisfy neither of them; either she would lie and he would know it, or she would tell the truth and he would know it. He had touched her intimately for the first time only the night before, true, but for the two of them intimacy had come long ago; before any physicality had transpired, each had recognized and hailed the other as the purveyor of temporalities well met. And thus he knows the way she holds her arms across her chest, keeping the structures of her guilt within, the absolute discipline she wrests and demands from herself, evident in the infinitesimal trembling that she cannot help but yield to. He knows that she is berating herself for this, that she sees this as a confession of a fallibility she should have relegated to the peripheries long ago to die.

He knows that what she desires, he cannot provide; what he wants, she does not know.

He knows, too, that what he wants, he is unsure of.

Here, away from the clawing and climbing of their lives and livelihoods, he smells the clean scent of soap on her skin and breathes deep of it, he holds the girl he loves as she cries, secretly and shamefully, perhaps having realized that he knows of her tears, or perhaps not; he holds the girl he loves and knows unquestionably, a maelstrom of sorrow rising in his throat, that this will not be enough, that this will not be enough to save either of them, that this will not be enough to save either of them from the nameless fear that dances and follows him like a shadow. He wants to move to face her, to fiercely kiss her down-turned mouth and thumb away her tears, but he knows, intuitively, she will be able to taste the mourning on his tongue, will glean that he has now, somewhere between the night before and the morning present, started down the meandering path of grief away from her, away from this, and away from them.

He feels very young.

02. I forgot what it’s like to talk to someone who gets my work. It was blissful.

03. Travel plans for 2012: Baltimore, MD; San Francisco/Yosemite, CA (yes, I know this isn’t really traveling for me per se, but the Skipper hasn’t been and it will be nice to let him be a tourist); All Over the Place, Scotland (I think, depending on my schedule).

04. My new boots are really cute. I’m a bit worried though as my mama seems to love them which usually means they’re awful. 

05. Angry Birds makes me so angry. Also, the game should be called Gloating Pigs.

06. I think I saw A. at the gym the other night. I was elliptical-ing along, minding my own business, and kind of looking around like you do at the gym, and I swear he was on the machine a couple of feet away. I mean seriously? Seriously? 2011 was the first year where I managed to bypass December 9&10 without crying and reliving the assault, and so I was feeling pretty good, and then bam! New Years Day and there he is. If you’re there, God, you’re a dick (for many other reasons, too, but this was just like I can’t even don’t you have other things to be doing??).

24 (tie). N.E.R.D. and Antony and the Johnsons (97 plays): These two artists cannot be more different — the former I listen to when I want to hit the dance floor, and the later I listen to when I want to be hit in the heart (and sometimes on the butt). N.E.R.D. is on here primarily because I was obsessed with “Hypnotize U,” a thumping, grinding sex-beat accompanied by Pharrell’s crooning filthy filthy things. For some reason this motivates me to work out harder at the gym? I have no idea. Antony and the Johnsons is on here because I Am a Bird Now is one of my favorite albums, and the way his voice breaks in “Fistful of Love” makes me listen to it on repeat all day long.

22 (tie). The Roots and Death Cab for Cutie (98 plays): The Roots released Undun very recently, but the album that puts them on this list is most definitely How I Got Over, which I think is their best since 2002′s Phrenology. Not to say that the albums in between were bad, but How I Got Over included everything required for a classic Roots album: storylines + social insights + rhythm and more rhythm = fantastic output. As for Death Cab for Cutie, you all know how I feel about this band, and I don’t care if you mock me. While Codes and Keys does not come anywhere near Plans andTransatlanticism, both of which have been such huge parts of my writing process, it is still enough to warrant them a place in the top 25. If I had listened to them in high school, my binders would all have said DCFC 4-EVA.

21. Iron & Wine (100 plays): I used to really dislike Iron & Wine, with the exception of his dreamy cover of Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” from the Garden State soundtrack (by the way, I hate that movie. Hate. Hate so hard. That and Napoleon Dynamite were the reigning movies of my last year of college and I just could not be bothered. And enough with the stupid manic pixie indie hipster girl in movies! Look, I know we all want to be her or fuck her or date her or whatever, but be honest — that’s the girl we all roll our eyes at for talking too loudly in the cafe about her “weird” tendencies [weird = supposedly adorkable]. And yes, I know this outburst puts me at odds with my undying love for Death Cab for Cutie. Leave me alone). But somewhere along the line I fell head over heels for Our Endless Numbered Days and now I can’t get enough.

20. Editors (101 plays): I’ll just copy what I wrote last year, because it’s still true — “I will always love The Back Room, but with In This Light and On This Morning, the Editors released an album that is derivative of Depeche Mode and Joy Division but without the navel-gazing of the former and the melancholy of the latter. I love both Depeche Mode and Joy Division but there is something about this particular band that takes their spirit and makes it… loud. Is that the right word? If Joy Division is listened to while crammed into a tiny room stinking of cigarette smoke, and you’ve got so much eyeliner on that you basically look like a human panda baby, then the Editors are meant to be listened to in a giant arena in the most un-ironic fashion possible. Go ahead. Listen to “Papillon” and tell me you don’t want to be crowded with a million strangers outdoors in the dark while singing along. And then making out with the hot stranger next to you. That kind of thing.” Yep. Still true.

19. Mogwai (105 plays): I’m pretty sure I now own every album this Scottish post-rock band has put out, and although I have yet to listen to Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, I’m excited because Luke Sutherland guests on it, and anyone who can write like he did in Venus As a Boy wins gold medals from me. I read it in the Skipper’s house while drinking a rum and coke, and the way he describes Orkney is so heartbreaking and honest and beautiful. I’m grateful to Bonnie for introducing me to his writing. Also, I’m afraid to listen to the album because if he’s really awesome in it I’ll have to hate him. I hate people who get to be so multi-talented artistically. Not fair.

18. Bjork (107 plays): After a disappointing showing with Medulla and Volta (seriously, how disappointed was I in Volta? I built it up a lot in my head so at first I thought maybe I was just expecting too much? And then I realized, it’s fucking Bjork, I should have high expectations and the album was so mediocre it was depressing. Frenchie sent me a copy and at the end I just messaged him, “Is… is that it? Is that really it?!”), Bjork returns with an album that is reminiscent of her best work (1997′s Homogenic and 2001′s Vespertine). Add to that Michel Gondry’s video for “Crystalline” and it’s clear why so many of us love her.

16 (tie). Black Star and Cat Power (112 plays): It is not surprising to see Black Star on here; come on you two, your fans are waiting for a second album! One new single is not going to keep us going for much longer! Please? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease? Cat Power is a more recent obsession — I think I can honestly say that before this year, I only really liked “Lived in Bars,” but I gave The Greatest a try and once I figured out it was moody, slow, drinking whisky and potentially weeping music, then I listened to it entirely too much for my own mental state. Usually with some kind of alcohol in hand. Not so much with the crying, though.

15. Britney Spears (128 plays): BSpears drops a few places this year, and this is because outside of working out I very rarely listened to her. I’m not sure why. However, “I Wanna Go” was used in my turbo kickboxing class at the gym, and I got so obsessed that I had to download it so I could have it pumping in my ears as I ran. There’s something so obviously fraudulent in the song, what’s with all the auto-tune, but in that very fakery I think she’s sassier than she’s been in a while. And if that is the case, welcome back, BSpears. I’m enjoying your continuous evolution from teen-pop to dance-pop. Also, when you sing “Be a little inappropriate, /  ’cause I know that everybody’s thinking it,” I want to give you a high five. Thanks for the unofficial motto of my twenties.

14. Johnny Cash (131 plays): There are very, very few instances where the cover replaces the original, but “Hurt” now belongs to Johnny Cash, not Trent Reznor. Even diehard NIN fans have to admit that Cash’s version is the definitive one. The Skipper and I listened to American IV: The Man Comes Around while driving around the Isle of  Mull, away from Tobermory and the bulk of the tourists. Surrounded by sea and sky and trees and nothing but twisting roads ahead of us, we listened to Cash’s gravelly voice give life to his versions of songs that we already know and love. It was a fitting soundtrack to a day spent away from everyone and everything.

13. JLS (137 plays): Because this is a black British boy band, I made the claim that listening to them is like the aural version of Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic. Yeah, I know I’m full of shit, but I thought it was funny. Also, I wonder what Fred Moten would make of this  argument?

12. Florence + the Machine (138 plays): I really disliked this band at first because “The Dog Days Are Over” kept getting stuck in my head, no thanks to the radio channels playing it on endless loops every time I got in the car. And to be completely honest the album doesn’t solidify for me in a way that I find meaningful — usually my favorite artists are the ones whose albums I can listen to front to back because to skip around would be heresy. Not so much with Florence + the Machine, but all in all I’m glad I gave the album a try. Also Lauren dancing to it is possibly the most adorable thing ever.

11. The National (147 plays): The National have always been in my top 5 — they were #1 in 2010, #5 in 2009, and #1 in 2008. They make their lowest showing this year, I guess I just didn’t show them enough love. This by no means indicates that my love for Alligator has diminished. A perfect album from beginning to end.

And now my top 10 for 2011.

10. Erykah Badu (172 plays): I remember when Baduizm came out in 8th grade — I had never heard anything like it before. Sinuous, scratchy and smooth at the same time, I listened to “Next Lifetime” and couldn’t quite grasp what the song was about. All the regret and longing but without any bitterness, just the reflection on what could have been, and what might be later. Much later. And while that album remains firmly anchored as my favorite of hers, all of her other albums have produced songs of equal caliber that still force me to pause and slow down, a little bit, just so I can think. And listen. And try to understand.

09. Scissor Sisters (175 plays): Okay. I have never listened to Scissor Sisters before this year, and can I just say that the video for “Any Which Way” from Night Work is the most flamboyant music video I have ever seen. Like they put Freddie Mercury to shame. I can’t even with the glitter and the white shorts and the sushi flying through the air. And yes, their name is a reference to a sex act between two ladies. Every time I listen to this album I want to grow a dick, sprout facial hair, put on some leather and go dancing. Yes I know that’s beyond stereotypical but that’s what the music makes me want to do. And thanks to all of you who immediately thought, “Grow a dick? You have one.” You warm the cockles of my Grinch-y heart.

08. Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi (181 plays): If you have not heard Rome yet go listen to it. If you can’t get a hold of it, email me and I will get you a copy. Go. Listen. Do it now. Did you listen? Rome is meant to be an homage to spaghetti westerns and if you can’t visualize Sergio Leone and hear Ennio Morricone in there, you are dead to me. I was going to write “Deader than Clint Eastwood” to drive home my point and then I remembered that he’s not actually dead.

07. Kanye West (193 plays): Honestly, the Jay-Z and Kanye West collaboration falls short of what I was hoping for. And I’m not even a huge fan of either of them (Side note: there’s apparently a Common and Nas collaboration coming this year? Fingers crossed). However, I can tell you that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is what put Kanye in the top ten. I still think it’s impeccably crafted, full of braggadocio and smart wordplay and a brilliant use of Gil Scott-Heron (RIP). It is the Kanye-iest of his albums.

06. The Decemberists (212 plays): I finally downloaded a copy of The King is Dead. And it’s good! I was worried because all the reviews were going on and on about how their sound has changed, and I kept thinking, “But I love their sound!” It is markedly different from The Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love, my two favorites, but still enjoyably clever. And I know this is lame, but I still get sad when I listen to “The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned).” I can’t help it, I can just picture all the words in my head and it makes me sad! On a cheerier note, I also very much enjoyed Colin Meloy Sings Live! The bare bones versions of certain songs like “Red Right Ankle” highlight the lyrics and his goddamn earnestness so much. When he croons, “This is the story of the boys who loved you, / who love you now and loved you then. / And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you, / and some just laid around in bed. / And some, they crumbled you straight to you knees, / did it cruel, did it tenderly. / Some, they crawled their way into your heart, / to rend your ventricles apart. / This is the story of the boys who loved you,” a little part of me just crawls into itself. Fucking ventricles.

05. Beirut (303 plays): Gulag Orkestar is such a hipster album that it hurts. But it is so good. I don’t like The Flying Club Cup as much but both are perfect for days of dissertating or grading.

04. TV On the Radio (361 plays): Yes, Nine Types of Light is a great album. No, it is not as good as Dear Science (come on now — is anything as good as Dear Science?). The real reason TV On the Radio is in my top five, however, is not due to either of these albums. It’s because I could not stop listening to “Wolf Like Me.” I was already in love with the absolute joy with which they were banging out lines like “My mind has changed my body’s frame but God I like it, / My heart’s aflame, my body’s strained but God I like it” and then I watched the music video and it’s about werewolves!And not the stupid tormented Twilight werewolves, but Asian Americans in awesome 80s clothing werewolves! Totally sold.

03. The Knife (383 plays): This creepy duo has been in my top ten since 2008. If you don’t know why I love them by now then you suck. And they are supposed to release a new album this year! If this turns out to be a rumor I am going to be so sad. Because while Fever Ray is good and the album was good and blah blah blah, this brother-sister team is just not as good when they’re not performing as a team. Silent Shout and Deep Cuts are both classics. Bring back the Knife!

02. Mumford & Sons (522 plays): They jumped up two spots this year, mostly because I essentially wrote my second chapter while having them on a loop. Sigh No More is such a good album. Last year I wrote that “It’s not the most stylistically innovative album, no, but it’s the most cohesive album overall,” and I still think this is true. I do love the banjos, and I do love the literary references (timshel, anyone?), but I don’t think it’s necessarily an album that does anything new for me. At the same time, it is an album that you can play the entire way through while finding the whole thing a gratifying experience.

01. Adele (710 plays): Is anyone surprised? Really, is anyone surprised at all? It’s so cliche to love her album,21, but I do! And I don’t care if it’s not cool to love her or whatever because I love this album and I love her voice and I love how basically every song is either a “Fuck off, you broke my heart” song or a “You broke my heart but I miss you” song or a “Love love kiss kiss” song. I don’t know why! But I do! I resisted 21 for as long as possible because 19 just did not do it for me. When everyone was raving about “Chasing Pavements” I was rolling my eyes and going “Next!” And even “Rolling in the Deep,” as ubiquitous as it was, didn’t put her in this position. The truth of the matter is, the part of me that loves angsty romance a la Mulder-and-Scully could not stop listening to “Someone Like You.” Yes yes, me and the rest of the world. It’s like every part of me — tragic Korean, gay man, sentimental douchebag, teenybopper, little old lady — turns to mush when I hear that song, and all I want to do is roll down my windows and sing it as loudly and as off key-ly as possible. Usually when a song gets played to death on the radio I immediately change the station, but with this one I purposely turn the stations until I find someone playing it (and of course someone always is). And that’s not even my favorite song on the album! That honor goes to “One and Only” which isn’t even on the radio. So I guess it can be my own personal favorite (me and the bajillion other people who bought the album this year). Adele — for writing the perfect breakup album, for having that beautiful voice, for letting me unabashedly wring my hands while I sing, for making it okay for me to be so heartfelt in my cheesiness — you are my #1 and favorite artist of 2011.

Dude.

I fucking love being single.

Yeah yeah, I love my partner, blah blah blah.

Doesn’t change my core belief.