On Post: La La Love You

Date: January 21

Find it here

As Pixies songs go, La La Love You is fairly lyrically…shallow, shall we say? Ok, as music goes, it’s fairly shallow. In the middle of it though is this sequence that goes “first base/second base/third base/home run.” While not as blatantly about the “deed” as Paradise by the Dashboard Light’s baseball interlude, I think the reason for the reference here is pretty clear.

And that got me to thinking, are “the bases” universal. The four f’s referenced in the entry is what I was raised on (although raised on in this context is just super creepy) but I don’t know if everyone else received the same. Similarly, I swear I was involved in a discussion once with someone about five years older than me and someone about five years younger in which it seemed that our definition of what base meant what had some crossovers, but were not, in fact, the same. And given that norms are always evolving and changing, a free love hippie, for instance, would seem a man or woman with a death wish in the early 90’s when AIDS seemed indomitable. And vice versa, a super contentious 90’s person through back to the 60’s or 70’s would seem wildly overly concerned with STDs and judgmental about the idea of just doing what feels good. So why wouldn’t the way we label “bases” change. Of course, it’s weird to ask someone young enough to tell you what their bases are unless you know them, so there’s that tension between being honestly curious and knowing that to ask makes you very creepy indeed.

As far as why a girl instead of guy…well, for one, I felt like I’ve written a lot of guys this time around in the Project and less women than last time. Also, the first line I conceived, which I confess I now cannot recall—it might have been the Pretty Woman line. I dated someone in high school who used to half-joke that she wanted to be a prostitute after seeing Pretty Woman despite being very serious about saving herself for marriage in real life. I have no doubt she was not the only girl of our generation who saw it when it came out, or just the trailer, or it on TV who came away with the same idea. Anyway, I always felt that it made a sort of sense but it was evidence of what a phenomenally messed up movie that film was at heart. “Girls, girls, girls, come join the sex trade. You wear funny outfits until you meet the man of your dreams whose rich, makes you over, and takes you away from the life just as you tire of it.”

That, coupled with a podcast I had listened to a day or two before in which one of the women discussed her difficulty in finding men who were willing to kiss early in the relationship because it was “so intimate” but had no problem getting down (if you know what I mean) birthed that line.

Anyway, as I was saying before I distracted myself, that first line felt feminine to me. Which is a wildly pretentious thing to say, but it did. So the character flowed from that.

Seriously, though, what are people’s definitions of the bases these days? Anybody?

My explanation not ring true? Do you have questions that this piece left unanswered? Reach out and touch me at tim.g.stevens@gmail.com or @ungajje on the Twitter. And, as always, spread the word.