Short Story: And She Was Hot In A 50s Dress

A new short story about dating.

She was hot. And she liked my playlist. I mean, how could you not, really? It started with Dire Straits’ Tunnel of Love. That, as I said to her, is like a movie or a novel right there. A whole story wrapped up in the riddle of a pop song. It’s like West Side Story down the Geordie docks of England.

Dinner was nice. I talked about some of the other songs on the playlist. And she listened. Then we both listened. To the playlist, I mean. And she started to drift off a bit, but I was able to bring her back on track with the story about Mark Knopfler writing Private Dancer for Tina Turner. You see, that song was on the playlist too — I always like to have clever little links between the tunes, and sometimes, I’ll admit, the links are actually a bit too clever. So they require some explanation.

We took a stroll and I had the music playing out loud through the phone-speaker. Something-something about it being a bit embarrassing. But it was like, do you want an ice-cream or not? Don’t ruin it!

DD Smash’s Magic What She Do playing while we walked, and I told more stories of the songs and how they got there.

The time seemed right, the night so blue. Her perfume swimming in my head. The stars out. And one right beside me, walking with arms folded. I told her that line and how it came from the Lou Reed lyric where he quotes Andy Warhol saying there are no stars in a New York sky. Instead they’re all on the ground.

He means the people are the stars, I said.

And then she went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like, “I don’t really like Lou Reed, he can’t really sing”.

So I listened to the other songs from the playlist alone. Left her there to think about what she’d done. A good drive home, though. The car efficient in its mileage as ever. Hugging the curves of the road, with The Rolling Stones’ underrated 1983 gem Undercover on the playlist to finish. Mick singing in that cool loud-whisper, “She was hot…”