This is a song I never wanted to write. But it wanted to be written, and I did write it in the end. I first came up with the idea in midwinter, and I actually wrote it in midsummer.

So why hold back? Well, let's start with the vague details. It's about a girl who I thought I was friends with. I've known her about four years, and we've spent a lot of time hanging out in the music scene.

We've emailed back and forth a fair bit, and she's shared some fairly personal stuff with me. In person, she was always pretty physical. She'd touch me on the shoulders or the back.

I mean, I thought we were friends. I had some feelings for her. I wrote a song about her. She didn't feel the same way, but she wasn't upset, either.

She was great to be with in the moment, but there wasn't a lot other than that. I'd see her in the music scene, but she hardly ever initiated anything. I felt kind of neglected, and I wanted to talk to her about how we related to each other.

She wouldn't.

Oh, she claimed it was because she felt our friendship wasn't deep enough. I suspect she didn't quite trust me in that context. And so, despite the massive stupidity of it, I wound up saying, "let's not be friends."

I guess my main thing was I didn't want to be an asshole about it. Sure, she gave me expectations that she wasn't up to fulfilling, but I didn't want to be saying "so-and-so's" a bitch. But there's no denying I was upset. Still, I held off on writing the song for months, even though I already had many of the ideas. But in the end, I figured the song would haunt me 'till I let it out, and I'm feeling much better now.

The song has four verses, one bridge, and no chorus. It usually takes about 2 minutes 10 seconds to perform. The stress pattern isn't very regular. Each verse has four lines. The rhyme pattern in the verse is AABB, and AAAA in the bridge.

The theme phrase, "It was bad for me, was it good for you?" is about the relatioship, and the double-entendre is quite intentional. (Though the notion that "bad for me" could suggest an STD didn't occur 'till much later.

The bit about how the words "like" and "love" are basically prostitutes because they mean whatever you want them to. ("Pay them to" ties into Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty bit.)

Questions, comments or suggestions about this web site? Email me at aaron.bentley@utoronto.ca