Mix Messages

While I was home on Easter break, my parents treated my girlfriend and me to an excellent performance of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in Minneapolis. In the play, there’s a great scene where the male lead Orlando is posting gushy love poems on trees throughout the forest of Arden to his beloved Rosalind. I doubt this was common practice in the Elizabethan era, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen sap like this oozing from a telephone pole in my time.

Instead of the love poem, we emotionally-reserved and debonair 21st-century boys have come to rely on the mixtape as a sign of our affection. This paradigm shift has been well-documented, most recently in High Fidelity (more the book than the movie). The origins of this courting ritual, for most of us, began very early, directly following the bittersweet circle-yes-or-no stage. The most common situation for loss of mixtape virginity involves a sixth-grade vixen that made your heart skip a beat on a daily basis. Your love went unnoticed, but wait—she broke up with that greaser Jimmy during lunch! Now was your chance! You had to tell her how you felt, and as quickly as possible, before another teen vulture snatched her up.

But alas, with your pubescent self-esteem and your crackly voice, not to mention her clucky henhouse always following her around, the most rational action was to let someone else, like those smooth cats from Boyz II Men, do the talking. She even has their T-shirt. Perfect. God, you even stoop to Janet Jackson—for her of course. This has to work.

If your sweaty palms actually delivered it, that mixtape is now in a shoebox with Emotions and the soundtrack to 90210. She removed the J-card because it had your name on it, and she didn’t want her friends to know. So there it sits, your heart in a plastic case (if you’re lucky), inside a musty cardboard container at her parents' house. You would have rather it had been eaten by a tape player so you knew she got the message.

Nevertheless, the mixtape fetish grows from here, each one claiming to be personally tracked for the type of girl you’re sweet on, all the while serving more as an anthology of the music you liked at the time. As you mature, it branches out into platonic relationships. You note that mixtape subsists as the preferred nomenclature despite the compact disc overtaking the cassette as the dominant medium. Some call it an art form, and sadly, you are one of these people.

But through all of it, if you’re a heterosexual male, you’ve never made a mix for a guy. You’ve given copies of a mix to a buddy, but never made one for him. To do something like that would be to display emotions left intentionally untouched in the male world. When babysitter Chad makes Jerry that Miles/Mingus tape in Jerry Maguire, lets face it—it’s weird. But see, even then, the mix is actually intended for the heart of Renee Zellweger, not Tom Cruise, despite what you may have heard about him.

So, when I recently signed up for something called the International Mixtape Project on the advice of a friend, I realized that I would be venturing into the unknown. The Project is quite simple, really. Once a month, founder Ryan sends out a name and address to participants, and they have a month to forward a handmade mix (tape or CD) of songs of your choosing, to that person. It’s not a one-to-one exchange, it’s more like a chain letter, and you can send the same mix to multiple people in other months.

Today I got my first assignment, and sure enough, I am to deliver mixtape number one, for the month of April, to Matthew in Medford, Massachusetts. This is already the most bi-curious thing I’ve ever done. Well, besides rushing a fraternity.

So, Matthew in Medford, since I’m sure your reading this, I wanted to let you know that I’ve given it some thought. Were you a girl, I may make a mix, say, loosely based on the perennial losers of the world to parallel your obvious love for the Red Sox. I’d use some rarities to keep you on your toes, and I’d work on the transitions between songs like I always do. I’d find mpeg files of stupid John Kerry jokes from radio talk shows and squeeze them in. I might cap it all off with a live version of “We are the Champions” just so you know that I also hate the Yankees.

But Matthew, unless you are feigning your masculinity like Rosalind masquerading as Ganymede in As You Like It, you are shit out of luck, man. Never fear, though, I’ve got an old time-tested stand-by for you. My “Margarita Mix 2.0” is perfect for those summer days when you’re wasted on boat drinks by 2 p.m. and eyeing up the underage lifeguard at your apartment’s pool. It goes from The Avalanches to Herb Alpert to Frank Sinatra to Cornelius and back again. I made it for myself, for obvious reasons, but I’ve even gotten subtle compliments from my guy friends on it. Not to toot my own horn here, but you should really consider yourself lucky with this one.

As for the mixtape I receive for the month, I will pull no punches. There’s no excuse for a terrible mix, what with iTunes and various other copyright-infringing means available to everyone. But part of me really wants an old tape with Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do, I Do it For You” on it, so I can tell myself that my sixth-grade flame thought it so heartfelt that she put it back in to circulation. She always was cute.