I was really into making mixtapes for girls in junior high. All romantic hetero teenaged boys should be. John Hughes got a lot of things wrong, but boomboxes on front lawns will always be close to perfect. In the first comic I ever wrote a boy giving a girl a tape is the beginning of their journey, it’s the reason you like him, and it’s the reason you want them to be together in the end. It’s a simple device but it makes so much sense to me. If you ever made a tape or ever got a tape it was the most romantic we were allowed to be at that age. I’m not sure if I wasn’t brave enough or smart enough to write love letters. Maybe I was just smart enough to know that they wouldn’t work, but it just seemed so much better to let Joey Ramone, Paul Westerberg, Lance Hahn, J. Mascis, Dave Weston, Kathleen Hanna, Mac McCaughn, Jim Elison, and John Darnielle speak on my behalf. I could spend days plotting, pour my heart out, show that I was cool and interesting, and then pass it off like it didn’t really matter when she didn’t like the tape. I never reused songs for different girls, that was cheating and only scumbags did that. This Unrest song made it onto almost every tape I ever made though. I don’t know what I thought it meant. I think I was a manipulative asshole who pretended to be some weary old soul, so a song about reminiscing on first loves made me seem distant and aloof. Or maybe I just liked the the not subtle hint of including a song with “make out” in the title. Not many of those girls ever made out with me and I don’t know how many only did because I made a great mixtape. Either way, this song makes me feel a lot of abstract and conflicting feelings that aren’t really tied to any specific people or places. I feel a lot of longing for no one in particular, regrets about nothing in particular, and contentment for no real reason. I guess it makes me feel 15 again, which isn’t something I want to feel very often, but I don’t mind it on some nights. I don’t pine for my youth, but I really miss making those tapes.