I'll Raise You One Tape - The Sound of Showing Up
We’d met twice.
Two dates.
Both easy.
Both promising, in that way where nothing is promised yet.
Then we set out in different directions.
Not dramatically.
Just… life.
And then the tape arrived.
So, now that I’d watched the tape,
what do I do?
Watch it again.
And again, just to catch the way he smiled before the punchline.
I wasn’t obsessing.
I was absorbing.
His voice.
His pauses.
The way he looked off-camera like he was searching for something he couldn’t
quite say.
I drove the back roads that week, windows down, Seger
playing low.
“Oh, blame it on midnight…”
The moon hung heavy over the fields, casting everything in
silver and a sense of wonder and promise.
The tape was goofy.
It was tender.
It was two hours of him trying not to miss me too hard.
Just a kind of pure, unaltered honesty in everything he said.
And I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it.
Seger kept singing:
“Until you’ve been beside a man / You don’t know what he
wants…”
And maybe that was true.
But maybe it was also true that until you’ve been beside a woman,
I just drove.
And let the moon do what it does—
shine a little light on the things I wasn’t ready to say out loud.
I wasn’t sure I’d climb out of.
Not because I didn’t understand—
but because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel.
I continued driving the back roads that week,
windows down, tape deck humming,
Seger’s voice cutting through the dusk like memory
I watched the tape yet again.
I laughed,
I felt the edges of something tender and unfinished.
And then—because I’m me—I make
plans to film my own.
Not out of sentiment.
Not out of longing.
But because the moment called for it.
And I called Donna.
you don’t go it alone.
You call your best friend,
your partner in chaos and mischief.
She answered on the second ring, already laughing.
“I knew it,” she said. “You watched it.”
“I did,” I said. “And now we’re making our own.”
Plans unfolded fast.
Her kitchen became our studio.
The teddy bears were cast as emotional support.
It was perfect.
It was ours.
The Floor, the Cake, and the Bears
The teddy bears looked ridiculous.
Donna had arranged them like diplomats at a summit—each one with a different
expression,
as if they were about to vote on whether I should send the tape at all.
The cake sat in the middle of the table, silent.
Because that’s what cakes did, right?
They didn’t offer advice.
They didn’t interrupt.
They just existed.
The camera blinked red.
Donna gave me the thumbs-up from behind a fortress of teddy bears.
Seger was queued, low but insistent, like a heartbeat.
And we couldn’t look at the camera.
Not really.
We looked at the floor.
At the bears.
At the frosting that had started to crust over like it was tired of waiting.
How did the floor become so
interesting anyway?
Maybe it was the way it didn’t ask questions.
Didn’t expect answers.
Just held us up while we figured out what to say.
Seger played low in the background,
his voice brushing against the silence:
“I feel like a number…”
And maybe that’s what we were trying to fight—
the feeling of being reduced,
flattened,
catalogued.
So we looked down.
Until we didn’t.
No Apologies
As the night wore on,
the drinks loosened the straightjackets we didn’t know we’d been wearing.
Suddenly, the camera wasn’t a stranger.
It was an accomplice.
We stopped looking at the floor.
Stopped pretending the cake was the main event.
We looked straight into the lens—finally.
Liquid courage?
Sure.
But it was more than that.
It was years of friendship forged through late-night drives,
bad dates,
good music,
and the kind of laughter that stitches you back together.
Donna leaned in first.
She said something ridiculous.
I followed with something equally so.
We cared whether we looked silly or not.
But not in the way that made us shrink.
We cared enough to show up.
To speak plainly.
To say, “This is me now. Not polished. Not perfect. But present.”
The bears watched.
The cake still sat quietly.
And we kept talking.
Because once you break the seal,
once you stop performing and start revealing,
there’s no going back.
We owned the moment.
Midnight Cheese and Cinematic Interruptions
Halfway to midnight,
just as I was mid-sentence—Donna’s eyes widened.
“Munchies,” she said, like it was a code word for survival.
The store down the street closed in ten minutes.
We bolted.
Camera still warm, frosting still crusting,
bears left behind like we’d abandoned a tea party.
We were back in a flash.
To the soon-to-be audience, it’ll look seamless.
A jump cut.
A blink.
But we knew.
We’d crossed a threshold.
Because sometimes, the most honest moments come after the interruption.
After the snack run.
After the camera cools down and the cheese gets weird.
And maybe that’s the real story.
Not the tape.
Not the sailor.
But the way two women, halfway to midnight, can find fun in the ridiculous.
Cheese, Cameras, and Crisis Management
You know the one—orange, glossy, vaguely radioactive.
Without thinking, I turned it toward my face.
And then—clarity.
Like a lightning bolt of dignity, I remembered:
I’m on camera.
Pat will be watching this.
Good grief.
The bears looked scandalized.
Donna was already laughing.
like I was erasing evidence.
Like I hadn’t just almost committed a culinary crime on tape.
Whew.
Dodged a bullet there.
Pop Goes the Midnight
Time for a beer.
I lifted the can up to the camera like it was a sacred
offering.
“Hey, listen!” I said, grinning.
POP.
It echoed through the kitchen like a punctuation mark on the
night.
“Doesn’t that sound good?” I asked.
Giggles all around.
Donna nearly dropped her chip.
One of the bears tipped over in approval.
Even the cake seemed to lean in, like it wanted a sip.
Didn’t need polish.
Just a pop.
A laugh.
And the kind of midnight that tastes like friendship and orange cheese.
The Final Frame
The chips were half gone.
The cheese had congealed into something resembling regret.
The bears had slumped in their seats, clearly over it.
Donna raised her glass.
I raised my beer.
“To chaos,” she said.
“To clarity,” I added.
“To whatever this tape becomes.”
Seger played one last track—The Fire Inside,
“There’s a fire inside of everyone / Burning with desire…”
And maybe that’s what this tape was—
not a soft confession,
but a bold declaration. A peak at what makes me tick.
Of what friendship looks like at midnight.
Just Me
I looked into the lens, finally steady.
No floor gazing.
Just me.
We clinked glasses.
The camera blinked red.
And just like that, the tape was done.
Not perfect.
Not polished.
But real.
Isn't that the only kind of story worth telling?
Unscripted.
Unedited.
Just bold.
Just me.
No makeup touch-ups.
No rehearsed monologues.
Just a woman with a half-eaten cake, a can of orange regret,
and a best friend who knows when to cue the music and pass the chips.
Seger played us out,
his voice trailing behind the last laugh:
“I’m older now but still runnin’ against the wind…”
I didn’t know what Pat would think.
Didn’t know if he’d laugh, rewind or chuck it overboard.
But I knew this:
I showed up.
Fully.
Messily.
Beautifully.
And in my book? The only kind of tape worth sending.
Some stories don’t end. They echo.
This one’s still unfolding—quietly, honestly, in the spaces between.
Stay tuned—because the next chapter isn’t waiting. It’s already humming beneath
the surface.
