He had such green eyes. And overgrown shaggy hair, and a skinny frame draped in oversized band tees. Naturally, I thought he was quite cool. In any case, I admired his choice of favorite Pavement album (Terror Twilight) and his ability to listen to twenty-minute Godspeed You! Black Emperor tracks without breaking a sweat. After a chance meeting, something like a friendship went from zero to sixty, just two summers ago. About two weeks were filled with long afternoons spent in his sweltering room, listening to bizarre music and thoughtlessly hacking on whatever instruments were laying around.

We’d waste away the afternoons acting pretentious and pretending we didn’t like each other. I’d be on the floor by his desk, usually with his bass guitar in my lap, and he would be in the chair, sorting through his iTunes and picking out choice cuts. He introduced little pop-enthusiast me to lots of new stuff. Usually atmospheric works, bands he felt spoke to him on some deeper level. There were a few local bands that he claimed to know and couldn’t figure out why they weren’t bigger than they were. Mason Proper entered my musical sphere this way. To him, Mason Proper were the great unsung heroes of just about everything: the Ann Arbor scene, the Michigan scene, the American scene, international music in general. I took a keen interest in the band, fueled by my keen interest in the boy.

“A Chance Encounter” was behind the first kiss that we never actually had. If we had ever gotten to that point, I’m sure it would have been playing in the background. Just like him, Mason Proper are self-aware of the emotional responses they incur in listeners, and they play to that image, purposefully or not. Everything is set to be a bit more melancholy than average. The vague lyrics are mumbled to sound a bit more arty than they really are, the strings laid just so, the drums quiet and building. The boy was just the same way: he had an angsty, screwed-up image, and he played into it relentlessly. He painted only in black and white, he never slept at night, he scorned anything fashionable or fun. A Kiss fan, he was not.

He needed these same ideals in his mates, unfortunately. He needed a “Chemical Dress Eliza” of his own, a fatally pretty muse, similarly waifish, to pout with him. He needed a girl who languished in depression, and could drink black coffee. I always chose Mason Proper’s upbeat, goofier tracks like “Mr. Charm.” Some Pavement influence, strange synths, shouting—a track right up my alternative alley. As you probably predicted, the kid and I don’t really talk anymore. Unlike him, I actually moved out of my parents’ house. He also got a new girlfriend. I might have stolen his watch. Whatever. Ol’ green eyes did show me some damn good music, even if we never were really a we.

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