The trip proved to be worthwhile in one very important way--I networked, so to say, with the clerks. It just so happened that one of them is making a mixtape for a woman he's in love with, but, as he mentions, "I'm in love with her--she just doesn't know it yet." What better way to tell someone you care than with something crafted for the sole purpose of giving?
During the course of our discussion about records and women, he asked me an important question: "How does one woo in the 21st century?"
I wanted to be able to give him an answer and tell him exactly what to do that would win this woman's heart, but I was at a loss. What is courtship in the 21st century? I thought about the trials and tribulations I've experienced in the trenches. From what I understand, modern courtship is all about being tech-savvy. I am expected to be a willing recipient of email, text messages, and cell phone calls. In addition, I am expected to have the technology, the skill sets, and the energy in which to reply to the blitzkrieg.
The mixtape isn't common courtship practice in our modern times. The mixtape has been replaced by mix CDs and iPod playlists. These CDs and playlists take some time to arrange, but they are digital--they are easily arranged, archived, and replicated for repeat uses.
A mixtape is not something that you can throw together or easily duplicate in case things "just don't work out." One can spend days, even weeks, hand-crafting the perfect mixtape. There's track listings, liner notes, and, for the hardcore artists, cover art to be arranged, written, and created. It is your personal Manhattan project and the mixtape is the atomic bomb that will end the war and determine where you stand vis-a-vis your relationship status.
Perhaps that extended metaphor was overdramatic, but people who don't have to date cannot comprehend what it's like out there in the minefield. I am, as Arthur Alexander would say, a Soldier of Love and frankly, I'm a little shell-shocked. Perhaps that's why I've considered taking my fashion cues from Patty Hearst for all future dates:
The modern female dater has to be armed and ready for battle. In my jumpsuit pockets I've got my cell phone--complete with texting keyboard and photo/video message capabilities--and my iPod with personalized playlists. My kit bag has my Mac laptop and my digital camera. The kit bag is crucial. If he decides to make us exclusive I'm going to need proof. This evidence needs to be uploaded to the internet in less than 24 hours, as I am expected to immediately update all my Facebook information (profile picture, relationship and personal stats, etc.) and send out an electronic A.P.B. in the form of mass emails with photo attachment so that my suitor can be properly evaluated by friends, family, and arch-enemies. And of course you need the gun and the beret, because no jumpsuit ensemble is complete without the proper accessories. But the gun also serves as self-defense, because the 21st century man has the (wrong) impression that a woman is just another tech accessory and therefore can be mauled at random. Apparently, he didn't get the text message.
In a world where the love letter has disintegrated to a barrage of text messages, I need the mixtape.
