Top 100 - Bachelor Kisses, Go Betweens # 71

Story by Barry

The soundtrack to my relationship with the English girl was a series of C-90 mix tapes. Each one contained only an hour-and-a-half of music but took me days to compile. Making the perfect mix tape was better than sex.

To be honest, at the time I actually believed that statement; that making the perfect mix tape was a substitute for sex. Or at least a stepping stone (the Monkees, tape two, side B, track three).

We met in Sydney in the summer of 1986. She went back to England a few months later. We wrote long, long letters but it was those mix tapes that I knew would win her heart and make her mine forever. I peppered them with songs full of yearning, longing and desire. Bachelor Kisses by the Go-Betweens. Throw Your Arms Around Me by Hunters & Collectors. Good Feeling by Violent Femmes.

Naturally, I wouldn't make any of these the opening song. That would break rule four in my unwritten rules of mix tape making: if you are trying to get across a deep, subliminal, personal message through the words of a certain song (that is, you are trying to turn it into "our" song) then you must bury this song in the track listing. Towards the final third of side A or the first third of side B is fine. Never - repeat, never - open your mix tape with this song.

I hadn't thought about the English girl, or about those tapes, for a long while. Then I went to see Young Adult. Charlize Theron plays a successful but messed-up writer of teen fiction who decides to go back to her home town to win back her childhood sweetheart. She jumps into her Mini Minor, rams an old mix tape into her car stereo and Teenage Fanclub's 1991 song The Concept blasts over the opening credits. The camera lingers lovingly in extreme close-up on the plastic casing and spinning cogs of the cassette as Theron keeps hitting the rewind button.

Before Young Adult finishes its run, I'm sure I won't be the only ageing music nerd to nod along in the darkened cinema with a nostalgic smile on his face.

From the late '70s to the early '90s, the mix tape was our love letter - the blank page was the cassette, the ink was your record collection, the quill was the record button on your tape deck. Mix CDs and MP3 playlists just aren't the same. There's none of that sitting down in real time waiting for the songs to record, plus slip-ups are easily corrected.

If you were doing it right, the mix tape took time, thought and sweat. Don't get me started on trying to squeeze more than 20 song titles and band names on the inside of a tiny insert card in cramped block letters, then the painstaking creation of a cover using old magazines, a photocopier, scissors and a glue stick.

I've made as many tapes for men as I have for women. And to quote George Costanza, I say that with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality. The compilation cassette crossed the sexual divide. It was a statement and a seduction, whether you were trying to win the heart of a girl or the approval of a good buddy. Those songs grouped together in that particular order were communicating how you wanted to be perceived.

Of course (Young Adult spoiler alert!), just as Charlize didn't get the old boyfriend back, I didn't end up with the English girl, so maybe you could say my mix tapes didn't work. I got to England mid-1987, we hung out for a while and then one day she said, "I care for you, Divola, I really do care."

But she cared more for Rob, a guy who looked like a member of Spandau Ballet and had shocking taste in music. Instead, we became "really good friends".

Many years later, in the late '90s, the English girl was visiting Sydney. She had her new husband in tow. No, it wasn't Rob. My old gang from the '80s got together for drinks with her and late in the night she took me aside. We talked about the old times and about the future and then she smiled at me warmly.

"Remember all those tapes you used to send me, Divola?"

I nodded and waited for her to tell me how much they meant to her and how she still had them all. She started giggling.

"I never listened to any of them."

It's still the most hurtful thing a woman has ever said to me.

Artwork by Karin