You Probably Think This Blog Is About You
Breaking news out of Martha’s Vineyard, everyone! Carly Simon has just announced that she is going to reveal the true identity of the You’re So Vain Guy to an NBC sports executive in exchange for a $50,000 charitable donation.
Hey, I can tell you all right now who the song was about, and you don’t even have to give me $50,000 to do so (although if you feel like writing a check, by all means please do, since my unemployment benefits are due to expire next week, my book manuscript is only a quarter of the way finished, and I really don’t feel like going out and getting a job). You’re So Vain was all about my eleventh grade boyfriend, G., an egotistical Don-Juannabe who tore my heart out, flung it onto the ground, and kicked it - and me - to the curb in a very public, embarrassing, and painful manner (he also wrote my name and phone number in indelible ink on a bathroom wall out of pure spite, but that’s a story for another day).
I know the song was written for G., because it fit him to a T. Except for the parts about the trips to Saratoga and the Lear Jet, I suppose. But still. For months after our nasty breakup, I would cry by myself in my bedroom, playing the 45 over and over, singing along at the top of my lungs, and nursing pre-Phil-Collins style revenge fantasies about becoming a famous rock star and tracking G. down in the audience so I could sing the song right into his face and embarrass him in front of the entire nation. The fact that I have limited vocal capabilities was irrelevant in the face of my sweetly satisfying mental image of G., scurrying out of the Hartford Civic Center with his hands over his head, being pelted with decaying tomatoes, rotten eggs, and very sharp rocks by my adoring public.
You’re So Vain was the ubiquitous Bad Boyfriend song of the seventies. Every brokenhearted high school girl owned the record, and every one of us swore that the song was all about HIM. I derived a great deal of comfort out of relating so closely to the lyrics, and considered the song central to my eventual ability to recover and move on to the bigger and better heartbreaks that awaited me in my future.
The only other song I have identified with so intensely since then as been Alanis Morrisette’s You Oughta Know. The first time I heard it, I was lying in bed with a blanket over my face, reeling from yet another bad breakup when it suddenly came on the radio, blaring out my pain and rage for all the world to hear. I was transfixed. I didn’t know the name of the song or the artist, but I sprang from my bed and somehow tracked down the CD anyway. For the next six weeks, I lapsed back into my high school pattern, playing the song over and over (much easier to do with a CD and a remote this time), singing along (albeit a little more quietly, since now I had finicky neighbors), and once again nursing the Phil Collins Revenge Fantasy (only this time I upgraded myself to a swanky nightclub so I could jump up on top of the piano, a la Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys, and point directly to C. so as to humiliate him in a much more dramatic way).
My recovery was going along quite well, until I turned on the radio one morning and inadvertently discovered who You Oughta Know was actually written for. It was about that guy whose name you can never remember who played the Olsen Twins’ sidekick on Full House. Yeah, that’s right - Full Fucking House! Apparently Alanis had had a passionate affair with this guy back when she was a young Canadian starlet and he dumped her for an older woman before moving on to the fame and glory of Banal ABC Sitcom Land. He even did a guest spot on my favorite morning radio show and actually deconstructed the lyrics with the host, line by line, totally ruining the song for me and forever supplanting my Phil Collins Revenge Fantasy with the appalling mental image of Mary Kate and Ashley, simpering away for the cameras. I was left to recover on my own, alone and uncomforted.
And recover I did - eventually. If there's one thing I learned from my breakup with G., it was that no matter how painful heartbreak is, it’s something that you can eventually get over. But sometimes you have to play a few mental tricks with yourself to get over the hump and move on. So I really have no desire to pick up next weeks National Enquirer (uh….when I’m in line at the supermarket, of course….) to find out that You’re So Vain was really all about Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty, or some other odious celebrity who has no relevance to me or my life. I don’t want to have to go through it all again. Once was enough.
So, thanks very much, Carly, but I prefer to cloud up my own coffee.
12:13:07 PM 
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