❤️🔥 Get Ur Freak On
💔 Johnny, Part 1
I didn’t know if I wanted more or if I wanted to stop. I was paralyzed by the pressure.
In my research of my own life, which just still sounds so weird to me to do, I Googled, “what is the song take on me about.”
This very helpful article from songmeaningsandfacts.com states:
A-ha’s “Take On Me” is based on the singer kicking it to a romantic interest, as in trying to convince her to accept him as a lover. And the title is derived from him entreating her to ‘take him on’, as in take a chance with him. And while it can definitely be gleaned that his love for her is true, he is the shy type. Owing to this, he is finding it challenging to express his feelings to this special lady.
On the other hand, the lady also seems not to be responding in the way he prefers, “shying away” at times herself. However, he is determined to be the recipient of her love while the opportunity is ripe. Thus most of the track, as aforementioned, centers on him entreating her to actually be receptive to the affection he has to offer.
My dear Johnny,
I can’t believe it took twenty years for me to realize the significance of the song you chose that night. The song you made me dance to with you, despite my aching feet. I knew it was important to you, I just didn’t know why.
Now that I know, I both feel like a fool and feel like crying. How romantically sweet that was of you. How thoughtful, and obvious. I’m so sorry it was so obvious, yet I was so oblivious. Typical me.
But it doesn’t matter, because it worked, didn’t it? Dancing with you that night is my favorite memory I have of you, despite how clueless I was about the meaning behind it all. That was the moment I fell for you. Bravo, you cunning boy. Your plan worked.
You’ll never read this, and so you’ll never know, but I’ll keep that night with me forever. It already meant something, but now it means a million times more.
Even if this song means something else to you now, even if you played it for a hundred other girls, to me that song is ours.
I’ll be stumbling away,
Rachel
G E T U R F R E A K O N
I don’t know where to start with Johnny. God, he was hot. I guess I can start there.
I likely first saw him in theatre class. There were a lot of alternative kids in the department, and he was one of them. He was always clad in black; I cannot remember him any other way. I don’t think I ever saw any hue of the rainbow grace his skin.
His hair was Harry Potter messy. If you only have the films as a reference, we’re talking Goblet of Fire. Daniel Radcliffe’s hair was never appropriately messy in any of the other films. Harry Potter messy suited Johnny. It made him more attractive; you just wanted to run your fingers through his jet-black locks and grab a handful while you pulled him close.
I may have done that.
Also like Potter, he never was without his glasses. They weren’t round; I’ll end the Boy Who Lived references here. His glasses also made him more handsome; he looked like some sophisticated teen with a mysterious black aura.
He was a year my junior, but his body looked like he was a year my senior. His shoulders and chest were broad. You could be safe there, especially because they were attached to incredibly toned arms that blanketed you with protection.
Johnny also no longer had that smooth, babyface complexion. His five o’clock shadow would arrive punctually on a face that looked like the darker version of Kurt Cobain’s, and he had a rugged roughness about him even though he was only sixteen.
God, he was hot.
And yet, I didn’t notice right away. That’s how I was back then, distracted by so many things, including other boys, that I couldn’t tell when there was something so luscious right in front of my clueless little face.
He was into me. At first I didn’t know it, then I denied it. Because that was another thing I did. I couldn’t accept that someone would find me worthy of desire. I was only seventeen, innocent in so many ways; unprepared to embark on the journey that society makes you think you need to set out on when you are at the unripened age of a high school graduate.
But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about a band fellah that just broke my heart. I was so happy and then so sad, and it all happened in September. Cue Green Day.
October rolled around and somehow, Johnny just appeared. My bestie, Erin, and I were suddenly always within proximity of Johnny and his bestie, Joel. In contrast to Johnny, Joel was shorter, blonde, and soft. Joel had just endured a breakup, too, and he and I bonded over that. We may have bonded a little too much, because Johnny and others in our circle began to think Joel and I had a “thing.”
“Absolutely not,” I likely articulated to Johnny one day when he suggested this notion. “Joel is very much like a little brother. Please don’t make me gag.”
That month, Johnny and I were two background performers in the theatre department’s annual fundraiser, the Lip Synch. A lot of the ensemble had several quick changes, including me, which required me to regularly strip off my top behind the tiny curtain that hid us from the eye-line of the audience, fondling around in the darkness backstage for my next outfit.
Luckily, this was my fourth year of theatre, and I, like so many others, had gotten over the horrifying act of stripping down to my bra in front of the rest of the cast, no matter how shy I innately was. Everyone does it. Everyone has them. Everyone’s seen it. No one cares.
Unless they do. It wasn’t until I was driving a few of my friends home one night after the final performance that I realized, someone did care.
“What?” I asked Brenda, one of the other performers.
I was driving her home first, she in the back, and Erin in the front.
“Johnny was ‘freaking’ you while you were in your bra during one of your quick changes,” she stated again.
“That’s why he was behind me?” I asked.
I recalled the moment. I was slipping my arms into the top I was changing into, and I saw someone move close to me out of my peripheral vision. When I turned around, Johnny was just smiling sweetly at me.
No, handsomely.
No, hotly.
But I barely paid him any mind, because I had to exit onto the stage.
“He wants you,” Erin stated.
“You always think that,” I told her.
“It’s usually true, you just never believe me.”
It’s true. I never do.
Any thoughts of Johnny dissipated almost immediately, because that’s when Brenda revealed that she had a crush on another guy from theatre. A guy that I had been crushing on since I was a sophomore—a real American pie of a guy, but had never addressed my feelings. When I went home that night, that was the guy that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
October dissolved into November, and I refused to have feelings for the same guy as one of my friends, so I left Brenda’s crush to just Brenda, and denied any feelings that may have been simmering under the surface since I was fifteen.
It was just as well; I was still trying to get over my September heartache, which was being made more difficult by the fact that he regularly played with his new band at a venue my friends and I constantly frequented, The Mac Stack.
One night, we were at one of these shows, Erin and I. Johnny and Joel were there, too, so we hung out on and off throughout the night.
After the show, Erin and I jumped into my old black Honda, shielding our un-jacketed skin from the midnight air.
As I turned onto the road towards Erin’s house, she blurted out, “Johnny likes you!” Her smile was wide, spreading to the twinkle in the sky of her eyes.
“Oh my goodness, Erin, not this again!”
“I know what you’re going to say, but I got confirmation.”
I snapped my eyes from the road for a second to look at her; she was giddy at the prospect of new love for her boy-crazy buddy.
“Johnny said it himself. When I was talking to him and Joel while you were heaading to the front of the pit.”
A traitorous tingling reverberated through my body, beginning at my core and rippling outwards. It was only a second, but I stuffed the feeling away like a loveletter you don’t want prying eyes to see. I was only feeling this because I was taken away by the fact that I was desired.
The word about this spread among our friend group, and every single one of them, including Joel—likely unbeknownst to Johnny—was pressuring me to like him back and go out with him.
“You should go out with him, Rachel!”
“He likes you. Why don’t you guys date?”
“Why don’t you just like him back?”
How does one simply decide to ‘like someone back’? They don’t.
I ignored them all and carried on with my busy high school schedule, continuing to get over my ex-boyfriend, and succeeding, and trying to stifle feelings for a crush that I “gave” to Brenda, and not succeeding.
