Look, Kim, I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us, but I’m darned confused trying to make heads or tails out of that song “Lasso” you wrote about it. I know you’re not talking to me and all, but maybe you could send me a text sometime helping me out with this stuff.

The song starts out by saying that when you first saw me “the stars lined up” and you thought you’d “heard from God.” So, you sing, “I gave him my best shot.” Listen, for one thing I barely remember that night—I was drunk behind Sonic—so maybe I missed the stars doing anything screwy. Who, exactly, were you giving your best shot to, anyway? Me? God? It was kind of hot when you took my shake and winked at me while you took a sip, but was that really you giving God your best shot?

“Loving you was like throwing a lasso around a tornado,” you sing. Now, I have to assume that’s a thinly-veiled reference to mounting me in the back of my dad’s Chevy, and I do take that as a compliment. That’s more or less what it felt like to me, too. When you continue on to say that it was like taking “a ride on a Tilt-a-Whirl that sits on top of the world,” I guess that means you liked the way I bucked. Much obliged, sweetheart. When you say you’ve “always been afraid of flying,” is that a reference to an orgasm, or do you mean that time we did whip-its?

Now, when you say you “felt like a pearl” when you were holding my hand, I guess you’re saying my hands were cold and clammy and wet, and, well, I’m sorry! I have to wash my hands after every shift, and Louie never keeps the paper towels stocked, so there you go. You knew what you were getting into when you started dating a guy who works in food service.

“Like a vine bends a tree down to the ground, I won’t hold you down.” Now, see, that sounds like you’re apologizing, but I’m thinking this is one of those reverse-psychology situations where you’re saying you were clingy—like a vine, I get it—but you’re actually talking about that time you caught me with my hand up Annalynn’s shirt, and you don’t really think you were too out of line for punching me in the kidney. I’m not arguing with you there, but what do you mean with that “I found all the clouds touch the ground in this small town” line? Does that have something to do with Annalynn falling on her ass when you slapped her off the hood of my car? If so, I don’t think she’ll appreciate the suggestion that her buns are puffy.

I just completely lose you when you wrap up with that verse about riding on “a high trapeze swinging over the deep.” What’s a circus doing at sea, and wouldn’t you rather fall into the water than onto the ground? Is it about that time we hooked up on the swingset? Because that was hot. Things were always good between us, until you started getting all poetic.

– Jay Gabler