Love Potion No. 9

The train got me again this morning, but this time I’m sure it was not my fault, because I was thinking good thoughts, and besides I was like five blocks away from the track. I had just turned onto University and right away had to stop at the back of this long line of cars. I still feel that the basic principle is valid though, and that somebody in the car line must have been thinking bad thoughts, exceptionally bad thoughts it would seem, because I’ve never seen it catch so many cars all at once. I wish I could have counseled those negative drivers and maybe helped them to experience the peace and contentment that I have come to feel in my own life since last Friday morning, but unfortunately I was unable to sense which cars were causing the trouble. I sort of got a feeling that the problematic vibes were emanating from a clump of cars up around the intersection with Maple, that were blocking the intersection so that the Maple cars couldn’t go either, even though there was no train in their way, and despite the fact that the University cars had nothing to gain from blocking the Maple cars, other than to be about 10 feet closer to a moving train, which I feel sure did not even appear to be made of chocolate from their perspective. Anyway, it was just a vague sense of a small cloud of negativity, more like a negative patch of fog really, nothing concrete. I guess I don’t possess that particular psychic gift of being able to precisely pinpoint negative thoughts, though I do possess several other gifts, some psychic, some not, which I’m sure are equally useful to mankind, or will someday prove to be.

Fortunately, there was a song playing on the radio that has always troubled me, and I have been meaning for years to think about what the hell was going on with this song, and whether it really didn’t make much sense, or if it maybe made more sense than a regular song, and I just didn’t get it, but up to this point I’ve never had the time. Now, because the train was having to go to extraordinary lengths to nudge this recalcitrant group of drivers into the higher plane of existence that the train and I occupy, I finally had the time.

The song’s name is “Love Potion No. 9” and this is what disturbs me about it…well, first let me give you a brief synopsis of the plot, in case you don’t know the song. There’s this guy, and it seems that he’s a flop with chicks. This is a situation that I’ve experienced on occasion, incredible as that may seem to those who know me, and I can feel his pain, which for me is like a dull ache in the left upper chest that I sometimes mistake for a heart attack and have to go to the emergency room. Though he may experience it differently. It’s my understanding that the perception of chickflop pain varies greatly with the individual. I had a friend once who claimed that for him it was a sharp, needle-sticky kind of sensation in his right leg, but I don’t really buy that—everybody knows that this is a variety of heart pain, and the right leg is just too far from the heart for it to have gotten down there. I suspect that he was having sciatica, or maybe deep vein thrombosis, but I just nodded sympathetically and said “Ummm.” Once people latch on to these irrational beliefs, there’s really no way to dissuade them, and it’s a pain in the ass to even try.

What I think is really sad is that the guy in the song sought out the help of a trained professional—in fact, he did everything just like they tell you to in those public service announcements—and still things went so poorly for him.

First off, he made the sensible decision to go to a gypsy, not some phone psychic, or an unlicensed charlatan like that hippy guy that lived in an abandoned pig shack in Hawaii and told me and Kirsten that our love would last forever, when in fact it didn’t even make it through the end of the return flight. A gypsy would’ve know that.

And he didn’t just go to the first gypsy he happened to come upon, but instead went way across town so that he could see a gypsy with a gold-capped tooth, which is the ne plus ultra of gypsy love doctors. It’s similar to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but shinier. So the poor guy did everything like he should have, but due to the egregious malfeasance of that darned gypsy, obtained results that were far from satisfactory. Isn’t that the way of the world? You know what they say, there’s a rotten apple in every barrel. I don’t know if the gypsy just wasn’t paying attention, or maybe she was burned out on love doctoring and didn’t take any pride in her work anymore, or possibly she had some kind of weird brain tumor that made her hear things opposite from how they really are, or to hear stuff correctly but then do the opposite thing from what she should have done without meaning to, or maybe the bottles came from the supplier labeled wrong and it wasn’t really her fault. Oh no, it couldn’t have been that last one, cause the song says that she mixed it up there on the premises, in a sink, which doesn’t sound very sanitary to me. But all the others are still possibilities. I don’t know. All I know is this is one gypsy that ought to be sued the hell out of, and reported to the Better Business Bureau.

Cause the last thing this guy needed—that part of the song is clear even to me, and I’m not a gypsy—was an aphrodisiac for himself! But that’s what he got, and as a result of this prescribing error, he kissed a cop on 34st and Vine, a course of action he would never have considered had he not been under the influence of drugs. In the ensuing fracas, his potion bottle sustained multiple fractures, and the potion leaked out all over his new khaki Dockers, staining them so badly that even a Vietnamese drycleaner couldn't get it out. Frankly I still feel like he got pretty lucky with that cop, just losing a bottle of potion that wasn’t right for his condition to start with, and a pair of pants. A lot of cops wouldn’t have been so restrained in their response, and the situation could have turned real ugly.

Now some gypsy apologists try to claim that the gypsy was giving him the LP9 to slip into girls’ drinks while they were gone to the bathroom, and that he was the one who misunderstood, and didn’t bother to read the package insert, but this argument is completely refuted by even the most cursory examination of the lyrics. The song clearly states that he took the drug right there in the gypsy’s office, in full view of the gypsy herself, who didn’t lift one finger to stop him. And furthermore he engaged in substantial preparatory activity prior to quaffing the potion—holding his nose and closing his eyes, etc.—so his intentions would have been perfectly obvious to any gypsy worth her salt. I’m not even a gypsy, and I recognize the international signs that someone is about to drink medicine that smells like turpentine and looks like India ink. Hell, a two-year old child would have known what was going down, or a four-year old for sure.

So in the end, the poor guy was still a flop with chicks, but now it was worse than before, because he had taken that aphrodisiac and was even hornier than he usually was, which was already more than was constructive, given his situation. Not to mention that he’d had a very traumatic day, what with having to drive across town, and that little run-in with the cop and all, plus he was out whatever he’d paid for the potion. Cause there’s no way you’re ever going to get your money back from a gypsy. Don’t even try.

You know, I was thinking of trying to seek professional help for my own chickflop issues, but now I don’t know what to do, because my insurance won’t pay for a shrink, or a hooker, and this song guy’s experience has really put me off gypsies.