Finding My Way Around a Difficult Situation

My next door neighbor is Tom Petty. He’s a good friend and sometimes we hang out. The hard part is my girlfriend hates his music. So I kept his friendship secret. My girlfriend would say, “What did you do today?” I’d say, “I played guitar and watched TV”, but I’d leave out, “…with Tom Petty.”

After a while this way of hiding began to wear me out. That’s the thing about secrets, they don’t take up much space, but they are so heavy. I thought of a way around it. I asked Tom if he would make an album of cover songs by her favorite performer Enrico Caruso. Her favorite song of his is, “Vesti la giubba”. She loves singing out loud, “Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio,non so più quel che dico,e quel che faccio!” It’s all about a clown with a big smile on his face, who is crying on the inside.

Tom loves all kinds of music so he said, “sure”. The album came out a month later and I bought a copy and gave it to my girlfriend. At first she got really mad at me because she saw Tom’s name on the CD. But then I played it on her boom box and she started jumping up and down and singing, “Recitar! Mentre preso…”, you know the rest.

A week later I told her Tom lives across the hall from me and that we like to hang out. She frowned briefly, then remembered, smiled and started to sing Tom’s version of Caruso’s “La donna è mobile”. I like being more honest. But I’m not sure I’ll tell her what the songs means.