Much like Heath Ledger’s thirst for steamy make out sessions with Jake Gyllenhaal in the film “Brokeback Mountain” burns through him in the form of rugged sexuality, my love for music (and the shame attached to it) causes me to do desperate things. I realized that this morning.

Now, late into the evening and with a few bourbons in my belly I have decided to confess to you that my musical obsession has it’s roots in theft. I’m not proud of it. But I must confess. If not to make me feel better than in some weird attempt at comedy.

I remember seeing the ads in Parade Magazine when my parents bought the Sunday paper. It seemed so shiny, so new, so cheap. It was 13 tapes for the $1.38. Columbia House was my homeboy. Shortly after seeing it and thinking that it was probably too good to be true a guy that lived up the street (and was responsible for me seeing my first naked woman) told me of the scam.

“Just order the tapes under a different name.” He told me over and over again. I tried it once. Not having the guts to actually make up a name I gave an alias that I’d seen junk mail come to my grandmother under the name of. Rather than “Bugg” I would be “Bveg”: it was swarthy, it was slavic, and it was my gateway to free cassette tapes.

For those of you who have never done this (and by extension, can still look at yourself in the mirror), Columbia House was a company that acted as a music subscription service. If you agreed to buy X number of albums in the next 3 years, you could cancel your service, and to entice you into enrolling, they would give you an exorberant amount of albums for essientially no cost.

The best part was that these albums weren’t hard to find gems. In fact, they were quite banal and cringe worthy albums. In my first batch I recieved Bob Seegar’s Greatest Hits, Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation, Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet and other quite available albums.

But much like Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain the secret consumed me and would keep me from sleeping at night. There I was, 11 years old and worrying about my credit score being effected by those nefarious people at Columbia House. But it still didn’t stop me.

During my next run I recieved a few tapes that I promised my sister I’d give her for letting me use her middle name and last name, as well as the most awesome album I’ve ever stolen: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.

I can’t even describe what hearing that album as a kid was like. The drums sounded like cannons, the guitars were cool and you could play air guitar to them, Kirk Cameron and Alan Thicke went to a Bruce concert on an episode of Growing Pains (laugh now, but it was validation for me as a music fan). I played that over and over again on the little Emerson Boom Box my grandmother got me for Christmas that year.

Later on, I gave up the Columbia House racket. The stress and my father yelling at me about lying combined to make it damn near impossible to get steal the cassettes from the company anymore (plus I think they got wise to my tricks after a year or so). Today, I buy music as penance for my past thieving, and only download out of print albums.

But just like Anne Hathaway topless in “Brokeback Mountain”, this story has a perky climax that will make you thank yourself that you watched it: a few years ago a friend of mine attempted to steal CDs from Columbia House again. He succeeded 3 times. The names he used: Juan Santos Halper, Jose Television Camino and Andre Republican Quiznos.

In honor of thieveing, and in honor of Bruce Springsteen being so awesome, here’s one of my favorite songs from Born in the U.S.A. and while you listen to it think to yourself “if it wasn’t for this album and petty theft, that guy on the internet wouldn’t be writing long winded unfunny blogs”.

Bruce Springsteen- I’m Going Down

Until later, be good.
Later