OCTOBER MIX by Chloe Caldwell

Women: A NOVELLA mix tape

These are songs, most referenced and some not referenced in my book WOMEN. For each song, I wrote one sentence summing up what is going on in the book. SO — spoiler alert! Just kidding. The book is about a break up, to put it lightly. There’s not “plot” really. Themes of playlist: Obsession, lesbians, IDGAF, drunk, broken.

1. Supersuckers: Hungover Together

Finn and the narrator wake up hung over together and a few days later Finn sends the narrator this song.

2. Those Three Days: Lucinda Williams

This is the song Finn and the narrator listen to after the first time they’ve been intimate.

3. Mariah Carey: Obsessed

At this point in the book the narrator and Finn quote Nicki Minaj on American Idol, saying, I’m obsessed with you.

4. Hostile Omish: Vagitarian (Lesbian Love Song)

Finn sends the narrator this song. Self-Explanatory.

5. Cher: The Shoop Shoop song or It’s In His Kiss

The narrator stays home for days and watches Mermaids and binge-eats mac and cheese and this motivates her to find a therapist.

6. Grimes: Oblivion

The narrator and her friend Sabine eat MDMA and do other illicit things, all the while listening to Grimes.

7. CocoRosie: Lemonade

This is for all the CocoRosie haters out there. I love them. Shamelessly. The narrator and Sabine listen to this song and bathe together.

8. Taylor Swift: I Knew You Were Trouble

Elizabeth Ellen cut this scene, but originally there was a scene of the narrator and the girl she was babysitting singing this song in the car. I don’t know if I am grateful or sad she cut it. I’ll probably be grateful in a few years.

9. Melissa Ferrick: Drive

The narrator listens to this song in her basement apartment and masturbates. In the live version, MF sings, “If your girlfriend has more than one towel, she’s probably straight.”

10. Ne-Yo: Mad

The narrator explores her past female friendships and realizes they’ve been codependent.

(My best friend and I used to sing this song to one another: “I don’t want to go to bed, without you, I don’t what you to go to bed, without me” though I just looked up the lyrics and I see we misinterpreted them.)

11. Aerosmith: Dream On

On her birthday, the narrator sings this song in the car, then barfs and pees her pants, in that order.

12. Judy Garland: I Don’t Care

The narrator decides she doesn’t care. She dances around to Judy Garland in the kitchen.

They say I’m crazy got no sense, but I don’t care. They may or may not mean offense, but I don’t care. You see I’m sort of independent. I’m my own superintendent.

13. All Over Me: Loving Annabelle (movie soundtrack)

This song prefaces a really hot sex scene in Loving Annabelle

14. Lucinda Williams: Are You Alright?

Towards the end of the book, the narrator and her mother drive on a highway and listen to this song by Lucinda. They hit two deer with their car.

15. Eric Satie: Gymnopedie

If my book was a silent French film, I would want this song to roll at the end, and have the narrator like, walking around near the French Riviera, smoking Gauloises, a single tear rolling down her cheek, and then a smile. Blows smoke. End film.

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— CHLOE CALDWELL is the author of the forthcoming novella, Women, (SF/LD Books, October 2014) and the essay collection Legs Get Led Astray (Future Tense Books, April 2012).