When I was in high school, and in love with Sam Coursey, I would sometimes leave school and wend my way over to his mother's house. I would find him in his quarters on the third floor. As I recall, he had fabric hanging here and there, functioning as partitions, and furniture, such as his bed, dressers, arm chairs, positioned to define spaces: a sitting area, a working area, a sleeping area. We would talk, we would visit, we would spend some time in bed together. Sensing that I was less than central to his life, I would eventually take my leave.
Once when I went to his house, his girlfriend, Mary, was there. He had spoken of her in the past, and I think I was surprised when I met her. My high school was a small private school in Portland, and when I walked over to Sam's house, I walked through a rather nice neighborhood. As Sam had described Mary's beauty to me previously, I had a little more in the way of expectation, and while she was reasonably pretty, Mary had features (Italian? perhaps) that in New England would be considered common in the pejorative sense. Anyhow, Mary looked at me in the way of "How dare you," and I'm not sure how this played out. I may have realized this was a very bad time indeed, and left. I want to say she had another friend with her; maybe they left, and my visit with Sam overlapped clumsily with hers.
Maybe that was the same visit where Sam and I sat in his armchairs and looked at record album covers. Women's eyes mattered to him. He spoke of Mary's eyes, their beauty, their expressiveness, etc. He also loved the lead singer for the Motels, Martha Davis. "Look at her eyes," he said. He may have compared Martha Davis' eyes with Mary's. It might have been that way.
Even if Sam did compare Mary to Martha Davis, it isn't the reason I never liked the Motels. I only remember the popular covers, "Only the Lonely," and "Suddenly last summer," and they did nothing for me. Those two songs got a lot of undeserved airplay, as I saw it, but I wasn't about to say this to Sam Coursey when he was saying how wonderful they were and I wanted to go to bed with him. Heart, on the other hand, was another matter. We listened to Dog and the Butterfly and looked at its jacket. Maybe we spoke of eyes, maybe we spoke of the expressiveness of voices.

It wasn't Sam. It wasn't Mary. I like Heart. I don't like the Motels.

I can see myself in the bathroom at the library in Bath, hearing the Pretender's song, "Brass in Pocket." It must have been popular at that time (I could undoubtedly assign the year this moment occurred if I knew the year the record was released) and was in my head. It was that way with "Tusk," I see myself in similar places, in Bath, at home, hearing those songs. I was probably 14.

Now I know
I've got to play my hand.
What the winner don't know
the gambler understands.
My heart keeps a playing it through
for you my friend,
I'll take my chances on you
again and again..
Coming straight on for you
You made my mind
Now I'm stronger
Now I'm coming through
Straight on
Straight on for you
Straight on
Straight on
I'm straight on for you
Straight on for you.