Close Reading: “cheating”

I think most people who are able to separate fiction from real life would agree that there are certain characters (perhaps even most characters) who are enjoyable within their piece of media, but who you would never want to encounter in real life. Personally, I’ve found that the characters I have a penchant for tend to be ones that I would consider to be actively terrible people if they existed.

Which brings me to the song “cheating” by Michael Aldag. I can’t tell you anything about him or his real-life personality, because I only know this one song and I only know it because Spotify gave it to me. Perhaps the character in this song IS his true personality; perhaps it’s a persona (I hope it’s a persona). But in the context of a fictional story, this song is hilarious. Please join me and see if you agree.

I saw her standing across the AstroTurf
Couldn’t believe that you had got there first
You said you loved her, did you really though?
Already had someone else on the go

Right off the bat this song swerves from a classic, done-a-million-times love song. I know I haven’t read a lot of romance novels/watched a lot of romcoms but I’m fairly confident that “I saw her standing across the AstroTurf” is not a line you encounter a lot in any medium. I’m even more compelled by the fact that neither AstroTurf nor any sort of sport comes into play in the entire rest of the song, and that “AstroTurf” does not rhyme with “first.” It’s such a bold choice to start your audience off with this line, and it absolutely grabbed my attention. I don’t know if I’d haven given this song a chance without this opener; I genuinely love it so much.

But moving on! The storytelling here is very tight; our main guy sees this gorgeous girl on the AstroTurf, but unfortunately his friend had already made contact- and not only that, but his friend is already in love with her. But our hero is skeptical; the friend is already seeing someone else, and it seems like there’s a thought that the friend is just being greedy and trying to date too many women, leaving the main character loveless and alone on the AstroTurf (I can’t get over the setting; I apologize).

Based on the name of the song, you may already see where this is going- the main character is trying to convince his friend that he didn’t really love or deserve AstroGirl- but let’s see more of the lyrics by moving into the first part of the chorus:

And yes, she stayed the night and she
She probably shouldn’t have
Look in her eyes and tell
Tell me you wouldn’t have

All is fair in matters of the heart
So go ahead and tear this friendship apart

I know some people get very one-sided when it comes to cheating; it’s only the person in the relationship’s fault! Women are temptresses and men can’t resist! Men are domineering and women can’t resist! Ninety-nine percent of the time, both people are at fault. So the main character isn’t WRONG that maybe AstroGirl shouldn’t have stayed the night, but it’s definitely also his fault. That said, he’s not totally blaming her; it sounds more like he’s convincing his friend that this was inevitable. At least in the first two lines- the next two lines are almost as funny as the AstroTurf, because the main guy is telling his friend to look into the eyes of the girl the friend was dating who then cheated on him, and then the friend will understand that he- the friend- would also have wanted to be with her. But he knows that already! Because he was already the one with her! He doesn’t have to imagine cheating with this girl because he’s WITH this girl. I get that the main character is probably saying “Look at her and you’ll see that no one would be able to resist” but that sentiment would work better for me if neither of them had been dating her, and the friend is disapproving of the fling as an outside party. It’s like if someone stole your car and said you couldn’t get mad because you would have stolen it, too. But I’m only mad that YOU have the car because it’s MY CAR. Maybe I’d have been just as happy or happier with another car; the part I’m miffed at is that YOU STOLE MY CAR.

Then we get to the next bit, where the main character says that actually! This is all the friend’s fault. Because love and friendship are different. Even if the person you love is supposed to be dating the friend who is now understandably a bit peeved. (And I would argue that they’re not unrelated; if your friend is dating someone with horrific views who does and says terrible things, your friend isn’t responsible for what that person is doing or saying, but they ARE responsible for condoning that person’s behavior by attaching themselves to that person. That’s not the situation here; just more proof that the main character is not convincing me.)

Second part of the chorus!

It’s not my fault
You know what’s done is done
She wanted me, let it be
We were still so young

Wish I could say that “Sorry, I’m wrong”
But it’s not my fault that you got cheated on

I LOVE this argument. This guy is a monster. He knew, from the first time he met AstroGirl, that she was already involved with his friend. He still had her stay the night- which, as an aside, I think is a neutral decision that needs more context. There are a lot of non-sexual reasons to encourage someone to stay over instead of going home: they’ve had too much to drink, the weather is dangerous, your place is closer to where they need to be the next morning, they’re sick or upset and you don’t think they should be alone, something is wrong at their place (bad roommate, fumigation, etc), they would be trying to find a hotel and there’s no reason for them to pay for a room if they’re comfortable staying with you- and so on. So maybe they had good reason to be in that situation… but they still both made an active decision to do something that was a betrayal to the friend. In no universe did the main character do nothing wrong. The fact that AstoGirl has beautiful eyes doesn’t mean that the boundaries of an established relationship go out the window.

You may be so overwhelmed by how gutsy this argument is that you miss a crucial line: “We were still so young.” This adds SO many layers to the situation. This is an excuse you use when you’re talking about something that happened a long time ago. Most people have done things that are stupid, or foolish, or cruel, and you look back and think “If I had been a little more mature or if I had a little more experience, I would never have done that.” So it seems that one of the following scenarios must be true:

• The main character is, as we established, a monster. He and AstroGirl hooked up a week ago, and as he goes through his list of excuses to prove that he totally isn’t at fault here, he’s trying to argue that he’s just too youthful to know right from wrong! His brain isn’t fully developed and he can’t be held accountable for his actions, even as he’s making them. After this conversation, he’s going to rob a bank and drive the wrong way on the highway, and when he’s stopped he’ll shrug and say, “If you take a look at my license, you’ll see I’m not yet an age where you can blame me for whatever I do.”
• This happened a few years ago, and his friend just found out, and is understandably angry that the main character didn’t tell him at the time. I think this has the most potential to make the main character a little less of a monster. Maybe AstroGirl claimed she was going to break up with the friend, so the main character decided it was okay (even knowing it really wasn’t), and then they didn’t break up and he panicked and didn’t know what to do. Maybe AstroGirl felt guilty and broke up with the friend, and the main character was too cowardly to admit his part in the breakup. Maybe it was a really messy relationship and the friend wasn’t being faithful, either, so the main character doesn’t feel bad. I would feel better about any one of the those scenarios if the whole rest of the song didn’t exist, where the main character makes it clear that he accepts zero blame in the situation and also thinks the friend isn’t entitled to any negative feelings. “It’s not my fault that you got cheated on” is an unhinged thing to say when you were actively the “other person” and knew it the whole time.
• Let’s return to the AstroTurf, which is suggestive to me that they were playing or attending a sporting event at the time. Combined with the line about being too young, I like to think that perhaps these people were on co-ed middle school soccer together, and years later the friend is still bitter that his “girlfriend” (who he passed notes to, slow-danced with once at homecoming in the school gym, and was dropped off by a parent for a few movie dates) went to a late-night party at the main character’s house, and the friend has twisted this into an epic tale of betrayal that he can’t get over, and the main character has likewise exaggerated it into a faux-sordid, “You have GOT to let that go” manner.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the third, especially in the context of the second verse:

You only know a good thing when it’s gone
But it’s far too late to play that pity song
Maybe if you had learnt to treat her right
She wouldn’t have run into my arms that night

If it’s “far too late,” then option one is out. And while the remark about not treating her right could absolutely just be another way to pass the buck, it also seems weird to save it for the last excuse- after “just look at her eyes, and you’ll understand”- if it’s actually true that AstroGirl came to the main character in tears because she felt that she wasn’t being valued, or because the friend was cruel or dismissive. It’s so much funnier to think that this whole story started with a 12-year-old girl going to a classmate’s house after dinner and being like “Thank you SO much more having me over to play Mario Kart, David. You’re totally a gentleman for letting me pick my character first. When Jason invites me to play video games, he just wants me to watch him. And today at lunch he traded his pear with Becky instead of with me and he KNOWS how much I like pears. So I don’t think I can date him anymore.” And twenty years later Jason still isn’t over it.

Genuis didn’t have the third verse, for some reason, but I snagged it from Spotify:

If I were you, I’d try and not take it personal
Find someone new, maybe try someone else’s girl
She likes your jokes, but mine were funnier
Or at least I didn’t kiss her in front of you

Regardless of the scenario, I don’t really know how you’re supposed to not take it personally if your friend is knowingly the other person in your romantic relationship. It’s not like the friend was trying to be the top of the class and the narrator got a perfect score on the final, or any similar “I’m just operating at my normal levels and if that impacts your life, it wasn’t intentional.” I do love the next line, where the narrator indicates that he’s really committed to the bit by suggesting that his friend should go find a new girl who’s already in a relationship and steal her. This, at least, implies that the narrator isn’t giving himself special dispensation- “all’s fair in love and war” really seems to be his motto. After all, he’s funny! So you can’t blame him. (I agree with him there; this song is enormously funny.) To show just how funny he is, he puts forth his final winning argument- at least he didn’t involve himself with his friend’s girlfriend where the friend could see them! He is a pillar of restraint.

I was working out the phrase I wanted for that last sentence and for whatever reason the word “nobility” was floating around in my head instead of what I actually wanted to say and my brain made connections to what I’ve been reading recently and I’ve just now decided that this song is actually a continuation of the storied tradition of Arthurian literature, and the narrator is a modern interpretation of Lancelot. Goodbye.