A record store date isn’t sex, but it is intimate enough to be classified as a body. The foreplay of getting your bearings and noting how the shop is laid out. Fingers slipping through layers of vinyl, feeling the plastic covers, some smoother than others. Peering over to see if your partner is still into it as time becomes an afterthought. Every experience different from the ones before.
I don’t mean to take this analogy further than it requires, but I do mean to say that I felt close to Elizabeth as we went up and down the aisles of each shop. For my 32nd birthday, Elizabeth gave me my dream day: she offered to take me to five different record stores around the city and said I could get a vinyl at each one.
I’ve had more elaborate parties. For example, Elizabeth rented a party bus for my 30th, and us and our friends went on a fast food tour of Columbus. But as my transition into “unc-dom” takes fuller shape, a record store shopping spree is exactly what my heart needed. Time shared immersing ourselves in the music we love most.
Music has always been a foundational part of Elizabeth and I’s relationship. When we first start talking, I remember hours spent texting back and forth about concerts we’d attended and artists we loved listening to. I had Acid Rap playing in my car when I picked her up for our first date because she said she liked Chance the Rapper.
For one of our first Valentine’s together, Elizabeth, the most thoughtful gift giver I know, burnt me a CD with songs attached to memories we shared. Now that we’re married, I laugh when I can hear her eyes roll as another vinyl arrives at the door. And those laughs turn into knowing smiles as she sings a song she only knows because she’s heard me play it obsessively around the house.
Megan Falley, the nationally-ranked slam poet and wife of the gone-heartbreakingly-soon Andrea Gibson, wrote a recent essay in which she described learning about basketball because of Gibson’s love for it. A poem she wrote for Gibson, peppered with NBA lore, says:
“I’m only still going with the basketball references
because of how much it would make you laugh—
to hear what I learned about sports
just so I could have another language
to speak to you in.”
I struggled with foreign language classes in school, but I’ve become well-versed in Elizabeth’s heartsongs. I can say this with confidence because I shouldn’t know what a West Wilson or Amanda Batula is. But during the quarantine period of COVID, I let Elizabeth guide me on a journey of getting into Real Housewives, which opened us up to the wider world of Bravo TV and eventually led us to our favorite show, Summer House.
Similarly, Elizabeth name drops role players on my favorite basketball team, the Denver Nuggets, like they’re friends we meet for trivia every Wednesday. Just as I flip from side A to side B on my most cherished vinyl, I turn every stone looking for clues that will give me a deeper understanding of who she is. I see her doing the same with my beloveds.
This city we share, Elizabeth’s hometown, is one I now consider home because of the love that brought me here and the kindness I’ve had extended to me along the way. On one of our frequent after-work walks, she asked if I’d ever want to live anywhere else. We talked about the places we might consider but settled on the fact that nowhere else is Columbus. Nowhere else is ours the way this city is ours.
One more point for Columbus is something that a local writer replied after I shared about my birthday excursion: “It’s amazing to live in a city that has (at least) 5 record stores.” He added, “I’ll never take that for granted (nor will my bank account).”
When I went back to one of those record stores on my actual birthday, the owner asked if I had just been in for some kind of celebration. He remembered. I don’t take that for granted either. Columbus isn’t small by any means, but it allows for a closeness where interactions like this are possible. Where conversations can carry over into shared languages that feel as intimate as a record store date. It’s not sex, but I sigh as I head home with a sleeve full of songs to add to our vocabulary.
About the Writer:
Alex Lewis (He/Him) of Feels Like Home
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Socials: lewisalex10.com
Gratitude to Alex Lewis for being the 2nd guest writer of the 2026 cohort. Alex is actually the first male writer of the Postcards & Playlists series and this is the 3rd year. So shoutout to him for being the first. Alex’s Substack caught my attention years ago because he is a music lover like myself. His postcard had me smiling as read of him and his wife learning and embracing another’s literal love languages and I’m such a fan of Andrea and Megan (I agree, gone too soon). Alex’s hosting an upcoming event, The Album Club where they will discuss Solange’s, “When I Get Home” and I wish I lived in Columbus so that I could attend. I’m a huge Solange fan and my Substack is inspired partially by her. I haven’t told anyone yet, (until now), but I’ll be seeing her in NY in June for a conversation about the 10 year anniversary of “A Seat at the Table” hosted by Vulture Mag (I definitely will write about it). At the end of the year him and the fellow guest writers will meet virtually to celebrate the postcards and the joy of writing.
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Thank you for having me, Janel! Hopefully I didn't ruin it for the guys after me 😅
Bookmarking for later.