In Between Days: My 35-Year Love Affair with The Cure
However far away, I will always love you
Yesterday I got so old I felt like I could die
It’s 2008, and it’s 2am. I’m cradling my four-week old infant as she nurses for what must be the 17th time that night, but it’s hard to say as it’s like one prolonged session that never, ever ends.
Do you remember those “Rock-a-Bye Baby” CDs? They were popular in the early 2000s, a series of discs featuring top artists for parenting-aged people (think U2, Radiohead, Prince, Journey, you get the idea). Gen-X gold. Immensely popular at baby showers.
I was delighted when friends gifted me The Cure version at mine.
But on A Night Like This, I can’t remember much of anything. I’m high on breastfeeding endorphins and low on post-pregnancy hormonal dips, and deliriously exhausted from four weeks of no more than two consecutive hours of sleep.
In a blurry haze, I recognize the lullaby playing in the nursery is “In Between Days.”
My favorite Cure song.
My frazzled brain processes an inordinate number of timelines at once. I’m in a nightclub I’m at a show I’m falling in love I’m dancing with friends I’m crying I’m laughing I’m living my life — my life till this point — steeped in this soundtrack.
And in this timeline — the one with my voracious baby in my arms and on my boob—I begin to sob.
“Go on, go on, just walk away. Go on, go on, your choice is made.”
I chose this baby and this life and here I am, an infinite distance from my own memories and I fear I’ll never find my way back to myself.
“Go on, go on, and disappear.”
I’ve disappeared into the needs of this frantic little body that’s literally sucking her life force from me.
“Go on, go on, away from here.”
I cry for my nights past, spent spinning in dark wave nightclub circles to this glorious song, now reduced to the twinkle instrumental of a lullaby much as my prior existence has faded to indistinct whirls of memory.
“And I know I was wrong when I said it was true, that it couldn’t be me and be her in between without you.”
My sobs turn to heaves and then to just breaths. I sigh, relieved.
I’m still me, the same me of my memories.
Now I am her, the mom I’m becoming.
“Me” and “Her” are one and the same and we are both exhausted. But we’re going to be okay. And wherever we go from here, I think, looking down at my nursing baby’s head, I can’t be me or be her without you.
“Without you, without you.”
“Never without you,” I whisper to my infant daughter. “For always and ever are always for you.”
It was my In Between Days night, full of a whirlwind of memories of past, present, and future, and all set to the soundtrack of one singular band...
You make me feel like I am young again
It’s 1992, about 4am. I’m alone, sitting on the sidewalk in front of a record store in Dunedin, Florida, because it’s a Ticketmaster outlet a few hours outside of the University of Florida, where I am a senior. I drive here because any record store in Gainesville is going to be too mobbed with other college student fans to get good seats for a show. And tomorrow morning, tickets go on sale to see The Cure.
So I sit on the street, alone, all night.
(Adult me revisiting this memory is terrified for that 21-year-old woman and how vulnerable she was.)
But it’s the Wish tour. Kristina and I need good seats. I am resolute.
I’m in college and am accustomed to all-nighters. This is the best excuse I’ve ever had to pull one.
My drive, my wait, and my patience pay off — we get second row seats!
You’re such a strange girl, I think you come from another world
It’s 1991, it’s sometime between 9pm and 2am and because I’m finally 21, I’m in a dance club with Kristina, my college roommate and best friend.
Kristina is the influence I didn’t know I needed but most definitely did. Music, fashion, ambition, brains, and guts— Kristina has it all, and I’m just happy to be along for the ride.
We go clubbing, a lot.
She’s The Perfect Girl.
We dance to everything, but our favorite is Saturday night at Netherworld, where we dance to the all the classics of the Dark Wave era — New Order, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, and The Cure, always The Cure.
“Charlotte Sometimes” is our favorite song but really, anything off Head on the Door, Disintegration, or Staring at the Sea is perfection, at our apartment or on the dance floor.
Netherworld is our black fishnets and eyeliner collegiate Mecca.
It takes us some time to realize the club had been opened by Todd…
You, strange as angels
It’s 1988, I’m 17 years old and I’m in love for the first time.
I meet Todd my senior year at my local suburban record store, Q Records. I walk in and see the tall, skinny, pierced, black-haired boy behind the counter and I’ve never seen anyone so effortlessly cool in my life. I can’t believe he’s looking back at me, especially as I’m here with my best friend, Denise, to buy the Hair motion picture soundtrack, which is about the least cool way to impress the incredibly cool record store guy.
But now Todd is my boyfriend, and he’s as unpretentious and kind as he is — did I mention? — cool.
He makes me mixtapes. Swoon.
Through them I discover Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, XTC, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Smiths.
But not The Cure. He plays me the whole Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album instead. At first I kinda hate it, especially the vocals. Smith’s emotive tenor grates on my nerves.
“It’s the one that makes me scream (she said).”
Maybe I don’t quite want to scream, but his voice is so unsettling.
I listen again.
“I’m dancing, screaming, itching, squealing, fever feeling…”
I still don’t like it… but I must hear it again.
“It’s torture. But I’m almost there.”
Ugh, not this record. Except wait.. yes, this record. Play it again.
“It’s dancing in a deepest ocean, twisting in the water. It’s just like a dream.”
I’m not sure how, but I’m now obsessed. What once sounded abrasive now sounds Just Like Heaven.
That’s our song, mine and Todd’s.
Our relationship is short, but its impact, lifelong.
He was just like a dream.
All the night time leaves me, three imaginary boys
It’s 2002, and my show-going bestie Liz and my roommate and I are telling our friend Greg about the new website we want to launch.
We want to be a positive voice in Seattle’s indie music scene, to uplift all the local bands we’ve been seeing in small venues and build a sense of community with other music fans.
“You know, like we’re your friends who go out the shows and tell you all about them, so you know which bands to go see,” we explain.
“We just need a name.”
Our pal Greg thinks and says, “I’ve got it.”
He suggests we pay homage to the debut Cure album, Three Imaginary Boys.
“You could be called Three Imaginary Girls,” he says.
And just like that, our music website — and the greatest creative adventure of my life — is born.
You hit me again, you howl and hit me again
It’s 2016, and the Cure are playing in Richland, Washington, which is basically Portland, Oregon. A girl friend of mine offers me a last-minute ticket and ride to the show.
I’m jubilant.
I’m crazy in love or limerance or whatever with my newish boyfriend so I tell him I’m going. He scoffs at my enthusiasm. “The Cure are an oldies band,” he says, dismissive.
Am I going to see an oldies band? I mean, I am kinda old. But I’m excited? Aren’t I? I leave for the show, my glow dimmed by his derision.
I adore this man so much I can’t yet see that he sneers at everything I do or like or value. It takes a lot of emotional labor to figure this out and I have done none of this work yet. I take the three-hour road trip to see the show.
Which is amazing, of course.
This is the first faint whiff that perhaps my artsy-than-thou boyfriend isn’t a great arbiter of taste, because nothing about The Cure is past its prime. They sound fresh, alive, robust, fully current and exciting and relevant. I have a magical night of dancing with my friend.
I don’t yet know this, but my boyfriend leaves me for his best friend’s wife two months later.
The heartache of this loss, the humiliation, my poor judgment, breaks me for a longer time than it should.
Eventually I shake (dog) shake him off.
I think I’m falling, I’m falling, I’m falling in…
It’s 2003 and it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m at the Crocodile Cafe at a show, and also on a first date with a tall, dark, handsome man with long beautiful forearms.
We’ve just met, and he’s regaling me with tales of seeing The Cure headline the Lorelei festival in Germany when he was a scrawny young thing in the army. He’s a huge fan, and we bond over our shared love of this band, among many, many other things.
I don’t yet know he’s to be a great love — the one I will marry and make babies with — but I can already tell he comes from another world.
He’s shaking my heart around and around, and turned me all upside down.
“The Perfect Girl” was featured on our wedding CD giveaway for guests.
You can never get enough, enough of this stuff
It’s 2020 and my 12-year-old shares my obsession for music, if not all the same bands, of course.
Right now she’s blasting music from her Alexa, in the same room where I’d sobbed my eyes out to a Cure lullaby 12 years earlier.
She’s playing her usual melange of tween pop and darker sounds (Destroy Boys and Mother Mother, if memory serves) when six familiar guitar notes ring out, followed by three drum beats and the unmistakable, “I would say I’m sorry if I thought that it would change your mind.”
I poke my head in. “Wow, you like “Boys Don’t Cry?” I ask her.
“You know this song??” she answers, incredulous and simultaneously somehow both impressed and disdainful.
“Do I know The Cure?” I ask her, laughing on the inside as my heart sings.
Oh yes, I know The Cure. My sweet child, I have so many songs — and stories — to share with you.
However far away, I will always love you
It’s 2023 — June 1, to be specific — and I’m on a family adventure with my two kids and their Dad.
We’re at a Cure concert together.
Because Ticketmaster is a jerk, we’re seated a zillion miles from the stage and up so high, my knees get weak anytime I look down.
So I don’t look downward.
Instead I peer over at my daughter. She’s somehow that same babe I held in arms 15 years ago, now this Perfect Girl sitting beside me.
And next to her sits my youngest child, slightly awkward and adorable in goth regalia with their fingerless gloves and giant headphones. How Beautiful They Are.
The show is incredible. The band plays a 29-song set, nearly three hours long. Every note is pitch perfect. They play a surprising number of brand new songs, ones not yet recorded, and they’re gorgeous. Over 40 years together and this band still creates new music, and delights stadiums full of people. I’m in awe of their longevity, their enduring relationships as band mates, and their stamina. They save most of their best-known songs till the encores.
“In-Between Days” is second-to-last.
As it plays, my mind drifts back to that fateful, fretful night in the nursery, when I feared my baby represented an end to my authentic, creative, fun self.
“Now I know I was wrong when I said it was true.”
I’m so glad I had it so wrong. How could I have known of the joy, the color, the creativity, the immense love that fills my days — In Between and otherwise — with you two in my life?
I couldn’t be me and be her in between without you, A + N.
For always and ever, will always be for you.
And The Cure.
I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.
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Disintegration is a masterpiece, but man, Head on the Door is sooo good! "Push" is one of my fave songs by the band.
This may be my favorite piece of yours, Dana. So so so good from start to finish.
The Cure has been so damn good for so long. Sadly, I've never seen them live. Maybe one day I'll get the chance. Until then, I have Apple Music for a reason.
Keep on keeping on, D.