Wish I Didn't Miss You by Angie Stone

I spent the whole summer DJing The Surf Lodge in Montauk, which, if you haven't been, is a riotously successful party spot/restaurant/hotel situated on the farthest point of Long Island, New York. They call it Montauk, End of the Earth — that's how far away it is — and it's a onetime sleepy surf town converted into the biggest summer party spot for young New Yorkers with money to spend. You'd hear stories of the bigger bars making multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of liquor sales a day, multiple days a week, June through September.

To get there from my house on the East side of the East Village I'd traverse Manhattan to Penn Station on the West side then catch a train due East, changing at Jamaica, Queens, passing through Westhampton, Hampton Bays, Southampton, Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Amagansett, and finally arriving at Montauk. The whole trip apartment-door-to-hotel-room usually took me about four and a half hours, and I'd do it in reverse every Sunday, always leaving on the 7:06pm train, and hopefully arriving home just before midnight.

On a Friday, no matter what time of day I left to try and avoid the crowds, the train would be standing-room-only, and I'd park myself right next to the toilet because at 35 years of age I have not yet mastered the art of going multiple hours without peeing.

I spent most of those journeys listening to audiobooks and podcasts, but I needed a lot of music to play during the four hour sets at Surf Lodge. It wasn't always a wild party; there were quieter moments, like Friday afternoons before the crowds showed up, and the more chilled out Sunday breakfast sets. Wish I Didn't Miss You by Angie Stone served multiple purposes: I fecking love a breakup song, so I'd often pass 20 or so minutes listening to it on repeat on my headphones on the train, but from a DJing standpoint it was the perfect transition song to take me from relaxed to party in three easy steps — the beat starts off smooth and chill, but the chorus goes hard and mixes perfectly into Smooth Operator by Sade, which mixes perfectly into Together Again by Janet Jackson, and boom the party was on.

The funny thing is I'd forgotten about this song for years, and then on a random day in April or May the lyrics, "I can't eat I can't sleep anymore," popped into my head so I googled them, and here we are.

I LIKE YOU!