Julia Ridley Smith’s story collection Sex Romp Gone Wrong is smart, poignant, and funny.
Like me, many of the women in Sex Romp Gone Wrong came of age in the era of the mix tape. We smoked cigarettes and fooled around to an eclectic melange of indie rock, hip hop, soul music, grunge, classic rock, pop, and the immortal Prince. While some songs and artists on this playlist are mentioned in specific stories, I’ve mostly gone for music that resonates with Sex Romp Gone Wrong’s themes: desire, love, sex, relationships, motherhood, and women’s righteous anger.
“None of Your Business,” Salt-N-Pepa
“You Oughta Know,” Alanis Morissette
In my story “Don’t Breathe, Breathe,” a bunch of women on a 50th-birthday trip to a North Carolina beach get drunk, talk about the shit they’ve been through, and play music from back in the day, when they were young and horny and aspired to the bravado of the women serving up these two songs.
“The Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” Sinead O’Connor
“Season of the Witch,” Donovan
When Sinead O’Connor died, I recalled how much her music meant to me in the 1990s. I used to crank up my ridiculously large stereo, with its huge speakers, and revel in her anguish and rage and her beautiful voice. “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” is so wistful and angry. A similar mix of emotions pervades “At the Arrowhead,” my story about a nursing home aide caring for an elderly man who reminds her of the last time she saw her troublesome little brother Donovan. Donovan, of course, named by their hippie mom for one of her fave singers.
“Funky Broadway,” Wilson Pickett
“I Can’t Stand the Rain,” Ann Peebles
Leckie, the young main character in my story “Cleopatra’s Needle,” says, “I set off down Broadway like I own the place. Funky Broadway. Broadway, New York, the city that never sleeps.” Leckie is headed to meet her lover at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but begins to lose her confidence as she watches the rain slide down the glass wall near the Temple of Dendur.
“Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Patti Smith
“Let’s Get It On,” Marvin Gaye
In my title story, “Sex Romp Gone Wrong,” a mother desperate to conceive and a daughter impatient to grow up are coming at sexual experience from very different places. When I discovered this Patti Smith version of the Nirvana song that’s such an anthem for my generation, I realized I’d never understood half the words. Thanks for enunciating, Patti. And also for being awesome. If you’re reading this (you’re not), I love you.
“Delirious,” Prince
Carrying on the theme of teen angst is “Hot Lesbian Vampire Magic School,” in which girls in a special boarding school are catching BIG feelings and deliriously demonstrating them through dance. Look in the text for a shout-out to the artist formerly known as.
“Psycho Killer,” Talking Heads
There are at least two female murderers in my book. See if you can find them!
“Welcome to the Jungle,” Guns N’ Roses
Wendy and Fiona in my story “Flown” used to drive around topless and listen to this song ironically. That’s a Gen-X thing: irony. We started that, and were really into it, until it got too popular, and then we decided we were too cool even for irony.
“F**k and Run,” Liz Phair
“Give Me One Reason,” Tracy Chapman
Sometimes women also don’t want to stick around after. But we might consider it, if you give us a good reason.
“Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves,” the Eurythmics and Aretha Franklin
Nope, you didn’t give us a reason. “Now this is a song to celebrate / the conscious liberation of the female state / Mothers, daughters and their daughters too.” Pairs well with my modern fairy tale “The Woman Who Did Things Wrong.”
“Delia,” David Johansen & the Harry Smiths
A character by the name of Delia appears in several of my stories (“Don’t Breathe, Breathe”; “Et tu, Miss Jones”; and “Damn It, Damn It, Damn It”). Her daddy used to sing this song to her, much to her mother’s chagrin: “You do know the Delia in that song is a prostitute? And the singer shot her?” What really gets me in this tune is the repeated refrain “all the friends they ever had are gone.” Sigh.
“Freight Train,” by Elizabeth Cotten
In my closing story, “Mrs. DeVry, Hanging Out the Wash,” the narrator says, “I wonder about that night when my great-grandmother was run down by that freight headed north.” That line puts me in mind of this tune by Elizabeth Cotten. When she sings, “Freight train, freight train, run so fast,” and picks her guitar, you can hear the lonesome train wheels turning: “When I die, Lord, bury me deep / Way down on Old Chestnut Street / So I can hear Old Number Nine / as she comes rolling by.”
Julia Ridley Smith is the author of a short story collection, Sex Romp Gone Wrong (Blair, 2024). Her first book, The Sum of Trifles (University of Georgia Press, 2021), is a memoir about cleaning out her antique-dealer parents’ house, grief, and what the objects we live with mean to us. Smith’s short stories and essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, the New England Review, and The Southern Review, among other places, and her work has been recognized as notable in Best American Essays. She teaches creative writing at UNC Chapel Hill.