Our Sexy Playlist Developed a Maritime Agenda

There are many ways to mark twelve years together. Narelle and I chose dinner at home, good wine and a shared commitment not to discuss the leaking garden tap until morning.

We were in our late forties. Romance had become less about grand surprises and more about removing obstacles. I'd finished the washing. She'd put the phones away. We'd eaten something requiring actual plates. The bedroom lamp worked. Frankly, the evening was overachieving.

We'd negotiated the dinner over breakfast. I suggested going out. Narelle looked at the rain, then at the shoes she'd worn all week, and asked whether staying home could count as an actual plan instead of the thing we did when we failed to make one.

'We can book a table,' I said, indicating our kitchen.

'Quiet corner?'

'Variable service. Handsome waiter.'

'Does he know where the good napkins are?'

He did not, but he was prepared to learn.

At six, I found her in the spare room moving a basket of clean washing off the chair. She was wearing earrings I hadn't seen in months. One was in; the other rested in her palm while she stared at the basket.

'Leave it,' I said.

'It's been there since Tuesday.'

'Another evening won't change its ambitions.'

She set the earring down and kissed me. Then she asked whether I had actually turned the oven on. Romance in our house was capable of handling two subjects at once.

Dinner went well until I mentioned the tap in the course of explaining why the side path was damp. Narelle held up one finger. I stopped mid-sentence, took a mouthful of food and changed the subject to a woman at work who had accidentally invited the entire office to her private dentist appointment.

Narelle laughed so hard she had to put down her fork. I realised I hadn't heard that particular laugh all week. We'd spoken plenty, but mostly in the short practical exchanges that let a household keep moving. Hearing her laugh felt like finding a room we hadn't been using.

Afterwards she sent me to the lounge while she finished something on her phone. I pretended not to know it involved the music. She pretended not to notice me straightening the couch cushions as though they had been the main obstacle to intimacy all along.

Narelle had made a playlist. Its title was Tonight, which I admired for its directness. Our usual shared playlists were called things like Car Maybe and Kitchen Songs 3, none of which made promises.

'No ads?' I asked.

'No ads.'

'No live versions where a stranger asks Sydney to make some noise?'

'I've checked.'

She'd thought of everything. I kissed her in the hallway, where we normally held discussions about whether the recycling bin was genuinely full or merely arranged badly. It was a substantial improvement in the use of the space.

For a while the music did its job. Quiet, warm, unobtrusive. We moved into the bedroom. Narelle rested her forehead against mine and smiled. I felt the lovely, familiar relief of being with someone who knew me and still chose to come closer.

Then a man began singing about a ship.

Not metaphorically. He was very clear about the vessel, the crew and the work ahead. Several other men joined him. Their enthusiasm suggested the sea was rough and they had eaten well.

Narelle froze.

I waited for the song to reveal some unexpected romantic context. It did not. There was a chorus. The chorus had duties.

'Interesting direction,' I said.

'That is not mine.'

'I haven't touched anything.'

The men continued. There was considerable hauling. No one appeared interested in our evening.

Narelle sat up and reached for the speaker controls. I caught her wrist gently.

'Wait. I need to know where they're going.'

She laughed, then tried to stop laughing, which produced a noise that made me laugh too. We sat against the pillows while the crew pursued its objective with admirable discipline.

'I checked this playlist,' she said.

'Perhaps you checked the coastal section separately.'

'You must have added it.'

'Why would I add maritime labour to Tonight?'

'You named the barbecue playlist Meat Feelings.'

That was relevant evidence, though not conclusive.

We retrieved a phone. The song was there, sitting between two perfectly suitable tracks, innocent as a dinner guest who had brought an accordion without being asked. Narelle scrolled through the playlist history while I examined the title.

It was familiar. Annoyingly familiar. Somewhere in my brain, a cupboard opened.

'Was this from that pub?' I asked.

'Which pub?'

'The one near the ferry. On the weekend we went to see your cousin.'

She stared at the screen. Then she stared at me.

'Oh no.'

Six months earlier, stranded indoors by rain on a short trip south, we'd spent an afternoon in a pub hosting a community singing group. We'd intended to have lunch. Instead we'd joined a table of cheerful adults who knew exactly when to thump it.

The pub had smelled of wet coats and hot chips. We'd taken the only free seats at the end of a long table, expecting to remain harmless spectators. A woman called Bev immediately slid a sheet of paper towards us.

'Words,' she said.

'We're just having lunch,' Narelle told her.

'Good. Singing's hungry work.'

A man opposite us tapped the table to establish a beat. I came in early. Narelle came in late. Bev pointed at us both with the patient disappointment of a person discovering two people could share a house for years without developing a common understanding of time.

By the third attempt we had improved enough to become a public nuisance. Narelle added a flourish that belonged to no known maritime tradition. I answered with a low harmony I was unable to reproduce on request. Bev nodded as though this was the best she could reasonably expect from casual lunch trade.

At one point the rain eased and we could have left. Neither of us moved. Narelle ordered another plate of chips. I asked the name of the song. The man with the beat told us, then added three recommendations without taking a breath.

'Careful,' Narelle whispered. 'We're joining something.'

'We can leave whenever we like.'

'Can we? Bev has given us parts.'

She had. Mine was essentially to make one loud sound at the correct moment, a task I approached with more confidence than skill. Narelle's involved actual words. She learned them immediately and spent the rest of the afternoon pretending not to enjoy my struggle.

When we finally stood to go, Bev asked whether we'd be back next month. We explained that we lived a long way away.

'Still,' she said, handing Narelle the lyric sheet. 'You can practise.'

On the ferry, Narelle tucked the paper carefully into her bag so it wouldn't get wet. I remember that now. At the time I thought she was merely tidying up. Twelve years together and I had failed to recognise the beginning of a private musical commitment happening right beside me.

Someone had taught us the chorus. Someone else had explained that the chorus was the easy bit and we shouldn't become arrogant. We had become arrogant anyway.

Near the end of the afternoon, Narelle had said, 'This is going on the romantic playlist.'

I had replied, 'Absolutely. Strong sense of shared purpose.'

Neither of us remembered whether we'd actually done it. The phone had now provided a firm answer.

'We were joking,' she said.

'Apparently we were also organised.'

The song started again. I'd accidentally put it on repeat while investigating. Narelle gave me a look that suggested my technical contribution had been assessed and found wanting.

I began singing the chorus.

'You know all of it,' she said.

'Only the main bit.'

Then the next verse began and she joined in ahead of me, including a line neither of us could plausibly have reconstructed from context.

I turned towards her very slowly.

'Only the main bit?' she said before I could speak.

'You've been listening to this.'

'It came on while I was cleaning.'

'How many times?'

She folded her arms. 'The grout was bad.'

We spent the next ten minutes conducting a deeply unserious inquiry into our independent shanty consumption. I admitted I'd listened to it on the drive to a work conference. She admitted she'd searched for another version because this one skipped a verse she liked.

'A favourite verse,' I said. 'And you blamed me.'

'You were the obvious suspect.'

'For knowing where the rope goes?'

The inquiry expanded when she asked about my work conference. I admitted the song had been useful on a long stretch of highway.

'Useful how?'

'It kept me alert.'

'By requiring you to sail something?'

'By having a strong structure.'

She gave me the look she used when I called an unnecessary purchase an investment. I confessed to singing both the lead and the response, alone in the car, occasionally disagreeing with myself about the timing.

Narelle was silent for a moment. Then she said she had once stopped the vacuum cleaner so she could hear the beginning properly.

That was the admission that undid me. Not the favourite verse or the saved alternative recording. The image of my practical wife standing in the lounge, holding a silent vacuum, waiting respectfully for a man to introduce a fictional crew.

'We should tell Bev,' I said.

'We absolutely should not. She'll send a rehearsal schedule.'

Narelle took the phone from me and found the playlist entry. We both leaned in as though examining an important historical document. Beside the song was the small indication that she had added it.

She lifted her chin. 'On a joint recommendation.'

I accepted the finding. Maritime responsibility, like the mortgage, was apparently shared.

We were laughing too hard to sustain either dignity or the original mood. That turned out not to matter. The new mood was ours too.

Narelle got up and returned with the leftover dessert. We ate it in bed while the speaker, finally released from repeat, resumed its attempt to be tasteful. A soft piano sounded faintly embarrassed by what had preceded it.

'I did want tonight to be nice,' she said after a while.

'It is nice.'

'You know what I mean.'

I did. We'd both been tired lately. We'd started treating uninterrupted time together as something that had to justify the effort of arranging it. A perfect dinner. A perfect mood. Ideally no unexpected sailors.

I put my bowl aside and moved closer.

'I like that we're idiots in the same fairly specific way,' I said.

She leaned against me. 'I knew the second verse before you.'

'Yes, darling. Very alluring.'

We kissed again. This time, when she reached for the speaker, I let her switch it off. The quiet felt good. So did not needing the evening to recover from anything.

The next morning, over coffee, she showed me a new playlist. Every song was suitable. She'd checked twice.

Then she opened another one. One track only.

Its title was For Emergencies At Sea.

'Private playlist?' I asked.

'Collaborative,' she said. 'We've both earned editing rights.'