I feel sure that somewhere on this blog we have kvetched and moaned about The Doors. But I can only find a passing reference by TGOTS to the odd experience of seeing Oliver Stone’s movie with our Russian exchange students.

My Doors associations go like this: When I was seven or eight, my sister was dating a sweet boy whose favorite song was “People are Strange.” When I was twelve or thirteen, my mother informed me that “Hello, I Love You” was a Beatles song, a fact I repeated to either my cool friend or my cool brother, who laughed and set me straight. When I was sixteen, there was that viewing of The Doors with The Russians, and the movie was godawful, and Jim Morrison getting a blow job from poor, sweet Meg Ryan in the recording studio* made him repugnant to me, and by the time he died, approximately seventeen hours after the movie started, I was glad.

Then when I was twenty-five or so, I met this nice fella whose favorite group in the entire world was The Doors. He was a friend of a friend. I remember very clearly driving with him in Maine, on the way to the Yarmouth Clam Festival, and telling him how much I despised the group.

Well, it’s a decade later, and that nice fella is now my permanent fella. He still loves The Doors, though perhaps a degree less than in his youthful days. And I still despise them, though perhaps a degree less than in mine.

In fact, I’ve decided there are four Doors songs I like. “Peace Frog,” which I heard this morning, is one of them; the uptempo beat combined with the horrific images of blood-filled streets just says Sixties to me, and I enjoy it despite myself. “Back Door Man” is another; I like the boozy obscenity of it (but it must be noted that this is an old blues song, not a creation of Morrison et al). “Love Her Madly” is a third, but I think it’s mostly because I laugh when he says “don’t you love her as she’s walking out the door,” picturing myself leaving to protest my fella playing one too many songs by the group.

The last one the fella introduced me to, and I think that was the moment I uncurled my fist and let go of my 100 percent hatred for Jim. “I Will Never Be Untrue” has a hint of old blues about it too, but from what I can tell it’s original to the group. It’s pretty, and it’s funny (“I will never stay out drinkin’ later than two … two-thirty”), and it makes me wish for just a second that I could have seen old Jim perform.

But then I hear “The End,” and all the other poetic blowhardy nonsense, and I’m back where I belong, on the anti-Doors side of the street.

* I might be remembering this wrong.  But I’ve decided to not spend any more time this morning Googling “Meg Ryan blow job.”