«Your free ride is over»: the routine, the list of lies and goodbye to the cushion boyfriend

Some break-ups announce themselves with a slammed door and some announce themselves with a yawn. The second kind is the most treacherous, because nobody sees it coming. Not even the person living through it. One day you realise you've spent months waking up with the feeling that everything repeats itself, that the coffee tastes of nothing and that your life has turned into a corridor with no windows. And it takes you a little longer still to ask who turned off the light.

«No quiero otro novio cojín» (I don't want another cushion boyfriend) is one of the songs on «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk», the first album of the trilogy, and it's built exactly like that: first the yawn, then the slammed door. On the song's own page I've already given the broad outline, and the full lyrics are published. Here I want to go more slowly and look at three things: what routine is doing in a heartbreak song, how you recognise someone who is living off you, and why the ending, simple as it is, strikes me as one of the bravest moments on the album.

The usual note before I start: the characters in my songs are characters. The cushion boyfriend has no ID card and there's no point looking for him. What does exist, and a lot, is the kind of relationship he stands for.

A song that takes its time to say what it is

If someone puts the song on without knowing the title, for quite a while they'll think it's about something else. The published lyric opens with a list of short images, two or three words each: waking up alone, empty looks, losing track of time, cold routine. Then the street with no name, the unhurried steps, the faceless people. It sounds like a song about the city, about work, about the fog that seeps into you during the bad months.

And the chorus of that first part is a literal loop. The word «rutina», routine, comes round again and again, like clocking in: everything repeats, nothing surprises, always the same. And then, just when you've got used to the grey, an exclamation bursts out and breaks the mood: «¡Me ofende!», it offends me!

That structure isn't a whim. It happens all the time in real life. Before we understand that the problem has a first and last name, we experience it as a general malaise. We don't say «my partner is using me». We say «I'm tired», «I don't know what's wrong with me», «I just don't care about anything». The first half of the song is exactly that: the stage where you haven't pointed at anyone yet and you only notice that your light is going out.

That moment fascinates me because it's where so many people get stuck. Some relationships don't end because of one great betrayal, but because one of the two people slowly loses their colour. And since there's no specific day when it happens, there's no specific day to react either.

Routine as stage scenery

It's only fair to defend routine, because it isn't the enemy. Every life has repetition in it: the alarm clock, the metro, the weekly shop, the same bar every Thursday. Repetition can be a refuge. Plenty of people find peace in knowing what comes next.

The routine in the song is something else. Look at the adjectives: cold, insipid, bitter, rigid. The laughter is distant, the dreams are asleep and the emotions are mutating. And at the end of the verse comes a word that doesn't belong to routine at all: «oprimidos», oppressed. That's where the lyric stops describing boredom and starts describing a cage.

The difference between the two is easy to explain and hard to see from the inside. Good routine is the kind you choose and that holds you up. Bad routine is the kind imposed on you that drains you. One leaves you energy for everything else; the other eats the energy you had.

When a relationship rests on one person giving and the other receiving, the giver's life fills up with that second kind of routine. Working, paying, organising, sorting things out. And because the other person contributes next to nothing, everything weighs twice as much. That's why, in the song, the work is insipid and the coffee is bitter. It's not that the coffee has changed. It's that there's nothing sweet left around it.

One word in the lyric, «letargo», lethargy, seems to me the key to the whole first half. In Spanish «letargo» is also what some animals do in winter: slow everything down to survive. It's a state of waiting. And that's what the narrator feels: that she's waiting for something, without quite knowing what, while life goes by at the unhurried pace of a street with no name.

«It offends me!»

Of the whole first part, my favourite line is that exclamation. After so many dimmed images, the character lets out a shout and says that all of this is offensive. Not boring, not tiring: offensive.

It makes me laugh because it's a wildly over-the-top reaction, pure soap opera, and at the same time it's fair. There is something offensive about having your joy stolen without anyone asking permission. There is something offensive about your life turning grey because someone has decided to move into it rent-free.

That «¡Me ofende!» is the first sign that the narrator is about to wake up from her lethargy. She doesn't yet know who to aim it at, but she no longer accepts the grey as normal. Anger, in this case, is good news. It's the sign that something is still alive in there and protesting.

I've said it before: in my lyrics drama and humour go together. An exclamation like that could sound ridiculous in another context. Here it works like an alarm clock. And the moment it goes off, the song changes its skin.

The change of tone: «This is over»

The second half begins with no transition. The published lyric jumps from the routine loop to a line that leaves no room for doubt: this is over, your free ride has come to an end.

The Spanish word is «chollo», and it's perfect for this. A «chollo» is a bargain, a cushy deal, something you get for very little effort and a lot of profit. Telling someone their «chollo» is over means telling them that until now they've been living off something that wasn't theirs, and that it's finished. There's no romantic drama in that line. There's bookkeeping.

And straight after comes the title. I don't want another cushion boyfriend. And the comparison that finishes him off: he's ended up at the level of a sock.

I've explained in another post on this blog that the sock is one of those words that keeps coming back in my songs, like gofio, the toasted flour from the Canary Islands. Just look at titles like «El calcetín» or «Gofio de calcetín», whose cover shows a man with a Pinocchio nose eating gofio from a bowl. I don't want to repeat that whole dictionary here. I'll just say that the cushion and the sock have something in common: they're soft, domestic objects that sit there doing nothing. A cushion stays on the sofa. A sock gets lost in the washing machine. Neither of them is going to catch you if you fall.

How to spot the one who settles in

What comes after the title is, for me, the most useful part of the song. The lyric imagines what the cushion boyfriend will do now that the door has been closed on him. And what it imagines is a pattern.

First, a new «obra de teatrillo», a little stage play, premiere and all. Then the question: who'll be the next sucker? And after that, the procedure, almost step by step: make someone fall in love, but first take a good look at their money, their property, their car. Pretend to care about their needs. And use all of it to show off in front of friends he then trashes behind their backs.

You don't need a study to know this exists. Anyone who has been around a bit knows someone who chose a partner by checking the postcode before the face. What the song does well is put the signs in order, like a detection manual:

• Interest shows up before affection. First come the questions about the flat, the job or the car, and only then about everything else.
• The other person's needs get listened to, but only when it suits. The lyric puts it very precisely: «harás que te interesen», you'll make them seem to interest you. In other words, the interest is a performance.
• There's an audience. The car isn't wanted for travelling, it's wanted for showing off.
• And there's a double face with everyone, friends included.

If one of those signs reminds you of someone close to you, it doesn't mean you're with a cushion boyfriend. But if they all turn up together, it's worth paying attention. The song doesn't give advice, but it paints a very recognisable portrait.

The little stage play

The word «teatrillo» wasn't picked at random. The diminutive makes it smaller and mocks it at the same time. It isn't real theatre, it's a «teatrillo»: a tiny show, cardboard scenery, cheap acting.

Theatre turns up quite a lot in my songs when I write about manipulation. There's a single called simply «Una obra de teatro», A stage play, and the idea of a relationship as a rehearsed performance comes back in songs like «Mentes diabólicas». That image interests me because it explains something that's very hard to grasp while you're living it: that the affection you were getting had been rehearsed. That there was a script, that you were the audience and that the show had already been performed before, with someone else.

That's what hurts most about uncovering a cushion boyfriend. Not so much the money or the wasted time, but realising that the tenderness was part of the scenery too. And that next season's opening night already has a date.

The inventory of lies

Then comes the part I enjoy most. The lyric starts listing things, like a report, or like a hearing in a village courtroom: there's so much to tell. Point one, his age: first falsehood. Point two, the colour of his eyes: total falsehood. Point three, he boasts about being sincere: as if, falsehood!

I love that the list starts with the silliest item. Lying about your age is practically a dating-app classic, and lying about the colour of your eyes is already heading into the grotesque. How do you lie about the colour of your eyes? With coloured contact lenses, with filters, with very carefully chosen photos. It's a lie that falls apart the moment you get a little closer. And that's exactly why it's so revealing: someone who lies about something so easy to check is someone who doesn't expect you to look closely.

The order of the list has its own logic. It starts with the superficial (the age, the eyes) and ends with the deep stuff (sincerity, fidelity). It's like peeling an onion: every layer is a lie, and when you reach the centre there's nothing left. And then comes the line that closes the inventory: above all, his story has to stage fidelity. Theatre again. Fidelity isn't lived, it's staged.

In the post about the five laws of exaggeration I talked about how much I like blowing things up so they can be seen better. Here it's the opposite: the list is almost notarial. Nothing needs exaggerating. Lining the lies up in a row is enough for the portrait to draw itself.

The friends he trashes

There's one line I find very sharp in the middle of so much outrageousness: the friends he shows off to and then, behind their backs, tears to shreds.

That double face is another classic sign. The person who criticises everyone the moment they turn around usually does the same to you. If he tells you what he says about his friends, you already know what he'll say about you when you're not there. It's such an old rule that it's almost embarrassing to spell it out, but it's terribly hard to apply when you're in love.

Hypocrisy is one of the themes that keeps coming back in Planeta Gayfolk. I have a single literally called «Hipócritas», Hypocrites, and in songs like «El narcisista» or «El descarte del narcisista» the double talk is everywhere. What I like about this line in «No quiero otro novio cojín» is that it needs no explanation. It's a scene everyone has witnessed at a dinner party: the toast to your face and the knife in your back.

«Off you go with your mother to bitch behind people's backs»

The farewell comes with a very street-level goodbye: «Adiós, patán», bye, you oaf. And then an image so concrete you can almost see it: off you go with your mother to bitch behind people's backs.

There the lyric suggests that backstabbing is practically a family custom, something done together, around the kitchen table. It's a low blow, of course. The song isn't trying to be fair to the character, just as nobody is fair to an ex at the moment of the break-up. It's a song for letting off steam, and letting off steam doesn't have to be balanced.

What I do think is important to say is that the humour in that section is aimed at the character and the way he behaves, not at anyone real. The lyric also mentions gofio and makes a nod to the islands, because the character comes from there. That's a trait of an invented character, just as he could have come from Albacete. It isn't a portrait of anyone because of where they're from.

The diary reply

Next the lyric describes something that happens in almost every break-up: the other person has been deeply offended by a comment. And the comment is, admittedly, pretty brutal: I hope he chokes on his gofio. Spiteful black humour, the kind you fire off in an audio message at some ungodly hour and the next day laugh at a little and regret a little.

And the narrator doesn't apologise. The reply is: well, if you like, I'll read you my diary. In other words, if that line bothered you, wait until you hear everything I never said. It's a funny threat, very typical of my lyrics, because it doesn't threaten anything violent. It threatens to read aloud.

That, I think, is one of the most interesting ideas in the song. The diary is where you keep everything you swallowed during the relationship. Everything left unsaid to avoid an argument, to avoid ruining dinner, to avoid looking dramatic. And when the relationship ends, that diary becomes ammunition. There's no need to invent anything: you only have to read what was already written.

«I don't need a secretary, I'm a businessman»

This is my favourite line in the whole song, and not because of the rhyme, which is shameless («secretario», «empresario»), but because of what it says.

A cushion boyfriend lives on the idea that he's needed. He presents himself as support, as help, as someone who organises, keeps you company, handles things. And the narrator tells him there's no need: no secretary required, because the narrator is a businessman. In other words, perfectly capable of running their own life, money and decisions.

I find it a very powerful line for anyone who has come out of a relationship built on dependence. Often the person taking advantage of you makes you believe you couldn't manage without him. That you're hopeless with paperwork, with the accounts, with schedules. And thank goodness he's there to help. The song dismantles that idea in a single line: you were the one running everything. You always were.

Notice the change of grammatical gender, too. The lyric opens with «despierto sola», I wake up alone, in the feminine, and here it says «empresario», businessman, in the masculine. I'm not going to invent an explanation for why the published lyric ended up that way. What I do know is that I like reading it as a sign that the character won't fit into a single label: whoever is speaking is, above all, someone who has had enough.

Swearing on his parents' memory

There's another line that captures a certain kind of liar perfectly: don't make me go back to how things were, when you'd swear even on your parents' memory.

We all know someone who swears too much. Who swears on his mother, on his dead, on everything holy. And we've all learned, the hard way, that the more someone swears, the less they deliver. Someone telling the truth doesn't usually need guarantors. A liar does: he has to prop up every sentence with something nobody can touch.

In the song, that swearing is the last thing the narrator remembers before closing the door. «Don't make me go back to how things were» means: don't force me to remember all that, because I remember it very well. It's a warning that memory, too, has woken up from its lethargy.

«From today, now I'm happy»

And then, after so much score-settling, the song does something very simple. It says: oh, yes! I've got to tell you that from today, now I'm happy.

I love that «¡ah, sí!», oh, yes!, like someone remembering at the door something they'd forgotten to mention. It's almost a passing remark, and that's why it hits so hard. Happiness doesn't arrive as a great revelation, but as a piece of information. From today, now yes.

That «ya sí», now yes, is the loveliest thing in the lyric. It implies that before, no. That throughout the first half, the grey routine, something didn't fit and couldn't be named. And that saying «this is over» was enough for the grey to start lifting.

Then the final chorus repeats the idea three times: I don't want another cushion boyfriend, the one I had ended up at the level of a sock. It's no longer an accusation aimed at him, it's a statement of intent for the future. I don't want another one. It's not just that this one is leaving: there won't be a replacement.

The two halves, read together

When you hear the whole song, the first half changes meaning. That cold routine no longer sounds like a complaint about work or the city. It sounds like the side effect of a relationship that soaked everything up. The bitter coffee, the distant laughter and the sleeping dreams were the consequence of living with someone who only took.

That's why I like that the song doesn't explain it at the start. It makes it closer to life. Nobody warns you that you're in a relationship of convenience. You find out later, when you look back and understand why you were so exhausted.

The structure also says something about how you get out. You don't get out all at once. First comes the malaise, then the anger («It offends me!»), then the inventory (the numbered lies) and finally the decision. It's a very recognisable sequence for anyone who has broken up with someone who was hurting them.

If you recognise yourself in the first half

I'm not a psychologist and this song isn't a treatment. But if, while you're listening, you recognise yourself in the first part, the routine that offends, it may be worth asking yourself a few simple questions:

• When was the last time something pleasantly surprised you within your relationship?
• If you make a list of what you give and what you receive, do the two look alike?
• Do you feel free to talk about your plans, your income or your decisions without the other person turning them into something of theirs?
• Do you keep a diary, real or mental, where you store everything you don't dare say?

None of those questions has an automatic answer. But asking them is already a step out of the lethargy. And if the situation weighs on you, talking to someone you trust or to a professional always helps more than putting up with it in silence.

Why I wrote it with humour

I could have written a sad song about a boyfriend who took advantage. That would have been perfectly legitimate. But in Planeta Gayfolk almost all heartbreak goes through humour, because humour is a way of taking back control. When you laugh at the person who hurt you, he stops being a monster and shrinks back to his real size: an oaf in coloured contact lenses.

That's what I'm after with lines like «at the level of a sock» or «I don't need a secretary». It isn't cruelty for its own sake. It's giving the narrator back the words that were taken away during the routine. In the first half there's barely a complaint. In the second, the words won't stop coming. And that difference is, deep down, what the song is about.

As a lyricist, composer and music producer, what interests me most in songs like this is that journey: from the fog to the clear sentence. I generate the music and the performances with artificial intelligence, but the journey, the move from the yawn to the slammed door, is what I try to draw in every lyric.

If you want to hear it, it's on the singles page and on every platform, and you can download it from the downloads section. And if something similar has happened to you, you know the deal: the free ride ends when you decide it does.

Frequently asked questions

What is «No quiero otro novio cojín» about? It's about a relationship in which one person lived at the other's expense. The first half describes a grey, exhausting routine, and the second is the break-up: an inventory of lies, a farewell and the line «from today, now I'm happy».

What is a «novio cojín», a cushion boyfriend? It's an expression from the Planeta Gayfolk lyrics for someone who settles into your life without contributing anything, like a cushion on the sofa. In the song he's also compared to a sock.

Which album is it on? It's part of «Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk», the first album in Mike Sain't Louis's Gayfolk trilogy, available on Spotify and all other platforms.

Who makes this song? Mike Sain't Louis, a lyricist, composer and music producer who calls himself the first AI songwriter: he writes the lyrics and directs the production, and the music and vocal performances are generated with artificial intelligence.