When I was fifteen years old, I only loved musicians.
Famous musicians, friend musicians, girl musicians and boy musicians, musicians whose faces I’d never even seen. At coffee shop and high-school organized concerts (God, these were always in the cafeteria, how awful) I sat cross-legged over beat-up Candies in the front row, large glossy hearts like heliumized Lisa Frank creations bubbling out of my throat and floating up to the ceiling. I watched their fingers press into each fret and I memorized their facial expressions, and after rushing home I’d write terrible poetry comparing them to delicious cookies.
For better or worse, I didn’t remain long on future-groupie track. No, instead, I clearly remember the chilly November evening in the car when the unplugged version of “Come As You Are” came on the radio. I was leaning my head on a windowpane in the back seat, feeling teenage as usual. The season’s last crumpled leaves swirled and jumped in the pavement, fluttering against the glass and seeming very significant. “No I doooon’t have a gun,” Kurt moaned, reverberating in the depths of the universe and my veins or whatever.
Wait a minute! I thought to myself, what if I did that?
For my 16th birthday, my dad took me to a store, and I picked out — not a gun, but my guitar.
Old Friend, a Little Dusty. (Full album)
Did I ever get lessons? The weird thing is, I don’t actually remember. I always meant to get lessons: it was going to be my potential birthday present from my mom. But I’m pretty sure this never happened. (Not to say anything against her, or maybe it is. Probably it’s something I let slide. Who knows? Forgetting is forgiving is forgetting.)
I think of a small white room and a man — likely my instructor — who was roughly half its size, bulging out of old polo shirts with arms like hairy meatloaves. There is a music stand in front of us, a small piano to the side. The fluorescent lights are very bright. Is that a guitar resting on my leg? No.
I’m holding something in both hands, there is a taste of old bamboo in my mouth. I think it’s that godforsaken clarinet.
Also, he might have been very, very thin.
