Back When Exile in Guyville Was the Only Album I Listened To

And it wasn’t like we were friends-friends so when he came to my parents’ back door I asked him the secret password. He said YOU WILL BURST INTO FLAMES UPON REENTERING THE EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE. I meowed. The thing is, there was no secret password.

He’d been with a lot of girls—probably in vans and on cold basement floors. In drooping green tents slick with summer rain. He told me I tasted like black coffee and kiwi. I wanted to wear his coat. Late-autumn-leaf brown, corduroy, vintage or maybe not, reminding me of Neil Young and pickup trucks. He always had candy in his pockets, little caramels wrapped in crinkly gold paper or minty gum that tasted like bright lights, blinking.

I called him. His mom had a really pretty Spanish accent that made me want to grow my hair out and run away, searching for heat. He got on the line and said Hey I was hoping you would call. I said you were? and he said Of course. Told me he had a girlfriend but he didn’t care and I said I didn’t care either. Why would I? We were seniors, highschool crazy. I smoked Camel Lights. Drove barefoot. Listened to Liz Phair. Before I heard her on the phone, I didn’t even know his mom was Spanish. And I mean, I had no clue he was hoping I’d call.

Eventually he broke it off with all his other girls. Those first frothy little years of crooked apartments, shitty jobs, half-assing college. Truth is, he listened to too much Eric Clapton. When he’d walk in the door, I’d hear the opening chords of “Layla” and while he was talking to me, telling me things on and on, I could hear the whole song in my head. All five hundred minutes of it. Asshole.

But I liked the night we got drunk and he walked me to my friend’s house. The slip of moon, uphill sidewalks, blackgreen grass, more sidewalks, a million moth army, more crickets, streetlights. All the girls were playing strip poker and I was glad I wore my pretty bra because I am not very good. The next day I left him. Tucked a note into his pack of cigarettes.

Come on. I am a lioness on a big, hot rock. I told you that.