This is the next part of my story, see the entry before last for the previous part.
In the Summer before 11th grade I started playing keyboards in my first band, a terrible psychedelic project called "Twilight Autumn". Our guitarist was a friend of mine who moved to our town from Seattle, who alternated between playing cheerful blues chords and trying to sound like David Gilmoure. Our bassist was Scary Joe and his little brother handled drums. We did a cover of a hardcore song from a little-known Seattle band, a punk song called "I want a cookie, I want a beer", and some rough blues rock, playing a few local shows and a house party in the time we were together.
That Summer the band made a road trip to a party at an abandoned baseball field. The night was spilled beer and bonfires, mosquitoes and running through sprinklers. A girl named Oddra who looked like Claire Danes talked with me through most of the night, and my first kiss happened with her before the party's close. We dated for a couple of months after that, then she broke things off to get together with an ex.
I kept attending local shows, watching a melting pot of musical styles and collecting scribblings from attendees in my art books. I met Molly at one of these outings, she signed my book and wrote her phone number down,. Molly looked a bit like an anime character, neon red and white hair and glasses, bright non-matching clothes and fluorescent shoelaces. She was a spontaneous ball of energy and confidence who smelled of candy and bleach. We were together a lot just after my breakup with Oddra, buying strange clothes from consignment stores (That was the style of the time. Really), giving each other bruises trying to learn to skateboard in her backyard, making fun of bad television and visiting the local head shop for hair dye. C was a few years older than us and worked at the shop, we had coffee with him on his breaks, listening to him ramble on about music in his cynical but always joking rhythm.
My second kiss was with Molly, a moment I will always remember when I hear the Breeders. Do you have any interesting music and memory connections like that in your life? It happens to me a lot. Molly was upset that it happened, she was just getting out of a bad relationship and we never took things any further in that direction.
Twilight Autumn broke up after a few months and I moved on to a long string of other musical projects. Oddra is gorgeous, single, and living in Chicago. Molly and I tried to reconnect several times over the years but circumstances never worked out right. Now she is teaching yoga and living in different places throughout the world. C became part of my close circle of friends but was killed back in 2000.
Flash in the dark, heat lightning blazes against the horizon beyond my window, sparks from a tap-dancing moon. I crawl out of the bed and walk in the dark onto the balcony. My neighbor Molly's delicate silhouette bends before her banister next door like she is drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. Mr. Alphabet calls from a distant jukebox and the soft flames of a block party beckon. A drag queen jams on 12-bar blues on the corner of our street and belly laughs mingle with back-alley screams in the humid-thick air. Time for a drink.
You know that feeling like contagious rain pelts the shores of your consciousness, when you have cannibalized your past and sold your future and you need to save your self but you can't find the door? The feeling of planting desperate seeds of hope to grow beanstalks of new dreams? It's kind of like that. There is always a little magic left. |
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..just sayin