To My Last High School Girlfriend

[Fucking music always makes me nostalgic, even if it's brand new. Are
all musicians destined to simply convey, chew on, and mull over what
has gone before? Must all music convey a tinge of something "lost",
some previous emotionally-intense space-time location? We shall see...]

Hey ____,
Been listening to "Slow Worm", the last song on the first Archers of
Load album "Icky Mettle", a song riddled with incoherent tragedy and
melody-laden frustration. Anyways, one of the most-recalled songs of
the mid-90s for me, and with that (and the weather) those failed (?)
summer romances... or perhaps by their failure they were inherently
perfect. We met at the fireworks display, you dug my hat, I dug your
taste in music. A dubbed copy of Sonic Youth's "Dirty" was played
somewhere along the way. Early on you gave me a poem torn directly from
the pages of an anthology, something sweet about cleaning up after a
party, eating popcorn, and watching the waves come in.

We first made out when you twisted my fingers at a red light. It was
during Beck's "Beer Can". Remember once when we parked by the lake, I
think a flashlight shone. Remember when I was stricken by the hives for
a week, you came to my parents' living room and fed me sympathy. You
and your gorgeous brown/red (what do they call it, auburn?) hair.
Hanging with your sisters in your hellishly sterile subdivision.
Hanging with 200,000 other indie rock shmucks at the Pavement/Sonic
Youth/Beck/Hole/Moby Lollapalooza. I held your hand as we made our way
up during Pavement's opener "Grounded". I remember the sun was shining.
Later, Beck played "Satan Gave Me a Taco" on the small stage. Your
older sister's friends were the classy popular indie rockers at our
school, the guys who played soccer high on acid and started garage
bands and came late to Bio because they were smoking all day long.

Your friend, a guy, didn't like me. Said I wasn't good enough. That I
shouldn't take a bus home from Lollapalooza, what was I a fucking
scrub. We were hanging with your sister and I declined some marijuana.
There was an edge to my voice, and you called me on it: I was a snobby
self-righteous straight-edger (yes folks, believe it or not). Do you
remember us ever going to dinner? Your dad chased me down your street
once when he caught me dropping you off. I was too old (two years
older). A last hurtful memory: hanging with your friends at Dairy
Queen, a fittingly dreary suburban ending to what otherwise contained
so much hope. I couldn't promise you anything once I went to college,
you said you felt like we had "broken up already". Even spraypainting
your name in giant pink and green letters under the overpass near your
work wasn't enough to make up for the sad fact that: teenage boys are
dicks.

-Paul