Chapter 2. The Boyfriend Years

Freshman year of high school I kissed a boy whose favorite band was Air Supply. Meanwhile, I was rehearsing Schoenberg with the Brown University Orchestra and negotiating a private crush on the college senior who played clarinet. But this was 1979. My life was waiting to happen: Frank Zappa's husky song echoed throughout the school bus, and I had never heard of the Ramones.

Attending a Quaker college turned out to be the perfect way to meet boys who preferred not to go to class. I knew I should stop calling them boys and think of them as men, but this was impossible. I was trained in classical melody. I had no idea what constituted a blues progression or why Chuck Berry had any relevance to the Rolling Stones. This amused the boys, who decided to make me listen to the Sex Pistols. I followed them around in record stores, hating the way they leafed through every single bin. If they hadn't been so beautiful, I would have died of boredom.

Meanwhile, my ear training advanced, and I discovered that the Replacements understood all my deepest hopes and fears. Michael Jackson's Thriller faded into strange obscurity as the Talking Heads assumed the philosophical proportions of Kant. And while there is nothing like a late-night session with Tammy Wynette for reminding a 19-year-old girl that her grandfather might have a point about Charlie Rich, the Clash's Sandinista makes a better Christmas present. In short, I was born again. I changed my major from music to English, read all the novels of Dickens, fell in love, fell in love, fell in love, went to a Pretenders concert in Philly, purchased a Velvet Underground record, smoked other people's pot, and don't actually remember how I managed to graduate.