under the bridge

today, as i was cleaning out an old box of magazine clippings and notable papers from my pre-art school days, i came across the red hot chili peppers guitar tabs bryan printed out for me when i was first learning to play the guitar. what a trip! i got out my guitar and started playing through the song, and i was astonished to find that my fingers flew to the right frets and picked up the rhythm immediately, even after all this time.

perhaps--bolstered by my recent music lessons--i played it even better than before, considering that bryan and i only got through the third measure (the trill stumped me, i remember) before we gave up and went to his camaro to make out. i'm too young for nostalgia, i know, but sometimes life seemed so simple back then, when i was certain that i loved god and that i liked men and that i wanted to be an interior designer when i grew up.

and because all things good must come to an end, i started playing the guitar and drank my first beer, and started smoking and kissed s., and stopped believing in anything i couldn't see. and i sneered at practical professions that catered to the rich, and i recorded all my thoughts--they were so original!--very precisely in my journals, preserving them in a brine of adolescent melodrama.

i found that i mark my time with music--i can divide my history and point out my different phases based on the soundtrack of the time (remember, oh god, i can't remember--but the guy who sang "i looooove, you, more than the sun, and the stars, that i taught how to shine"? wow. i call that girl julia, because she was so conservative and self-righteous, i can't stand to share a name with her).

and "under the bridge"? this is my coming of age story--even though i never did heroin and i've never been to LA--because when i hear this song, i can see myself clearly at age sixteen: sitting on the tiled floor outside u-high's cafeteria, leaning my head against b.'s flanneled shoulder, which i could feel moving beneath my ear as his slight wrists directed his fingers and his knuckles through the chords, and to the end.