Sitting here at my desk, I have my iTunes mix going on most of the time. Usually I have one of the mellow "Gallery Appropriate" mixes playing. But on a day like today, with all the fancy cars in town for the annual Really Fancy & Expensive Car Show, when nobody ventures into the gallery, well..... I figure I can play what I want to hear.
So I put on one of my random favorites mixes. It's all good, perfect for paying bills and doing bookwork...la la la....
Then.
I am instantly transported to my 12 year old self, as the first notes of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" starts playing. When did I add this? My tastes these days run more to the 90's "shoe-gazing" and grunge bands, or 80's indie, jangle-pop stuff... Where did this golden nugget of my youth come from? Well, well, well.
What I once again realize is that music has been a huge part of my life, something I've wanted to write about, but it's so big...so filled with emotion... and a subject I have been hesitant to even try to approach here.
I think I just need to take baby steps with this particular subject.
The memory that was so massively sparked today, with Neil's help, is a memory of such longing, so bittersweet and so 12 year old intense.
6th Grade. Small school. Small town. Every new kid that appears is fascinating, since most of us have grown up together, and a large percentage of our parents did, too. I have teachers that my mother and father had, when they were young. I have teachers that my mother and father grew up with. It's a very small town.
Enter New Cute Boy (even now, in my beyond middle age, I'm embarrassed to mention his name). Let's call him NCB. His mom is a single mom, which is just sooo different. He is from the "wrong" part of town. His brown hair is a little too long, and his clothes are a little rough. He smokes. His eyes are clear blue, with long, long lashes. I can see him, right now. I especially liked this soft yellow button down shirt he would wear, sleeves rolled up (no local boys do this), tucked into baggy blue jeans. He wore well worn work boots, way before it was cool. He was 12.
I was dangerously smitten.
We all noticed him, of course. All the popular cute girls, too, I'm sure. But they were more interested in the older sporty boys. What the problem was, well, my very best girlfriend had a big crush on NCB.
She would talk for hours about him. She would hand me notes about him. We would stalk him at recess together. We would stalk him after school together. We would spend more hours at night on the phone talking about him. But it was me listening and her talking...
I was hiding my crush like a disease.
Since we were only little kids, our discussions about NCB were pretty tame. The biggest fantasies involved actually being able to meet him, or talk to him... maybe, if dreams came true, a chance to dance with him at an upcoming school "Dance" which were always just around the corner. Pretty tame. I mean, we were just kids. This is way before MTV and all that has followed. We didn't have the sexual imagery so prevalent these days...there were the"bad" girls, sure, and then there were the rest of us. Clueless, for the most part.
So all the chatter between my best pal and I about NCB were about her and NCB getting together in the dream world. I just kept my secret to myself...and my fake red leather diary. Lock and key included.
Since I was a classic tom-boy with two brothers and zero sisters, I got along great with most of the boys. But NCB brought me to my knees. It was a first crush, and the hardest, for sure. Up to this point, I just dreamt about vampires and zombies, an occasional Japanese giant reptile, horses....boys just were not on my radar yet.
This was life changing. Really. I suppose all of us go through it some point...that awareness of yourself in a whole new way. Sweet and so brutal.
So of course, as these stories always seem to go, NCB does notice my best pal, and they are soon holding hands, etc, etc, etc. And of course I have to hear about every little detail, over and over and over, like little sharp razor strikes to my heart and soul. So sad and pathetic, that I hang on each and every little detail. I am a good pal. I say nothing but encouraging, 12 year old type things.
I am astounded to find out from my best pal that NCB and I have the same birthday, that he smokes pot as well as the cigarettes, that he is often home alone all night while his mom is at work. He feeds himself, washes his own clothes and doesn't have TV because they can't afford one. He loves Neil Young and The Who. These details that he is sharing with her, day after day after day, right into summer.
I am dying.
Here is where music comes into my life. Since I can't "be" with NCB, I will try to be like him, do things he likes to do. The cigarettes are a total bust. I just couldn't do it, still don't. Not that I didn't get busted trying (neighbor caught me and his son sneaking cigs). Pot came a little later. What I did do right was this. I asked for a record player for Christmas and got one. I asked for Neil's "After The Gold Rush", and got that, too.
I then get myself a little after school job (collecting 50 cents a month for the local paper home delivery service), which earned me $6.00 a month. I bought albums. First one was The Who's "Quadrophenia". Second was Neil Young w/ Crazy Horse "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere". Soon to follow are all the Crosby, Stills Nash & Young albums, James Taylor, all the Neil Young albums, more Who, Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, The Byrds, even Elton John.
I do this because I want to impress NCB with my coolness. Neil Young becomes my soundtrack for awhile. I actually become friends with NCB, we talk about music. We talk about books. We talk about life. My plan sort of works. Sort of.
He calls me at home to talk about my pal. She calls me at home to talk about NCB. I am a good pal. I say nothing but encouraging, 12 year old type things. It sucks. But. But. But...........
Now I have my music. I can shut my door, put on an album, put on headphones and let the music play long and loud. It helps the hurt. It makes things endurable. It becomes my drug of choice. My crush on NCB actually lasts a couple of years, way after my best pal has moved on to older and more dangerous boys. NCB and I become friends, but from afar. We are from different worlds, and as we get older, this becomes so apparent.
I move away.
Life goes on, with new crushes (lots of them, still to this day), new music, new friends, new towns to live in. NCB was killed in a freak boating accident, I discover many years after the fact. My best pal and I keep in touch for years, though not the last few.
I never divulge my 12 year old self's secret to her.
Until this morning, when Neil Young broke into my iTunes mix, I have not thought of NCB in years. Why would I?
Why? Because that is what music will do to your memory banks. Like some giant hammer coming right down onto your soft skull, whether you like the memories or not. For all the anguish at the time, I like this memory. I like that it is so huge in creating the person I am today, and I like myself a lot.
I think I want to give the NCB of my youth a big old shout out of "THANKS" for being there at just the right time to truly rock my world.
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