Muddy Waters learned how to play the blues from George Thorogood.â
We argued through the rest of the record, and by the final crashing notes of âJet Boy,â it had become painfully obvious that we werenât in any way musically compatible.
âI guess thereâs no point in asking if youâre a fan of Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers,â she said with an eye roll.
âTom Pettyâs band?â I asked, incredulous. âWell, I guess that explains the Traveling Wilburys. Poor bastard canât keep a band.â
I did not get laid that night.
I love that moment. I love it like I love home videos of my son trying to walk, and falling hard on his face, and then trying to make it seem like thatâs what he intended all along, that heâd really been reaching for that toy, and walking isâ
pfft
âwhatever. Thatâs the warm feeling I get when I think about missing my chance with the hot girl with the purple dreadlocks whose name might have started with an
A
.
I was trying so hard to be cool, and failing so spectacularly.
âAre you okay?â I heard Richard with the unnecessarily tight karate gi asking me.
âYou know,â I finally told him. âThis used to be a record store.â
âIs that so?â he asked. Somewhere behind him, a boy was taking a punch in the stomach. He made a sound that came out like a BLEEERT.
âSo,â I said awkwardly. âI guess it, uh . . . I guess it closed.â
He looked around the room, at the kids dressed like Ralph Macchio in
The Karate Kid
, giving each other karate chops. âIt looks like it,â he agreed.
He might have wondered why I was smelling his walls, which didnât make much sense to me even as I was doing it.
I could explain it if I had to. It was like when I got my dadâs ashes and I immediately took a whiff of the urn. I didnât open it or anything, I just sat on the stairs with it and put my nose just close enough to see if it smelled like anything I recognized. It was totally nonsensical. But I did it anyway.
Or hereâs what else itâs like. When your child is born and the first thing you do is smell his or her head. A newbornâs head is just amazing. Itâs magical, like a Florida orange fresh off the tree. For at least the first year of my sonâs life, I smelled his head at least twenty times a day. But then that wonderful smell just suddenly stops. You donât know why, itâs just gone. But you smell his or her head anyway, looking for some hint of what you lost, hoping it might come back if you breathe in hard enough.
I canât explain it better than that. I smelled the walls of a martial arts school for the same reasons I smelled the head of my non-infant son. Because I was sad about what it used to be.
Richard with the unnecessarily tight karate gi and I made some small talk, about what classes were coming up that might be appropriate for my son that Richard now seemed pretty convinced didnât exist. I took some brochures, and I almost gave him my credit card, if only to prove that I hadnât just been wasting his time all along. Andthen, with one more lingering stroke of a freshly painted wall, I got the hell out of there.
I sat in a booth at the Eat Rice Chinese restaurant, next door to what used to be the Record Swap, and made notes on a cocktail napkin, listing every record from my former collection that I was reasonably certain I could identify by sight. Or in some cases, smell.
Exile in Guyville , Liz Phair. With a store sticker still on the front sleeve, priced in UK pounds, bought during a summer backpacking trip to London and northern England. My intention was to purchase a Smiths record in Manchester, which I felt was significant, like buying a Beatles record in Liverpool or a Nirvana record in Seattle. And I came very close. I had
Louder Than Bombs
in my hands, and I was en route to the register at
Robyn Carr
Joanna Sims
ed. Abigail Browining
Harold Robbins
Kate Breslin
Margaret Dickinson
Elizabeth Berg
Anya Monroe
Ilan Pappé
Maddy Hunter