Challenge: Write about high school and music
I didn’t know anything about love then except
for what I read in books or, over and over, alone in my room, lying on my bed, heard in songs — Foghat declaring, live, that they feel like makin love, Fleetwood Mac’s songbird singing that it knows the score, James Taylor seeing fire and rain, Foreigner claiming to be hot-blooded, the Eagles living life in the fast lane. At dance parties I hoped I’d be chosen to hang on a boy in the dark, swaying in circles, sweating in our separate skins to Led Zeppelin's “Stairway to Heaven,” Donna Summer’s “Last Dance,” or Phil Collins’ relentless drums, feel it coming in the air, oh Lord, waiting for this moment all my life — mostly, I stood separate, watching others complete their circles, sketching territories that didn’t include me, that didn’t recognize my passport, breathing in Tom Petty, an ugly man with barracuda teeth, who told me I didn’t have to live like a refugee, and Neil Young, with his high, strange voice, like a man strangling in his own throat, who reminded me to keep on searching for a heart of gold, even as we both, impossibly, inevitably, grew old.
