eleven years

[David Windhorst <colorg@mindspring.com>]

So, anyway, it was September 1985, and I had just quit a steady 
bookstore job of five years to move a thousand miles to see if this 
earth-shattering summer romance was for real since she was relocating 
two time zones and we'd been there a week when she decided she didn't 
love me anymore and I drove around the desert staying in anonymous 
motels spending my short life's savings trying to figure out what the 
hell I was going to do now and there on MTV was this w.o.m.a.n. with a 
face and a voice that could turn you into pure white light and she 
leaned over a podium and read from a book and fired a hideously barbed 
arrow saying "I'd get him to swap our places" that reached into my 
chest and eviscerated my life and 
t-o-o-k-m-e-s-o-m-e-w-h-e-r-e-e-l-s-e I mean, yeah, I'd seen bits of 
Hammersmith Live and heard Pat B. do "Wuthering Heights" but, my god, 
this could change your life or make you want to end it or both and I 
didn't do anything about it for a year when I couldn't stand it and 
just didn't show up for work one Monday morning since I'd stolen a key 
to a condo in Florida and drove down to swim out into the gulf and 
disappear but stopped I don't know where in Tennessee I think and 
bought two albums, the soundtrack to "Blade Runner" and what else but 
HOL and hid out listening to Kate before trying to paddle halfway to 
Cuba but couldn't make myself do it and now I hang on her every word 
even though I still don't know why I'm crying, either, but it's 
something bright traveling fast.
Beauty is life.

David