ROCK STAR

I moved to Buffalo NY for college – and to start my musical career. It seemed like an extraordinarily large and sophisticated metropolis, since I had move there from Barneveld NY – a village of 400 people. For the first time, I was hitting my stride as a songwriter – the songs I’d written during the summer were miles ahead of those that had preceded them. By the end of September I’d started a trio and we diligently rehearsed and we were awesome. One month later we played our first show. A couple weeks after that I started seeing [Anne].

[Anne] was a rail thin girl who wore steel-toe oxblood Doc Martens and had dyed-black hair with severe bangs. She was lovely. She claimed she worked her summers as a Pierre Cardin runway model. She had elaborate hang-ups about sex and no hang-ups about drugs. She liked prescription painkillers and hoped – endeavored, aspired, wished - to someday shoot heroin. She treated me poorly, ignored me and started cheating on me within a few weeks. I sent her a somewhat sappy, self-deprecating, round-about letter about life, love, etc. that made her cry. That had been the intent and I considered it a victory of my creative skills, rather than any kind of satisfying romantic interaction. She was an English major and her favorite book was Catcher in the Rye. I thought that was an uninventive choice.

I was 18 years old, I was playing in a band I liked, and I was dating a model. I imagined I was indulging – on some small level – in the kind of cliched life I was going to lead.