Love Is A Mix Tape Part 3

Then we were both quiet for a few minutes. I was afraid that I'd just ruined everything; it was the first time either of us had ever promised anything. But it felt all right. I guess making little promises made us braver about the bigger ones.

There was never any epiphanic moment when we decided we should get married, no bolt of lightning. As soon as we started talking about it, we started trying to talk ourselves out of it, but we failed. Irish people marry late, as a rule. We have that potato-famine DNA from the old country, that mentality where you don't give birth to anything until you have the potatoes all stored up to feed it. My ancestors were all shepherds who got married in their thirties and then stayed together for life, who had long and happy marriages, no doubt because they were already deaf. My grandparents courted for nine years before they married in 1933. My cousin Sis Boyle in Southie was engaged for seventeen years before she finally threw caution to the wind and got hitched-and then she gave birth nine months later to the day. Renee was not psyched to hear stories like this. She informed me that Appalachians wed early, give birth immediately, and worry about feeding all their offspring later. Her parents met at eighteen, married at nineteen, and became parents at twenty. This terrified me. Between the two of us, we had three master's degrees, thousands of records, and no future.

I kept thinking of an old Robert Mitchum cowboy movie where he goes back to see the farmhouse where he was born and finds the house falling apart and an old man living in it by himself. "Lonely place," Robert Mitchum says. The old man says, "Nothing wrong with a lonely place as long as it's private. That's why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain't private." That was always my most intense fear about getting married: When everything sucked and I was by myself, I thought, Well, at least I don't have another miserable person to worry about. I figured if you give up your private place and it still turns out to be lonely, you're just screwed. So I felt safer not even thinking about it. No doubt about it, the idea of staying together was scary. But we also didn't want to wait around for a few years to see if it was going to happen. Why not just make make it happen? It felt disingenuous to keep saying, "If we're still together next year . . . " since we knew we it happen? It felt disingenuous to keep saying, "If we're still together next year . . . " since we knew we wanted wanted to be together next year. Pretending to keep those options open became dead weight. to be together next year. Pretending to keep those options open became dead weight.

We were just a couple of fallen angels, rolling the dice of our lives. We'd heard all the horror stories of early marriages and fast divorces and broken hearts. But we knew none of them would happen to us, because as Dexy's Midnight Runners sang to Eileen, we were far too young and clever. What if we just decide not not to fall apart? What if we decide to fall apart? What if we decide not not to wait to see what happens, but instead decide what we want to happen and then decide how to make it happen? Like Burt Reynolds says to Jerry Reed in to wait to see what happens, but instead decide what we want to happen and then decide how to make it happen? Like Burt Reynolds says to Jerry Reed in Smokey and the Bandit Smokey and the Bandit, "We ain't never not made it before, have we?"

So I gave Renee my grandmother's ring. My grandfather was crazy about Renee, at least partly because she was practically a foot shorter than all his granddaughters, so he could lean over and talk right into her ear. I knew my grandmother would have loved Renee, but I still hoped I wasn't letting her down. Renee and I were acting like a couple of foolhardy American brats. Nana had always warned me: Never marry an American girl. "These American girls are lazy!" she would fume. "They won't cook or clean. You need an Irish girl."

When Renee and I talked about it years later, we agreed on one point: We were insane. Renee always said, "If any of our kids want to get married when they're twenty-five, we'll have to lock them in the attic." We were just kids, and everybody who came to the wedding was guilty of shameful if not criminal negligence-look at the s.h.i.+ny pretty toaster, isn't it cute to see the babies playing with it in the bathtub? Jesus, people! There is such a thing as "tough love." But for whatever reason, n.o.body tried to stop us, or even talk sense into us. Instead, everybody wanted to help us out. We had no money, so all our friends did wedding favors for us. Our friend Gavin offered to DJ the wedding. Neither of us wanted to go crazy planning a wedding-we had our hands full planning the marriage.

I tried to talk Renee into doing our wedding dance to Van Halen's "Everybody Wants Some" because I had a romantic vision of us w.a.n.going our fandango to the part where Alex Van Halen is playing the bongos and David Lee Roth is doing his heartfelt "I like the way the line runs up the back of the stocking" monologue. But Renee quickly squashed that idea-no romance in the girl. So Big Star's "Thirteen" it was, the song that brought us together. We rented the university chapel for an hour, which cost a hundred bucks, and booked a reception at the Best Western down the street. For the ceremony Renee chose a Baptist hymn I'd never heard of, "Shall We Gather at the River," and we had fun picking out readings from Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf. We were looking forward to drawing up a prenuptial agreement, but unfortunately, we found out you can't get one unless you actually own something. Renee picked out a tux for me-I hadn't worn one since the Walpole High senior prom (theme: "We've Got Tonight")-and she selected a morning coat because it made me look like Janet Jackson in her "Escapade" video.

All I remember about the actual wedding is standing there on the altar steps like Enzo the baker in The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather stood on the hospital stairs with Al Pacino, waiting for the Turk's. .h.i.t men to come, trying to scare the hit men away by looking like they were ready for them. We both felt like Enzo that day. He's a baker; he doesn't know anything about guns. He just came to bring some flowers for his Don, who did him a big favor on Connie's wedding day. Now he and Pacino are standing on the stairs, shaking, pretending they know what they're doing. They don't fool each other, but maybe they can fool everybody else. stood on the hospital stairs with Al Pacino, waiting for the Turk's. .h.i.t men to come, trying to scare the hit men away by looking like they were ready for them. We both felt like Enzo that day. He's a baker; he doesn't know anything about guns. He just came to bring some flowers for his Don, who did him a big favor on Connie's wedding day. Now he and Pacino are standing on the stairs, shaking, pretending they know what they're doing. They don't fool each other, but maybe they can fool everybody else.

During the wedding Renee put my ring on my right hand. She started whispering, "Wrong hand! Wrong hand!" I whispered back, "Let's switch it Renee put my ring on my right hand. She started whispering, "Wrong hand! Wrong hand!" I whispered back, "Let's switch it later later," but she insisted on grabbing my hand, slipping the ring off, and putting it on my left hand, all in the middle of the ceremony. n.o.body in the crowd noticed this. You did good, Enzo.

When we got to the Best Western, we hit the dance floor, as Gavin favored us with our special request, James Brown's "I'm a Greedy Man." The G.o.dfather of Soul laid out his three-point program for domestic bliss:

Don't leave the homework undone, Don't tell the neighbors,

and, most crucially,

You got to have something to sit on before I carry you home.

Everybody shook it to the Go-Go's and the Human League and Chuck Berry, and we drank champagne and Gavin played Al Green's version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" at least four times. I danced with Renee's mom to the Chuck Berry song "Nadine." My sisters told me I needed to make a speech to the guests. I began by quoting the rapper Kool Moe Dee; my sisters told me that was a nice speech and cut me off. Gavin put on C&C Music Factory's "Everybody Dance Now" and my Uncle Ray took that as a cue to start the electric slide. (Uncle Ray and the electric slide go together like a 1976 Ford Pinto and a box of matches.) At any wedding we attend, my family is the problem table, the one everybody gradually drifts away from out of self-preservation. It's a proud family tradition. Now this was our our wedding, and n.o.body could stop us. Giving us a crate of champagne and a dance floor was like handing a madman the keys to a 747 and saying, "Now, seriously, dude, don't crash it. Promise?" wedding, and n.o.body could stop us. Giving us a crate of champagne and a dance floor was like handing a madman the keys to a 747 and saying, "Now, seriously, dude, don't crash it. Promise?"

Right before the party broke up, Renee's Uncle Troy came up and gave her a big hug and whispered into her ear. I was touched. I didn't realize he was saying, "Go easy on the boy."

After the reception our friends drove us to the Eastern Standard, the bar where we met. The bartender on duty was Ruby, one of our favorites, a profane and excellent old lady who didn't give a d.a.m.n about our precious memories. Ruby, She-Wolf of the SS. Ruby put the "freak" in "frequently drunk and belligerent." Since Virginia state law prohibits a bartender from consuming alcohol behind the bar, she instead lit up a big fatty and ignored all our drunken requests to play the Big Star tape. There was a big party across the street that night, at Silver Fox, the only drag joint in town, and since the club didn't have a liquor license the room was full of Chers and Jackies popping over to the Eastern Standard for a drink. Cornered on separate sides of the room, Renee and I watched our friends mingle, and occasionally locked eyes, trying to spot which guests were in the running for wedding nookie. Renee quizzed the Jews about what "mazel tov" means, the Baptists quizzed me about whether Renee was now obligated to bear Catholic babies and donate them to the Vatican, and the southerners quizzed the northerners about why n.o.body really eats grits. Around eleven, everybody drained their gla.s.ses and went off to the mall to see Terminator 2 Terminator 2.

Renee and I stayed behind for one more bourbon and ginger, which neither of us had any appet.i.te to finish. We had waited all day to get just one minute to ourselves, but neither of us could think of a thing to say.

"Why did he kiss the book?" Renee finally asked me.

"Excuse me?"

"Father Cunningham, he kissed the book."

"It's a standard thing."

"Does it mean I'm Catholic now? Because if he made me Catholic without asking, my mama is gonna be p.i.s.sed."

"He made you a bishop."

Renee poked her ice cubes with a plastic pirate sword and put her head on my shoulder. She asked me, "Was Mel gay?"

"You have a question, Your Holiness?"

"Mel. From Mel's diner. Kiss my grits."

"You mean Vic Tayback."

"No, just Mel."

"I don't think so."

"Mel never got any chicks. EVER."

"He was a hardworking man. Devoted to his diner."

"He never got any chicks. He never hung around anybody except Alice, with her show tunes. And Vera, with the tap dancing."

"He had Flo."

"Flo was a total drag queen."

"I just don't see it."

"Queer as a three-dollar bill, honey," Ruby said. "Last call."

n.o.body remembered to give us a lift home. The last bus had stopped running hours ago. So I grabbed Renee's hand, or maybe she grabbed mine, and we walked. Maybe it took an hour or two; neither of us was wearing a watch, so I don't know. We were too tired to gossip, so we sang songs we knew, like "O.P.P." and "I Just Want to Be Your Everything." Turned out we both remembered the words to a bunch of other Andy Gibb songs.

If I had my way, the story would end here. Renee was always braver. She always wanted to know what happens next.

that's entertainment

JULY 1991.

Now that we were married, Renee stopped having dreams about her ex-boyfriends every night. She was p.i.s.sed about that. So was I. The months leading up to the wedding had been a pageant of highly entertaining (for me) and traumatic (for her) dreams, which she confessed with shame every morning. They all had the same plot: Renee trysts with a boy from her past, he begs her to run away with him, she thinks about it, and then she decides instead to move on to her future with me. She thought these dreams were guilty secrets. I thought they were funny. I loved meeting these clowns. My favorite was the volleyball player from Roanoke. The last time she booty-called him, he said he was busy-he didn't want to miss the farewell episode of Renee stopped having dreams about her ex-boyfriends every night. She was p.i.s.sed about that. So was I. The months leading up to the wedding had been a pageant of highly entertaining (for me) and traumatic (for her) dreams, which she confessed with shame every morning. They all had the same plot: Renee trysts with a boy from her past, he begs her to run away with him, she thinks about it, and then she decides instead to move on to her future with me. She thought these dreams were guilty secrets. I thought they were funny. I loved meeting these clowns. My favorite was the volleyball player from Roanoke. The last time she booty-called him, he said he was busy-he didn't want to miss the farewell episode of Magnum, P.I. Magnum, P.I. Years after the fact, Renee was still fuming. I wanted to shake his hand. This was my compet.i.tion? No wonder I got a shot. Compared to her memories, I felt like Pele kicking a couple around with the 1981 Tampa Bay Rowdies. Years after the fact, Renee was still fuming. I wanted to shake his hand. This was my compet.i.tion? No wonder I got a shot. Compared to her memories, I felt like Pele kicking a couple around with the 1981 Tampa Bay Rowdies.

Now we were married, and the dreams stopped. I guess she'd said her goodbyes. We both missed these boys. Now we were alone with each other.

Which meant we had all these neighbors to deal with. The old lady next door dropped by with a plate of m.u.f.fins one Sunday afternoon, right in the middle of Studs Studs. Renee explained that in the South, this is normal-you just drop in on your married neighbors. I was aghast. I was a husband in the South now. We had married into this alien landscape with its strange customs. Had I chosen this? Had Renee? It felt like a hangover from a country song: You pa.s.s out on the train, miss your stop, wake up in a town you've never heard of, and that's where you live now. Renee and I were were just pa.s.sing through, on our way somewhere, but suddenly we just pa.s.sing through, on our way somewhere, but suddenly we lived lived here. here.

As newlyweds, we crammed into Renee's bas.e.m.e.nt on Highland Avenue. It was the first place we ever had to ourselves, with side two of Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits, Volume 1 Greatest Hits, Volume 1 on the stereo, never needing to be flipped-we just lifted the needle every eighteen minutes. Renee had a pantyhose job as a paralegal at a law firm. At work, she turned the radio down low so she could listen to my radio show, and I serenaded her with long-distance dedications like Frightwig's "My Crotch Does Not Say Go." Around five, I drove downtown to pick her up from work, and then we could go anywhere we wanted. It was too hot to go home until the sun went down, so we usually hit the Fas.h.i.+on Square Mall, where we'd sit on a bench, basking in the free air-conditioning, breathing in the scent of cookie-corns and cinna-cl.u.s.ters and crunch-o-cottons, chattering to keep our minds from wandering places we couldn't afford to go. For pinball, we hit the Seminole Theater, where we could play the on the stereo, never needing to be flipped-we just lifted the needle every eighteen minutes. Renee had a pantyhose job as a paralegal at a law firm. At work, she turned the radio down low so she could listen to my radio show, and I serenaded her with long-distance dedications like Frightwig's "My Crotch Does Not Say Go." Around five, I drove downtown to pick her up from work, and then we could go anywhere we wanted. It was too hot to go home until the sun went down, so we usually hit the Fas.h.i.+on Square Mall, where we'd sit on a bench, basking in the free air-conditioning, breathing in the scent of cookie-corns and cinna-cl.u.s.ters and crunch-o-cottons, chattering to keep our minds from wandering places we couldn't afford to go. For pinball, we hit the Seminole Theater, where we could play the Rollerball Rollerball machine all night without buying a movie ticket. If we were feeling lazy, we just went to MJ Design to browse through all the leopardskin fun fur. machine all night without buying a movie ticket. If we were feeling lazy, we just went to MJ Design to browse through all the leopardskin fun fur.

Our backyard looked into the woods, and we'd sit out there when it got too humid to breathe inside. Charlottesville turns into a rain forest every summer; the sea winds blow in from Tidewater, a few hundred miles to the east, and then they run slam into the Blue Ridge, so all the hot, wet air just hovers over Charlottesville. We'd look out across our neighbors' yards and try to imagine their lives. Did they really live live here, call it home? Or were they on their way to bigger things, like us? Did they get stuck here on their way somewhere else, or was this the town where they arrived and said, This is the place? Did they give up and blame each other? Were they lying low and planning their next move? here, call it home? Or were they on their way to bigger things, like us? Did they get stuck here on their way somewhere else, or was this the town where they arrived and said, This is the place? Did they give up and blame each other? Were they lying low and planning their next move?

I was still serfing away at grad school. My friends and I a.s.sumed that we would soon be tenured professors, which is an excellent life goal-it's like planning to be Cher. You think, I'm going to wear beads and fringed gowns, and sing "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" on the way to work every morning, and then one day, I'm going to get a call saying, "Congratulations! You're Cher! Can you make it to Vegas by showtime?" at grad school. My friends and I a.s.sumed that we would soon be tenured professors, which is an excellent life goal-it's like planning to be Cher. You think, I'm going to wear beads and fringed gowns, and sing "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" on the way to work every morning, and then one day, I'm going to get a call saying, "Congratulations! You're Cher! Can you make it to Vegas by showtime?"

Renee and I would s.h.i.+ver in the air-conditioning of the Fas.h.i.+on Square Mall and talk about how excellent it was going to be when we finally got out of Charlottesville. We'd go to the early bird special at the Chicken House, over in the Sears end of the mall. It was cheap, and we liked being surrounded by crotchety old couples. Someday, we'd be one of them. Meanwhile, we couldn't believe how exciting it was to be together, a pair of young Americruisers on a roll. We'd lived for just twenty-five years; we weren't planning to die for fifty more. We danced and drank and went to rock shows. Our lives were just beginning, our favorite moment was right now, our favorite songs were unwritten.

That summer we got our dog, and our new favorite band.

"I want to meet our dog," Renee said one night. We were sitting in the Fas.h.i.+on Square Mall parking lot, around midnight, the windows rolled down.

"We don't have a dog," I said.

"That's why I want to meet him."

"I hate dogs."

"You're gonna love dogs."

"I grew up with dogs."

"Yappy little northern things. Wait till you meet Duane."

Duane Allman, the guitarist for the Allman Brothers, the sweet blond Georgia angel who played the solos on "Whipping Post" and "You Don't Love Me" and "Blue Sky." We drove to the SPCA and went looking for Duane.

"I hate dogs."

"This dog is gonna be Duane Allman. A southern dog. He's gonna sleep in the sun all day. He's gonna be a ramblin' man."

"Duane Allman didn't play on 'Ramblin' Man,' actually. That was d.i.c.key Betts."

"You're such a boy."

Duane Allman was a beagle. The ladies at the SPCA put her on a leash and had Renee take her out for a walk around the grounds. Her name used to be "Dutchess," with a T. She was about a year old and tall for a beagle, and she wagged her tail as soon as she saw Renee. We walked a couple of dogs that day, but none of them had fit the name. This one was Duane.

"The next dog will be Ronnie Van Zandt," Renee said on the way home while Duane was in the backseat getting carsick.

My interest in dogs defined the term "scant." Interests don't come any scanter. I was hoping Duane Allman would change my mind. She didn't. Duane was nowhere near mellow-she was a high-strung little bundle of nightmares in fur. She was not so much Duane Allman; more like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Duane bit the cable guy and banged her head against the screen door; Renee didn't notice. Dog love is blind. For that matter, dog love is stupid. Duane and I never would have tolerated each other if we'd had a choice. But what could we do? We were two animals in love with the same girl.

Now there were three of us, and the apartment was even smaller, so we turned up the stereo and made it a little louder. Like all our friends in Charlottesville, we lived for music. In the summer of 1991, the world was teeming with hot young guitar bands. We didn't know "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was on the way in a few months. We just knew that after a few years of rock bands sounding smug and doddering, there was something new in the air. We played Nirvana's "Sliver" single a lot. They did not sound like a band that was getting ready to challenge the world. Truth be told, they sounded kind of like the Lemon-heads. But that was fine. This was the music we'd fallen in love to, the music that brought us together, and now there was more of it around than ever.

We waited all that summer for the Pavement show. The flier was up all over town:

We mean it manPAVEMENTwith very special guestsROYAL TRUX THURSDAY, AUGUST 29$5, only $4 for anyone wearing a WTJU T-s.h.i.+rt Basically he's a nice suburban kid who got hold of a guitar and some heroin and went a little bit wrong.

The night of the show, the floor was abuzz with antic.i.p.ation. None of us in the crowd knew what Pavement looked like, or even who was in the band. They put out mysterious seven-inch singles without any band info or photos, just credits for instruments like "guitar slug," "psued-piano gritt-gitt," "keybored," "chime scheme," and "last crash simbiosis." We a.s.sumed that they were manly and jaded, that they would stare at the floor and make abstract boy noise. That would be a good night out.

Royal Trux went on a few hours late, which I'm sure had nothing to do with buying drugs in Richmond. They were great, like a scuzz-rock Katrina and the Waves. The peroxide girl in the football jersey jumped around and screamed while the boy with the scary home-cut bangs played his guitar and tried to stay out of her way. She threw a cymbal at him. We wanted to take them home for a bath, a hot meal, and a blood change.

But Pavement was nothing at all like we pictured them. They were a bunch of foxy dudes, and they were into it into it. As soon as they hit the stage, you could hear all the girls in the crowd ovulate in unison. There were five or six of them up there, some banging on guitars, some just clapping their hands or singing along. They did not stare at the floor. They were there to make some noise and have some fun. They had fuzz and feedback and unironically beautiful sha-la-la melodies. The ba.s.sist looked just like Renee's high school boyfriend. Stephen Malkmus leaned into the mike, furrowed his brows, and sang lyrics like "I only really want you for your rock and roll" or "When I f.u.c.k you once it's never enough / When I f.u.c.k you two times it's always too much." The songs were all either fast or sad, because all songs should be either fast or sad. Some of the fast ones were sad, too.

Afterward, we staggered to the parking lot in total silence. When we got to the car, Renee spoke up in a mournful voice: "I don't think The Feelies are ever gonna be good enough again."

Our friend Joe in New York sent us a tape, a third-generation dub of the Pavement alb.u.m Slanted and Enchanted Slanted and Enchanted. Renee and I decided this was our favorite tape of all time. The guitars were all boyish ache and s.h.i.+ver. The vocals were funny bad poetry sung through a Burger World drive-through mike. The melodies were full of surfer-boy serenity, dreaming through a haze of tape hiss and mysterious amp noise. This was the greatest band ever, obviously. And they didn't live twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or five years ago. They were right now. They were ours.

I think about those days, and I think about a motto etched onto the sleeve of one of those Pavement singles: I AM MADE OF BLUE SKY AND HARD ROCK AND I WILL LIVE THIS WAY FOREVER. I AM MADE OF BLUE SKY AND HARD ROCK AND I WILL LIVE THIS WAY FOREVER.

the comfort zone

APRIL 1992.

The Comfort Zone was a dishes tape, maybe the finest of all dishes tapes, guaranteed to get me up to my elbows in Dawn Power Sudsing Formula and through the loading of the drying rack. I cranked it on the boombox we kept on the kitchen counter, right next to the sink. I taped most of it from Casey Kasem's was a dishes tape, maybe the finest of all dishes tapes, guaranteed to get me up to my elbows in Dawn Power Sudsing Formula and through the loading of the drying rack. I cranked it on the boombox we kept on the kitchen counter, right next to the sink. I taped most of it from Casey Kasem's American Top 40 American Top 40 countdown on Z-95, our local Top 40 station, with Casey nattering between songs. But that just adds to the ambience, since for any pop devotee, Casey's voice is music of the spheres. This tape counts down the hits from coast to coast! As the numbers get smaller, the hits get bigger! And we don't stop! Till we reach the top! countdown on Z-95, our local Top 40 station, with Casey nattering between songs. But that just adds to the ambience, since for any pop devotee, Casey's voice is music of the spheres. This tape counts down the hits from coast to coast! As the numbers get smaller, the hits get bigger! And we don't stop! Till we reach the top!

Like all radio tapes, it's a mixed bag. Disco scam artists, hair-metal schnauzers in red leather chaps, gangstas, ravers, fly-by-night pop smoothies, cartoon lip-synchers, sequin divas, flukes, hacks, one-hit scandals-we loved it all. n.o.body remembers The KLF today, but they made one of the decade's most sublime one-shots in 1992 with their hit "Justified and Ancient." A couple of British art-school poseurs hire Tammy Wynette to sing an incredibly beautiful disco song about an ice cream van? Genius! And of course, it became a gigantic international hit. Only in the nineties, brothers and sisters. n.o.body ever took this music seriously, but we loved it anyway: Vanilla Williams, Paula Abominable, Kris Kross, my beloved Hi-Five.

In some circles, admitting you love Top 40 radio is tantamount to bragging you gave your grandmother the clap, in church, in the front row at your aunt's funeral, but those are the circles I avoid like the plague or, for that matter, the clap. The beauty of Top 40 is you don't have to be any kind of great artist to make a great record-indeed, great artistness is just a pain in the a.s.s, which is why moron-rock choo-choo hack Tom Cochrane sounds right at home here with his idiot anthem, while U2 sound like Jesuits trying to act cool for the youth-group retreat. Tom Cochrane had nothing to say, plus a stupid way of saying it, but he helped me get the dishes done. As Casey Kasem would say, he kept my feet on the ground, and kept me reaching for the stars-even with my hands full of soap suds.

Z-95 was the only Top 40 station in town, and my wife and I loved it fiercely. Z-95 played hits like "I'm Too s.e.xy" and "Baby Got Back" and "Justified and Ancient" once an hour. They also constantly played this terrible British techno hit called "Groovy Train" by The Farm. Or maybe it was "Groovy Farm" by The Train-how would I know? Z-95 played all sorts of alleged hits that didn't exist in the real Billboard Top 40 charts, songs our friends in the big cities never heard of. We thought 2 In A Room's "Wiggle It" was the biggest hit in the world. It wasn't. We thought Martika's "Love . . . Thy Will Be Done" was the musical-youth anthem of the mid-to-late spring of 1992. It wasn't. We pitied the fools in New York and L.A. who had no idea Hi-Five were the world's greatest rock and roll band. MTV wouldn't touch this stuff. But what did they know? This was a golden age, and just by being stuck out in the middle of nowhere, we were right in the heat of the action. n.o.body remembers, n.o.body cares, and I guess that's fine with me. But I could hum Nikki's "Notice Me" for you. A few years ago there were two of us.

One night Renee and I were watching the En Vogue video where they s.h.i.+mmy in a sw.a.n.k club wearing those foxy red dresses. She said, "They're not wearing underwear." were watching the En Vogue video where they s.h.i.+mmy in a sw.a.n.k club wearing those foxy red dresses. She said, "They're not wearing underwear."

"They're not? How do you know?"

"I just know."

"They're not?"

"They're not."

I looked, but I could not see. I guess a woman just knows these things. Maybe it was the way the girls grind their hips, to and fro, in a way that underwear simply cannot contain; maybe it was the absence of panty lines. Renee wouldn't tell me.

There's also a scene in the video where one of the guys in the audience slips his wedding ring off his finger and hides it in his pocket. Renee hated that scene, but I loved it because it reminded me that it was time to do the dishes. Whenever I did dishes, I had to slip off my wedding ring and put it on the microwave so it wouldn't go down the drain. So, I think this is the perfect pop song-it reminds me of not wearing underwear, and it also reminds me of the dishes. What more could you want?