The first day of a new semester makes me happier than any other day during the year. Meeting five new sets of students. Fumbling names. Sweaty shirt. Bad jokes. Nerves. Hope. I usually forget how much of an impression they all make on me these first days until I look at them again somewhere toward the end of the semester and can see how much progress they’ve made. I don’t care what anyone says, getting up in front of people and talking, speaking clearly and articulately and intelligently is fucking terrifying for a lot of people, particularly a population of students that may have not been given a lot of encouragement over the years. Finding a voice is a process and it’s scary and hard. Being a part of that process with my students over and over again every semester is a wonderful thing. 

My face hums in the warmth of my apartment, the blue crisp of winter losing grip of our afternoon together. I stared at my shadow for 20 blocks outlining the collar and hair of whatever perfection I needed to project for myself for an hour or so. I could only steal glances at the Hudson every hundred feet for fear of losing sight of Riverside emptying out in front of my frozen pace. The river was pretty, the empty park a glory. After 30 minutes my thighs were tingling in the way only possible against frozen denim. I’ve been dealing on and off with a slight vertigo when I walk. Could be the anxiety or maybe I need new lenses. I felt it creep up through my back like wings and seep out my eyes and neck setting me sideways all light and breathless as if the cold air sucked balance out from under me. Battling the diziness with honey and pomegranates. 

I lost my virginity in the back of a tan Volvo station wagon underneath a basketball hoop. What started in the fading afternoon of the dunes ended after dusk in a backseat. It was the kind of mistake eager kids make randomly one day after rehearsal. The next time, the one that you say counts when telling your stories, was a year later and we were young and in love and to the point we listened to Little Earthquakes, laid a blanket on the floor and turned on a lava lamp. Our first kiss had been Belly so Tori made sense. Winter….oy. All the young kids learned to play the beginning to Silent All These Years for theatre parties. Mother is my favorite though. Something about the pressure of her playing that intro, the humming drive. Everything was so very pianissimo back then. Boys For Pele will always probably be my favorite with Under the Pink drawing a very very close second. I’d be lying if I said I listened to anything after Choirgirl Hotel. I haven’t heard Little Earthquakes in years. Just one of those records. Everything rushes back out of control. Christ I listened to 30 seconds of the title track and had to turn it off. I’ve got a few like that: Rites of Passage, Living in Clip, the first Manson record. A haze of fumbly sticky things burned a hole straight through. Maybe the innocent pulse of youth cuts too close. Too much? But I’ll listen to Bells for Her at the drop of a hat. Tori is the closest we ever got to magic. The white hot dull of everything we became. Our unreliable narrator of growing up. The 1990s.