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.