Linger On

"She sang to me before anyone else did," I said. "She sang directly to me, softly, breathing Lou Reed in my ear. 'Linger on, your pale blue eyes.'"

He looked at me and I tightened my fists as if to clutch closer my recitation. "We'd started with DK, the Pistols, the Dead Milkmen. We'd worked backward all the time. She'd taught me a love for punk rock music and led me from there further down to the Ramones, the Dolls, the Velvets. She'd sung the lyrics humorously first, then slow and sultry. She'd taught me the thrill of listening, of touching and not touching. She made sweeter the boundless spaces, all the hesitation, even the cotton underthings between us."

He smiled, soaking the words out of me.

"I saw a future so unlike this one," I said then. "Saw it hazily through dividing veils under which we lived. And just like our teenage clothing, it was all flimsy and pale before us."

I had wanted to move faster but I couldn't. Crisscross this speedy present with that languid lusty past. Everyone else was so young and fast. When I was that age, we measured speed in megahertz and miles per hour. Time was measured in seconds. Today I watched from my window seat as the boys and girls hurtled by, not in nano time but pico, even femto. Just getting to the cafe seemed to take hours and getting my words out to Harris' recording equipment was impossible time, relativistic time, and I was the left-home twin, watching myself recede.