L'Age d'Or

Remember those really fucking awesome backyard shows we used to go to, like 5 summers ago? Things were so so different then, we were such different people then. High school was still fresh, even after graduation. Damn was that ceremony boring. So full of fake-ass ostentation and seemingly random importance placed on a very unextraordinary "achievement." Pomp and circumstance indeed. So anticlimactic and unmoving... not at all the fitting ending to our youth.

Things were so golden back then. It was a hot and humid summer, and it permeated through everything, the blood in my veins, the air in my lungs. We'd swim in the big concrete hole of a dirty suburban pool surrounded by a weed-overrun backyard next to that crazy old dilapidated car covered in rust and spider webs. Sun bleached white plastic chairs that were about to break and dented beer cans littering the environs. Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller Lite 40's and fucking Natty Ice. And we'd walk to the 7-11 down Mast Boulevard and eat wonderful deep fried Taco Shop and drink Cokes or buy popsicles.

The best part was the afternoons when the sun set and everything was orange and red. And your loosely thrown together band would assemble in various white trash backyards to play into the twilight until the blue evening cooled us all down. I would sit on an amp wearing a flippy little skirt and flip flops watching you set up, sound check, smile at me. I stole your chord cheat sheet after the show, scrawled with a messy hand on the back of a crumpled flyer, studying the movements of the lines and savoring the spontaneity of their strokes with as much appreciation as a Chinese calligrapher. And I'd dance to the music you covered later that night as moths burned themselves on the bare light bulb of my bedroom lamp as they flew in through the open window.

Our hometown was shit, but we didn't care. It was East County, it was So-Cal, and it was summer. Your shitty amps rang out distorted chords that resounded against the walls of the valley, and for an hour or so I could just stare up at the dark sky and let go of everything. A real l'Age d'Or. We kissed on the 4th of July after climbing up to the hills covered in scratchy dry grass, showers of colored light illuminating our vision behind closed eyelids.

The summer and the music was still hot, flowing through my body, but when Labor Day came I was suddenly in the grip of Fall. Fuck, it was cold. And like a tide you ebbed ever slowly away. That was it. The moment when you smiled at me, bidding farewell as you stepped into your mom's van, going away to college, your cheerful words, "Be happy... go find a nice boyfriend" gave me a fucking black eye. That was when I knew I had grown up and that I could never ever go back or even look at this town again.