There's a band playing on the radio

Nineteen years ago, on an empty July night, she gave me a tiny plastic cheeseburger and a pink flamingo, also of plastic. We were on the dance floor, the music loud and pounding around us. Sqeezing my way between the crowd, I hugged her, pulled back and smiled at her, a big open ecstasy-induced love you, love you, love you, grin. She threw her head back, laughed like bells ringing Sunday morning over the music and smiled straight into my eyes in a way that soberly said, I'll always love you but I'll never put you on that pedestal. She looked me dead in the eyes. She meant it. I loved it. We were young, intoxicated and free. And I felt safe.

I heard that look, wanted to seal the moment around us and stay that way forever. I wrapped it over me as if she'd handed me a blanket to shelter the cold, while I shook all over from the honesty that I recognized. I closed my eyes and let the drugs take over. Magic. My friend.

I locked her eyes to mine, made a show of closing my hand around the trinkets, and put them in my pocket. She watched my hands, said something about my never remembering the other gifts I'd gotten that night, only hers. It was a challenge. Though lost in the music, I heard her, knew she was right.

Some expression in your eyes
overtook me by surprise

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My friend says to me, My mom has now been gone for longer than I knew her alive.

She shakes her head at the puzzle of time.

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I look at the calendar with a watchful eye these days. No one told me there would come a time when I would read the dates beyond the presence of today while fearing the pain of tomorrow. Saturday was her birthday. I wonder. Do I celebrate or mourn? She would have been 43. Soon, very soon, she will be gone for longer than I knew her.

They're playing
oh yeah
on the radio



I shake my head at the puzzle of time.

We danced across our nights together. Siouxsie Sioux got us moving, The Cult and English Beat. We sat beneath wide trees in the dark with our feet in a warm lake, and pulled mussels from a shell to the music of Squeeze blaring from my car parked on the street. We sat in my car with the music in our ears, the burning ends of our cigarettes making glowing lines from our lips along the path to the ashtray. Our anger and energy bursted with Bauhaus and The Replacements. Our angst and depression cut open with This Mortal Coil and Joy Division. The volume going higher with Au Pairs.

And so it came to be our song
and so on through all summer long

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We ate powdered donuts and drank coffee in the mornings at her place. Taking a bite from my donut, I throw the Classifieds to the floor. Circled jobs discarded. We bemoan our unemployment and lack of money. We answer our sorrow by skating Allen Parkway, winding through downtown, dipping our hair in the cool water of the fountains, and drinking wine at La Carafe. She shares her memories, Patsy Cline on the jukebox.

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There were rivers and rope swings between us, curves and promises. Long roads with words. So many words between us, so many songs. There were moments I'd watch her living, moments I'd sit back and love watching her life. And moments I'd sit still after she'd swim to shore, and I'd hold my breath while watching the water dry from her body, feeling like I was spying but knowing I was protecting. Drop by drop, the round bits of water losing their space of presence on her skin while she slept. There were moments like that where she'd sleep in peace. And I'd challenge the world to be quiet.

So I turn to the sounds in my car

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This is another year. Another blank page. Every August is this way. She calls me away in August and October. She does it through the music. What I wanted then was to know I would know her now.

She left. This life. And me. She got what she wanted. And she wanted it, to be sure. She wanted out. Every time I hang my clothes in a hotel closet I know it. She wanted out. Ten years later, it haunts me.



There's a band playing on the radio
and it's drowning the sound of my tears

They're playing
oh yeah
on the radio
and so on through all summer long

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In a silver box with papers guiding my role as Godmother to my niece and nephew, there are two other things: a plastic cheeseburger and a pink flamingo. They are the only gifts I remember from that year. She was right.