Awwwwww.

So I was talking on IM with a friend of mine from another era in my life tonight. This friend and I, we have weathered some weird stuff together. We will go six months or more without speaking--for no real reason other than falling out of touch--and pick up right were we left off the next time we run across each other on the internet.

We had a long, good 'talk'.

I also asked him about another co-friend of ours, someone we used to work with. (Have I tapped the great resource that is my history of working in a gas station in college? Amazing, hilarious, weird time in my life. I will have to go there at some point. The two men of which we are speaking worked graveyard there with me. The co-friend and I worked graves together all the time, and he saved my life once. Another story for another time.)

Anyway, this co-friend, who I need to think of a nickname for.......AV. Not even close to his real name, but whatever. Anyway, AV is and was a startlingly talented musician. Great singing voice, amazing guitar and bass player. (Taught me to play at work during a blizzard one time. I promptly forgot, but illegal cigarettes will do that to you. {Judge not, please, it was college.}) He was in a very popular local band while we worked together, and I have spent hours and hours of my life sitting in dive bars listening to them play. (He had an entire bar buy me shots 5 days after my 21st birthday one time. Kill me. Also, sang a metal cover of a Gordon Lightfoot song in my honor. Again, another story for another time.)

Anyway, shortly after I moved, his band broke up. I have run into AV several times since then, and he is still high on my list of great people I have had the opportunity to know. We have fallen out of touch the last few years--I saw him a few years ago on a trip down to see some other friends--but haven't spoken to him since. It makes me sad, actually...

Anyway, friend on IM.....D (Again, not his name) gave me the name of AV's new band. It would seem that they have been doing amazingly well in the home state--radio play and everything! And tonight was their CD release party. I looked them up, and was sent to their myspace page.

It warmed my heart. The new band is made up of members of AV's old band and another, equally talented band that broke up around the same time. The sound is great (If you're into metal, really), and it takes me back to one of the only good selection of memories I have from that place and time in my life.

I hear the music, and I am barely 21, sitting at a small, sticky table in a really shitty bar, drinking PBR and smoking Parliament Lights, my dark nail polish chipped, my scuffed black boots scraping damp bar trash underneath the table. Sweating under my leather jacket, my damp t-shirt clinging to my breasts. Listening to loud, bracingly beautiful music and feeling the night inside me.

I haven't felt like that in a long time. It was nice. Hopeful.

Wanna check it out? Send me a comment and I will send you the link. I don't know that all 5 of you can handle knowing where I went to college. Oh, wait.....most of you already do. If you weren't there with me. :)