really, who doesn't have a crush on a rock star?
May 12, 2004, 9:36 pm

We are in 8th grade.

Everyone is wearing I.O.U. sweatshirts in loud colors, and both of our families buy us generic white ones that aren't quite I.O.U., but everyone is too busy with their Starter jackets to notice. We notice we both have the same sweatshirt, and we decide to pick a day to wear them together; we always wear them together.

I outweigh him by 50 pounds. He has a bowlcut. It could be a skater-cut if he holds it just right. His voice is high.

We are in 10th grade.

I am unfortunately into country music. I don't talk to him much, but to say hello. We don't wear our sweatshirts anymore. He plays guitar.

We are in 11th grade.

Weezer releases the blue album. I spent some time up in his room, listening to the blue guitar wail sad, sad songs. He tries to belt out "Say It Ain't So," but it cracks most days.

We are in 12th grade.

We have Human Relations and Spanish together; in the former class we are to build an island paradise. I laugh as he carefully creates two gophers in Star Wars gear having a lightsaber battle out of brown construction paper. He draws Space Ghost on the wall in Spanish class, translating funny things into Spanish. We make sketches about Bathroom Duck; we go to Senior Week together. I spend lots more time in his room listening to the blue guitar with the Green Day stickers. He's getting good. He draws our yearbook cover with me and katslater and blulinepaper there with a bus.

I am in college.

His band plays around, around, and when I see them play, I see them at skating rinks, and I'm skating around, and he dedicates "Greentrees" and "Sucked Out" to me, and I laugh.

He moves to L.A.

I make fun of his name.

He comes home.

So last night, I go to a bar to see him play, not with his new band, who rocks, but with his guitar. It's not the blue one. His hair is styled, and punk, and too coifed to be him. He has tattoos, and he's very tall, and when he sings it's a wail, a wind, and it isn't cracking at the top or babyish anymore.

He plays me "Say It Ain't So" because I ask nicely and sits next to me when he plays "Old Apartment"...and I tear up, because I think, I maybe could have loved him once upon a time because he was so fun and so childish and silly and creative and all those things that he is now, but we're older and it just won't do.

He's a rock star now.

Love you, NattyBaby. Thanks.