It’s Eddie Vedder’s voice and the kick of that drum and each pull on that bass guitar’s strings.

With slitted eyes, I move my head in slow scoops, my shoulders in slow motion shrugs. One hand traces the arc of the steering wheel, the other palms the sticky grittiness of the gear shift knob. I hit fifty accelerating onto the freeway before I see I’m still in second gear, the RPM dial way too far into the orange.

Quick shift into fourth and who cares who passes me in my Vanagon. I’ve got two empty car seats in back and the stereo loud and the night to myself.

Soon that bass line’s throbbing a single note repetition and I’m lying on my twin bed with my first post-high school love. He played the guitar and we sang Iggy Pop’s “Candy,” and I think about “Candy, Candy, Candy, I can’t let you go.” I think about the opening line for the female vocal, B-52’s lead singer Kate Pierson, and how I used to try to sing just like her, “Yeah, well, it hurt real, real bad when you left me. Hell, I’m glad you got out, but… I miss you.”

How I sang-spoke that with as much toughness as I could muster, thinking about anybody who’d ever let me down, and how maybe I even felt a premonition that this guy might someday leave me and dump me for my very best friend, and another premonition that I might even hear this song in my head in fifteen years and feel what being dumped felt like all over again.

And Eddie Vedder can lay it all out for me on my stereo, and wail and hum and sing in his nasal baritone voice. And I’ll finally pull into a parking lot five minutes later, cutting the engine and blaring “Alive” some more, and I’ll lean back in my seat with the late afternoon sun slicing through the window like a celestial affirmation, and I’ll spread my legs like some tomboy, one knee against the door, the other propped up on the dash, and I’ll sit and write and think about how damned good I feel because if Eddie Vedder makes me feel anything at all, it’s that I’ve lived and I’ve loved and I’ve lost, and, yeah, I’m still alive.

By Anjie Reynolds

Labels: Anjie Reynolds

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