Not About Love

As spring rained into summer, I played love like a tambourine, shaking and rattling it – but it was music all the while.  It was a time when I was mad.  Crazy mad like a starved fox in heat.  Mad for really good sex and strong tequila and rock’n’roll and men that wouldn’t shy away.  I wanted a love that was as fierce as I felt when I walked down the street in my black boots.  I wanted a love made from sweat and teeth, ripped lace and walking shoes.  And I drank because most nights I couldn’t find it – and because, some nights, if I drank enough, I would think I did.  But, in the sunny, sober, morning hours, I would remember that it wasn’t love that I was looking for – it was timelessness.  It was that ever fleeting, ever forever, feeling of a first wine-drunk night and a great first kiss and the luxurious carelessness of youth.  It was a time when I was becoming aware that every night as I was getting drunk -- and every night I wasn't -- I was also getting old.  And the feeling I had once had of endless possibilities and infinite passion, was dying as fast as the minutes and hours of the night. So I had to drink and have sex and dance and cry and scream and listen to really good music because in possible self-destruction, there also seemed to be a kind of self-resurrection; a kind of saving grace -- as I think there is in most madness.