i forget what 8 was for

my favorite badass cowboy says it's time to update, so here goes.

when the phone rang at 1:32 a.m., i picked up before the first ring ended. this was becoming a ritual. me, lying on my bedroom floor, waiting for the phone to ring just as late night with david letterman signed off. mike on the other end, waiting to recap the show's hijinks, talk music, make me laugh. mike novaks, of the slow, loopy smile and easy charm, had rolled into our suburban utah junior high a month earlier and caught the attention of my best friend, sunny. yes, sunny, and with all the name implies, summergirl tan, blond hair, blue eyes, the whole deal. what the hell else? in the casually cruel yet pragmatic fiefdom that is junior high, she sent me- her less attracivie/non threatening coutnerpart- as a her dating emissary to mike. i was to befriend the boy and negotiate a 'going together' situation between them. easy peasy.

a week later, he and I were talking less about sunny and more about anything else. he made me a copy of violent femmes 'add it up' and tonight we were listening to it on either end of the phone line. we were young enough to be genuinely psyched about the swearing and naughty innuendoes "why can't i get, just one...' i told him about my secret crushes on david letterman and beastie boy king ad rock. he told me i was weird. then he asked me if i wanted to go to the femmes concert with him. i could't add that one up. "you mean, with you and sunny?" "no, just you and me, my dad could drop us off." "but what about sunny?" i was scared witless. i knew my place in the scheme of things and could not make it jibe with his invitation. it was as if accepting his invite would set in motion some sort of cataclysmic rift in the early teen universe- cool boys dating weird girls, cats and dogs living together- and i refused to be responsible for it.

so mike didn't become my first boyfriend, first kiss, or first love. but he did become the first guy to call me at one o'clock in the morning. and that's something.