I found a lover's rendezvous.
_ and I had only one interest in common when we first met. Girl-crazy 15-year-olds, we pursued imprudent dalliances with a determination that mystified our less amorous classmates.
I got some beer and the highway’s free.
We bonded after I introduced _ to alcohol and Bruce Springsteen. He never got his fill of either.
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.
While alcohol has never been more than an amusing diversion for me, _ drank constantly. My passion for Springsteen stalled with the 1984 release of Born in the U.S.A. but _ went on to write his senior thesis about the artist’s response to the Reagan era. He also caught more than two dozen Springsteen concerts.
I’m a rocker.
I dubbed _’s copy of The River on the day the album was released in 1980. I can’t quite remember what we illegally consumed before and during Springsteen’s 1981 concert in support of the album at Kemper Arena in the West Bottoms of Kansas City, but I recall that it was a massive night.
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?
We gradually drifted apart, partly because I just couldn’t hang. It took me a full day to recover after each of the handful of occasions we reunited during his last years.
The price you pay.
I brought a boombox and a copy of The River to _’s room in a hospice two days before his body gave out. He was coherent enough to indicate that he appreciated the gesture.
My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room.
The tears that streamed down my face at Thursday’s concert at the Sprint Center, consequently, didn’t come as a surprise. I cried for myself during “Independence Day” and lost it while thinking of _ as the band performed “Wreck on the Highway.”
They can’t touch me now.
Had I not been sober and in the arms of the woman I love, I might not have made it through the night.
(Tim Finn wrote a proper review of the concert. Original image by There Stands the Glass.)
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