Lose Another Broken Heart In A Land Of Meat

A memory that keeps reoccurring, somehow, for some reason.

In the summer of 1988 I was in Ferrum in Franklin County, Virginia. Tiny crossroads of a mountain community that consisted of a small private college along the outskirts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, along with a gas station, two restaurants, and convenience store. And pretty much not much else. Farm country. Country country. You've seen it all before.

One night while perusing the previously mentioned Express Mart convenience store I spotted a teenage girl, roughly around fifteen or sixteen, thin, non-descriptively pretty, with very little make-up and her straight mouse-brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. But two things made her stand out so vividly to me: A small hopped nose ring, and a white T-shirt with this written across the front.

And I know, you have seen this girl in various forms in every town in every city, and she hardly stands out for any reason in this current culture of attention-getting competitions. But at that time, in that backwood country setting, she was the epitome of an anomaly that had me following her around the store the way you spot another fellow American in a strange foreign land.

As I left the store that night I pictured the girl's bedroom, back home at her parents' house. I pictured them rich, in some semblance of an 80's McMansion secluded in the hills. And her room as neat as a pin, walls covered in alternative posters. Her little tape deck next to her bed playing "Perfect Kiss" while she sketched in her art pad under the skylight. Yes, for some reason, I pictured her bedroom having a skylight.

Where the hell did all that come from, anyway?