Trust Me, It'll Hit Ya.

My vicious job as a travel writer took me today somewhere I didn't want to go: an exhibition space in the south of the city. It would have been agreeable if not for a certain woman working there, a woman who's turned my summer a bit upside down. You know the old tale: boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl dumps boy, boy has to write a review of girl's curating feats.

The night that girl first dumped me, I went to visit my friend Nicole. "You know," I told her with full honesty, "I don't actually feel half bad."

"Trust me," she said in her authentic Texan accent, "It'll hit ya."

Today, as I left the place without stopping by the office to say hello, I again felt perfectly well. It hit me only later, while I was on stage in Florentine, jamming at a local open mic. I secretly dedicated to her this wee song of disillusionment. The version given here is from the film "Don't Look Back". It's probably the best ever recorded, and for some reason the first man seen in the footage is Alan Ginsberg.

Later still it was my friend Ravid who shared a bit of wisdom. "One day," she said of that defiant belle, "five years from now, she'll be sitting on the loo somewhere, taking a crap. and then, in the middle of the crap, she'll suddenly say: 'Oh sweet Jesus! what the fuck was I thinking?!'"

That's a good theory by me. Hey, we all take time to process.