Because I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams.

            – Whitesnake

1

First I tie the red and white bandana around my head. Then I put on the most ripped tee shirt I can find. Preferably the one where the sleeves and crew neck barely hang on for dear life. I dig out the cassette I used to tape “Livin’ on a Prayer” from the radio. The one where the timing is just off enough I capture a few seconds of station identification: “Boston’s only Rock Station” just before the faint, tinkling wind chimes start.

The song juices me up. Working-class ballads often do. I grab the phone and dial Julie Gatchell’s number. At school she wouldn’t give me the time of day. After dark, in her house with her seven half-brothers and half-sisters, she would laugh at the jokes I made about her cat.

2

All the seasons are different in New England. Still I can’t remember what time of year I called Erin Davany and played the song “Why Can’t this be Love” into the phone.

3

The youth-group-leader couple brought in boys from the rough neighborhoods near the city. All our town’s trees couldn’t cleanse their sins.

I’d ride my bike over to swim in their pool and after fall asleep on the basement sofa watching Robocop.

Around midnight, I woke to the sight of two of the project-kids getting dressed. It was probably easier to ask me to come than explain the plan or risk waking the youth-group-leader couple. I followed them around the neighborhood as they checked car doors to see if they were unlocked. We scored a neon windbreaker, a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament, and a Bobby Brown tape.

In one of the cars, I discovered Tiffany St. Louis’s mom passed out. Her skirt hiked all the way up. The yellow streetlight draped like a supplicant across her purple-pink vulva.

4

My parents were always somewhere else that summer. That Friday they convinced the Boy Scout leader to take me in. He said I could sleep in his bed. In the morning, he woke me with tickles under my arms.

Everybody thought he was so cool because he convinced the drummer from Boston to do a demo in the basement of St. Mary’s church.

5

That was the year Michael Syvalev and I made electric guitars with his father’s tools in the basement. I didn’t know a single chord. So he guided my fingers up the strings to the arpeggios of Eruption.