{"id":22065,"date":"2025-07-20T08:13:57","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T12:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=22065"},"modified":"2025-07-20T08:14:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T12:14:16","slug":"the-soundtrack-to-1988-in-five-movements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/flash-fiction\/the-soundtrack-to-1988-in-five-movements\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soundtrack to 1988 in Five Movements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u2013 Whitesnake<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1<\/p>\n

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\u2019 on a Prayer” from the radio. The one where the timing is just off enough I capture a few seconds of station identification: \u201cBoston\u2019s only Rock Station\u201d just before the faint, tinkling wind chimes start.<\/p>\n

The song juices me up. Working-class ballads often do. I grab the phone and dial Julie Gatchell\u2019s number. At school she wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

All the seasons are different in New England. Still I can\u2019t remember what time of year I called Erin Davany and played the song \u201cWhy Can\u2019t this be Love\u201d into the phone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

The youth-group-leader couple brought in boys from the rough neighborhoods near the city. All our town\u2019s trees couldn\u2019t cleanse their sins.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d ride my bike over to swim in their pool and after fall asleep on the basement sofa watching Robocop<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In one of the cars, I discovered Tiffany St. Louis\u2019s mom passed out. Her skirt hiked all the way up. The yellow streetlight draped like a supplicant across her purple-pink vulva.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Everybody thought he was so cool because he convinced the drummer from Boston to do a demo in the basement of St. Mary\u2019s church.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5<\/p>\n

That was the year Michael Syvalev and I made electric guitars with his father\u2019s tools in the basement. I didn\u2019t know a single chord. So he guided my fingers up the strings to the arpeggios of Eruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-andrew-boylan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22065"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22707,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22065\/revisions\/22707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}