you can take me home but i will never be your girl

*Meta-Post Disclaimer: I think I was drunk when I started writing this post two weeks ago on the damaging effects of heavy Liz Phair listening. I no longer have the strength to really get to the point of all this but maybe I'll be inspired later on, after all my tears have dried and my iPod is functional again.*

I may have encountered Liz Phair a little too early on in life. Exile in Guyville came in my BMG mail when I was maybe thirteen, certainly before I had listened to Exile on Main Street and perhaps immediately following the dumping of my first boyfriend ever (who would wtf later date my younger sister for two years). Although kissing with tongue was still somewhat disgusting, I could really get into a song like, say, "Fuck and Run:"

"Whatever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who tries to win you over
and whatever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who makes love cause he's in it
I want a boyfriend
I want all that stupid old shit
Letters and sodas."

At that time I believed, thanks to Liz Phair, 13 or 14 year-old me was wise beyond my years. I could see it pretty clearly: the 14 year old boys were never really going to grow up, and the above scenario laid out my inevitable future. Liz Phair, all monotone and detached, had this cool way of looking at things that bore no resemblance to any of the girls I went to school with. My friend Ryan once compared her to a potato [Note: this was actually Courtney Love, in some random book I read in high school]). She was an uber-girl. She understood things that we didn't.

And so, armed with guitar tab and cassette tapes, Liz Phair became my fucked-up older sister. She sat in the passenger side of my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme ("Batmobile," J.D. Salinger style: "Fire up the Batmobile / Cause I gotta get outta here / I don't speak the language / and you gave me no real choice / you made me see that my behavior was an opinion") while I did all the stupid things I did in high school. Consequently, I know every word to every Liz Phair song released before 1999. After remembering my obsession last week, I went on a Juvenilia / Exile / Whip-Smart / Whitechocolatespaceegg bender and realized that the memories of every one of those songs are so wrapped up in being 16 or 17 that it was almost unbearable. [Note: last week I reached my saturation point. I listened all day, cried for like 3 hours, and was eventually cheered up by Billy Joel.]

Oh nostalgia rush 1998 Lilith Fair: my best friend and I lied to my parents about staying with friends on Long Beach Island (where we would sleep in my car in some parking lot), obviously not stopping in Camden for the most ridiculous but secretly great concert featuring not just a rare performance by stage-fright-ridden Liz Phair but also Supa Dupa Fly era Missy Elliott.

The potential outcome of all of this — attending Sarah Lawrence — never materialized thank god, but along with my snail mail Matador Records newsletter came plenty of premature emotional baggage. On some level I feel lucky to have had this kind of amazing progression from these interesting and unique female pop culture voices. Sassy folded circa 1994. I would re-read the vaguely feministic articles in back issues while listening to Ms Phair lull me into the commitment-phobic independent daze that has plagued me throughout most of my adult life, a condition afflicting both genders that I have recently identified as The Dude Factor. Her take on the power dynamics of relationships is vulnerable, political, utterly dysfunctional, highly attuned to the emotional workings of the adolescent girl self. Whip-Smart, Track 3: "I don't need a support system"; Track 6: "I don't crack the door too far for anyone who's pushing too hard on me" followed by the haunting refrain "I won't decorate my love"; Track 11: "Just putting your body wherever it seemed like a good idea" ("Jealousy" also awesomely rhymes "He's got a family who deals heroin" with "and you're on the edge of your chair and").