Grunge Puppy Love

For a very brief time in the 90’s, it seemed like there were masses of privileged, spoiled, pretty boys who actually wanted to be around girls like me. I can’t say that I was ever really a huge fan of the whole 90’s Seattle music scene, but I loved the grunge puppies. I found them adorable, with their flannel shirts tied around their waists and their Docs. I met my first grunge puppy a couple of days before the school year started, when everyone was moving into the dorms. He was barely eighteen, and had just left home for the first time, and he had this way of listening to me speak that made me feel brilliant, and this way of looking at me as if I were some kind of rare, exotic flower. I was only 19, but I felt years older than him. He wanted so badly to be accepted by my friends and I, and we were nothing but a bunch of overly dramatic theater geeks who were never accepted anywhere else.

We spent hours that first night, sitting on the balcony next to my dorm room, listening to my stereo, smoking cigarettes and talking. I talked about the bands that I liked, and he talked about Pearl Jam and Nirvana. When he shook his silky, expensively conditioned hair over his face and tried to imitate Eddie Vedder, I found him utterly charming. He sounded more like Elvis or Cher, but I didn’t tell him that.

He told me that he’d never dated a girl who wasn’t a cheerleader.

How do you respond to a statement like that?

He told me he’d never met a girl like me, who could sit and talk to him all night long.

Hmmm. Again, I had no response, other than to walk into my dorm room, beckoning. He followed me, as any obedient grunge puppy would, and I cuddled up next to him on my narrow bed and told him to get some sleep.

I knew, even in that moment, that one day in the future, he’d be listening to “Black” and thinking about me.