and then the Thunderbird swooped down

I don't know why my parents didn't care. It was smack in the middle of the Seventies and everyone was high. This made it somehow permissible to go to a concert with some other girls from Alexander Graham Junior High School on a school night. I think Terri McGrath's mom drove us there. Coming home was another story.

Not many people at school knew who Springsteen was at that time; he had not yet reached the covers of Time and Newsweek and been blown into superstardom. But I knew him. I was a transplanted Jersey girl lonely for the sounds and cadence of my childhood and Springsteen's early albums filled me with the right mixture of longing and satisfaction. I was 14. It was enough.

I don't remember what happened to the other girls once we got to the show; I only remember that I made my way to the front of the stage, back when you could do that, and was pressed up against the stage directly in front of Bruce. The concert still defies description. I guess only those who saw him in the early days, in the small venues, before the mega-crowds, for the four+hour shows, so close you shared the sweat and spit of the whatever band member you were closest to, can share the zeitgeist of these concerts. It was just unbelievable, in the literal sense of the word. I had not been to a ton of concerts yet, but I had seen my share, and I knew what I was witnessing was something profoundly OTHER. I was way too in the moment to know yet that this would change my life- but I know I understood I was leaving something behind with each song. The critical departure happened during the long, soul shaking instrumental in Jungleland. He turned his back to us. He walked toward the drums. He swayed and danced to the sax, the organ, the piano. He was young and taut and all that sound and song and man and men became something bigger, more powerful than anything I could possibly understand, or care to understand. It was something about rocknroll and sex and men and music and myself and I grew a few inches and a few years in those minutes when that beautiful man had his back turned to me, his perfect body moving perfectly to his crazy sexy sad song, everyone (was anyone else there?) transfixed, transmutated, tranced out. The genie had been let out of the bottle and for me, there was no going back. Did I cry? I must have. I was ripped out of my skin, my senses. The Thunderbird had swooped and had me in its talons.

The next thing I knew, someone behind me gently lifted me up onto the stage- what the fuck?

I stood up, he's right there, he's smiling, what am I doing? He's looking at me. I move to the side a bit. Someone just as gently lowers me right back down to where I was before. There are men all around me smiling. What just happened?

I am soaked to the skin. I am wearing Chinese red satin.

The show is over, lights are on, where am I? Where is everyone? The people I came with are long gone. The person I came as is long gone.

Someone leads me to the back stage door. It opens up and I am escorted in, taken to a hospitality room. I remember cheese and I remember Heinekens. One by one the band members all make their way to the room and sit talking quietly. Who else is there? I have no idea. I am. Backstage. Are there other women here? Am I a woman? What? I ask where Bruce is. Someone, Little Steven?, points out toward the stage. I walk out of that room like a zombie out for blood. And there he is, walking across the stage. And just like that he takes me by the arm. He grabs a few beers and we sit in a room and talk. Talk? What could I possibly be saying? Who am I? He thinks I am a woman. I must be a woman.

It's time to go. We get up, he again takes my arm, and we begin to move toward the exit door. And then, somehow, improbably, impossibly, he stops, leans down, and kisses my mouth. Right there. We two. Are kissing. And that was it.

We are at the door. It opens and standing there is this boy from my school. He, too, was from New Jersey. What was he doing here at 1:30 in the morning? He looks at me like I am a goddess. A goddess of ROCK! That's it! Sweet E., later a deep deep love in my life. Right then just a ga-ga boy staring at this girl from school standing arm in arm with The Boss?

The bus is fired up and it is time for the boys to go. Clarence picks me up like piece of kindling, laid out across his arms, and tries to carry me into the bus. Says, "I want to take this one home with me." I giggle, squirm and get away. Laughter, winks, and they are loaded up and gone.

It is dark and late-the outside light is ugly. E. calls his mom at 2:00 in the morning to come pick us up . While we wait for her we get a wild hair and E. climbs the big marquee of the auditorium and steals the letters. He takes BRUCE. I take SPRINGSTEEN. His mom shows up and I have an armful of big black letters, a Heineken bottle, and lips just kissed. I am nobody I have ever known before. I have no memory of the ride home.

My parents are still up and I think I am going to be in big trouble. It's so very late. I walk back to their bedroom with my arms full and dump the letters on the bed. I tell them what happened, leaving out the part about the kiss. I think I am going to be grounded. I am not. That Heineken bottle sat on a shelf in my bedroom through three remodels into a guestroom and another 30 years before I grabbed it as the house was sold.

But I am a new girl. I have seen my future and its name is ROCK. I have been kissed, blessed, sexed, turned on, powered up, thundered down, jungle boogied. I am in love, out of my mind, out of control, newborn and never again a kid. I am a grownup with a mission and my mission is to kiss the shaman, to have the shaman serenade rain down upon me, to be the shapeshifter in the middle of the drums and bass and screaming guitar. I am totally fucked. It's the Jungleland that did it- took me to the middle, dropped me flat, and left me with a longing so big I spent the next 30 years filling it. And I came close. Many times I glimpsed the shadow on the stage, saw the moon in the middle of the room, felt the wing of the Thunderbird, rocked 'til my feet bled and my hair was on fire. But never (how could I?) did I ever get as close to the center of it all as I did that night, when a 26 year old with a bad ass guitar and tight ass jeans tore through the universe as I had known it and made me something new.