The Lizard King:

I saw my very first high school boyfriend at lunch today. We dated when we were barely fifteen and not actually allowed to date, which meant his mother and my mother drove us to two formal dances, our knees touching in the backseat, and sometimes we’d make out behind the wall of our little brothers’ elementary school before it was time to walk them home. He was really cute and not all that quick, and obsessed with Jim Morrison. When I broke up with him, I called the next day to see how he was doing and he said, “I just turned off all my lights and listened to Riders on the Storm on repeat, man.” He always wore a soft leather bomber jacket and smelled like a strong mixture of Eternity cologne and watermelon bubblegum. It was difficult to french kiss him on an empty stomach.

I think he’s married and has a baby now, and his hair was a little thinner, and we didn’t speak, but when I saw him across the restaurant, it all flooded back: the bubblegum and cologne; the cold brick of the school building against my back; that first dance combination of hairspray and velvet and nylon; the chapped lips after kissing in the cold; the fear that my mom was going to catch me in the dark, on the phone past 10.

I suddenly want to go home and find my Best of the Doors tape and turn off all the lights. Man.