R.I.P. Tawny Kitaen
I was driving onto the Willis Avenue Bridge into the city and this song came on, one of those misspent youth soundtrack regulars you'd forgotten. You were too cool to buy the album or even really know the band but there were biker bars where it played, black metal t-shirts with Marlboro packs rolled up in a sleeve over biceps, homemade speed and jacked up cars, that neighbor who stole your stereo and all your records after you dumped him.
You ran through boys in those days. Now you find yourself telling the 22-year-old to break as many hearts as she can. Those days don't last forever, you tell her.
Sometimes you want them back.
She Was An American Girl
Aug. 5, 1961 - May 7, 2021
P.S. She later called him a narcissistic asshole (quelle surprise) but let's live in the past for just a little while. Those power chords. Note the camera angle in the second video. Is it sexism if he's the object, too?
Susan Zakin is the editor of Journal of the Plague Year. This one's for Hailey.
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