I was driving home from work same as always, half hour commute down 175, when a snatch of song ruined me. A blue VW van passed me on the right, not what you'd expect, speakers blaring out a tribal sort of groove that stopped as soon as it got within earshot, this familiar guitar lick took over, cued the rest of the band in, and I nearly crashed my Hyundai, such a smart purchase. It was Jane's Addiction, that Ted, Just Admit It song, and that was all it took: the past seventeen years peeled away like old paint, all the wisdom and experience and responsibility I'd happened upon, Julie and Michael and little Claire/Thomas on the way, they were all gone and it was only — Jasmine, sticky, riding me through every corner of the humid forest, losing our blanket three spots back, a log or patch of grass or mud we didn't care, were God's children, grinding out His will into each other, there wasn't any place on her body or this planet that I hadn't fucked her and the more I did, the more I wanted to, raw ache inside me, and she never said no, was always up for it as long as I got her a six-pack for after and we could listen to Jane's Addiction, because it was of the earth (her words) they were shamans teasing the animals out of us and that was just fine, and the Ted song, that was her favorite, started off slow and built built to the furious explosion *sex is violence!* exulting in it, warning us at the same time, she raked cuts into my chest with her nails so many times during that one, grinning pumping, we gave into our base animal natures and screwed ourselves as close to enlightenment as we could — until I woke up one morning in a field with no idea where either one of us was. And never saw her again. But now that bus, that song, has ripped off the tips of my nerve endings and I can barely even sit here, it hurts so much, my family an hour and a half upstate and me, staring out into the woods, waiting for her to walk out and beckon me in, like she's been here all along, killing time until I remembered who, what, I really was.