Mick Jagger is used to having younger women fall in love with him, but my first infatuation was premature even for Mick -- I was nine years old.
Jagger strut down the catwalk stage at my first rock concert and I was converted. It was only rock and roll but I liked it, liked it yes I did.
As much as my taste in music changed over the years, my affection for Rolling Stones, much like the band, never quit.
My freshman year I moved into a nine by 13 dorm room with a stranger, and the close companionship of the albums I had collected over the years. Ange and I would become intimate acquaintances as freshman year roommates do.
Ange would alternate reading the Bible and her systerms engineering book to bed at night. She would trace the margins, noting
important passages with one of those retractable pencils, that looks
like a pencil, but isn't. "Is that for school," I remember ignorantly asking her the first time I watched her labor over scripture in her nighttime ritual.
I on the other hand worshipped the pantheon of Mick, Bob and John. I would immediately mute my music when she walked into the room and she hers. Our reaction times improved throughout the semester. We spent the year silently negotiating this shared space.
The first and last time Ange and I listened to music together, it was at full volume.
I decided that first priority in really getting to know Ange was cueing up the Rolling Stones song "Angie" for her.
I shuffled through the collection, found Goats Head Soup, and sunk in practical supplication with the first strum. Then Mick's voice came in beseeching "Anjay, Annnnnjay." The wider my mouth opened in lip synch, the tighter I cinched my eyes. This was passion, after all.
Eventually I opened my eyes back up again. Ange stared back. Didn't she get it? This was her namesake. But really I was the one who didn't get it.
Music that called my name fell deaf upon Ange's ears, even if it was literally calling hers. Though they are mine, the Rolling Stones are not everyone's religion and science.
I have seen Ange twice since freshman year. I asked her how she was. I sang to Mick's words, we shared once a long time ago, though this time to myself: "Angie, Angie / You can't say we never tried"
