I do proudly take credit for introducing Hüsker Dü and punk music to you. I like to think I saved you from following Def Leppard into the Matchbox Twentys and Imagine Dragonses of the world. There lies madness. So fine, I was an important path in your life. You should be happy you took it. And I am glad to be but a humble branch.

Not sure why the last paragraph is about you being tired after our time hanging out. I’d cut it.

Flip Your Wig

FLIP YOUR WIG

(Fall 1988–Winter 1989)

A chapter in which my high school life takes multiple turns.

This was a heady time for young Art.

You are so heady. I don’t even know what that means.

Perhaps the headiest. Well, that’s an overstatement. It’s a partially heady time, the best for which any of us can hope.

The week after Tom Jones’s service, Cayla quit the club. Her leaving was not a shock, but I was disappointed. She told me she never planned on being in the club for the long haul and she was weirded out by Mercy shooting all those photos at the funeral home. I appreciated Cayla’s promptness and candor and I was grateful she had been there at the start, and really, the club wouldn’t have happened if she had not joined. There was no way I would’ve gone through with any of it if the club was Eddie and me. I didn’t tell her the above, but standing in front of my locker, I thanked her and offered a formal handshake hand. She laughed, pumped my arm up and down once, and said, “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Barbara.”

Let’s press the Fast-Forward double arrows on this tape.