Hey Jakey,

I remember certain moments in my life as being particularly perfect. Like that one sunrise on the Salt River after illegally camping on the "rez", catching Nick Rhodes' makeup-stained towel when the Duran Duran roadie pitched it into the after-show gaggle of gals crowding the stage, hooking that last rainbow trout in Highland Creek before heading home that one time we actually caught our limit, John Doe singing "Silver Wings" to me at Palookaville, driving home one night from a camping trip in the mountains and watching a killer lightning storm miles away over the ocean, when Dennis hugged me that first time after I gifted him with a 45 single of Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime." And oh, all right-- that first time that your daddy and I kissed.

But if pressed to remember a perfect day, a full 24-hour juggernaut of bliss, I can't help but think of that day I spent with Sean.

My last year in college, I had so much going on in my life, and absolutely none of it had anything to do with my studies. If you check my transcripts, my grades will attest to that fact. I was writing a screenplay, I was smoking an eighth a day, my friend M and I were on a mission to visit every bar within an 800-mile radius called "The Wagon Wheel" (I think we found 3 of them, one of them was a lesbian bar), I had absolutely no money, and I had a crush on this guy named Sean.

Sean was in the journalism department with me. He was a writer, I was a photographer. We had a somewhat cordial working relationship, laboring nightly together in close quarters, working on the college newspaper. We started talking about music. He introduced me to all sorts of "new" stuff. I can trace much of my current tastes in music to those nights in the newsroom, raiding Sean's music collection: Tom Waits, Metallica, Nirvana, Primus, the Beastie Boys. Other stuff that I don't listen to so much anymore, but still like: Helmet, Sleater-Kinney, Alice in Chains, Bad Religion.

He started to make me mix tapes. Oh God, Jakey. If you ever want to weasel your way into a girl's heart, make her a mix tape. She'll be soft, warm putty in your hands. I still have them in a box in the back of my closet.

Of course, to Sean, I was just some gal he saw for a couple hours every night, someone with whom to shoot the shit, the chick who drank his Zimas when he brought them in. But I lived in a completely different realm. I loved him. I wanted to marry him and bear his children.

Oh, he was a cutie. I'll have to find a picture and post it. He had evil eyes, a shaved head, and he dressed like a skater. Yes, he rode his skateboard in the newsroom. I was a sucker for skaters back then. M and I called them "cheese," short for "cheese-eaters," from the then-current song "I'm An Adult Now," by the band The Pursuit of Happiness:

-- I can't take any more illicit drugs
-- I can't afford any artificial joy
-- I'd sure look like a fool, dead in a ditch somewhere
-- with a mind full of chemicals like some cheese-eating high school boy

To us, "cheese" wasn't a bad thing. We were relatively good girls, constantly searching for relatively bad boys. Leather jackets, flannel, engineer boots, a pack of smokes, a wallet on a keychain: this was sexy to me back then.

Sean was all of this and more. But he was not in my circle. That is to say, he was out of my league. We barely intersected for a couple of hours, four nights a week. During the day, he went his way, I went mine. I dreamt my dreamy dreams of him, and I was but a faint blip on his radar.

One Saturday that spring I took a trip to Berkeley. It was a chore to get there in those car-less days. It involved riding my bike to the light-rail station, and taking light-rail to the BART station, and taking BART into Berkeley. But if you did it early enough, you could get there by late morning, spend the day browsing record and bookstores, then make it home before nightfall. This trip was extra-special, because a band called Fugazi was playing a free show at noon in the quad at UC Berkeley. Fugazi was one of the bands that Sean had introduced me to, and maybe, just maybe, in the back of my mind, I had secret hopes of running into him there.

So there I was, in the quad, listening to Fugazi, only inches away from Berkeley's infamous "naked dude," who was enjoying the show, sans clothing, but outfitted with a backpack and sneakers. I hadn't glimpsed Sean all day, and was okay with that. I was enjoying myself. Even if he and I were in Berkeley at the same time that day, we'd probably never run into each other. Berkeley's a crowded place on the weekends, especially on a fine, spring-y day such as this one.

Imagine the thrill that ran up my spine when I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I turned to see Sean there, in all his cheesy glory. Pleasantries were exchanged, and we finished watching the show in companionable silence. I chewed the inside of my cheek raw, in a desperate attempt to keep the wildly goofy grin off my face.

Afterwards, he asked me what I was doing, and I told him I was thinking about catching a BART train and heading home, before it got too late. He told me he had driven in, and he'd drive me home, if I wanted to hang out for a while and go record shopping. We spent hours at Amoeba and Rasputins. We browsed some bookstores. We grabbed some pizza-by-the-slice at Blondies (I had pesto, he had pepperoni). We talked there, really talked and got to know each other. Today, I couldn't tell you a single thing that we talked about, except music. We talked a lot about music. To me, it was like spending a day with a rock star. I was that giddy. I will not apologize for how stricken I was that day.

It was dark when we drove home. We talked about life after college, we talked about relationships. I wish the story ended with sidelong glances, some hand-holding, some macking. But it doesn't. He dropped me off at my apartment on 10th Street, I woke up my roommate to tell her who I had just spent the day with, then I called my friend M, waking her up to tell her, "Guess who I just spent the day with... Of all the people in the world that I would want to spend the day with, guess who just dropped me off..." I can't remember if she guessed correctly or not.

I walked on air for several days. Several days was all I had, really, cuz graduation was drawing near, and I was leaving town (a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother day, Jake...).

I got a couple more mix tapes from him, and that's about it. I graduated, and didn't see him again for a long, long time.

The next time I did see him, I was already dating your daddy. Sean was seeing someone, too. But he did ask me if I wanted to go to a show with him and his girlfriend in San Francisco. It was Green Day and Bad Religion at the Warfield. I did go, and I had a great time. I adored his girlfriend, and after we dropped her off after the show, I adored listening to Sean talk about how much he was in love with her.

Long story about a relatively short day, but if I don't write this stuff down, sweetheart, I'll eventually forget. And who wants to ever forget about a perfect day? There are so few of them in life, so you have to remember them and keep them near.

I wish you many and many a perfect day, dear heart. Love you. Sleep well.

Oh, I finally found a photo. Cheese! With his ActUp t-shirt and those atrocious Mac IIe's or whatever they are. Dinosaurs. Anyway, this was typical newsroom activity.