Bread & Jam for Frances

There’s no photographic proof, but one year in college — it was either freshman or sophomore year — I dressed as Morrissey for Halloween. It was a sexually indeterminate time: I had a boyfriend back at home who visited on weekends, and a girlfriend whose dorm room was a strange and somehow comforting place. So styling my hair in the best pompadour I could manage, and suiting up in a pair of faded old jeans wasn’t so odd after all. Someone brought me a bouquet of daisies — there were no gladioli around — and I stuck them in my back pocket, just like I’d seen the Mozzer do in a videotape likely shown to me by that same poor, abused boyfriend.

What happened next? I’m certain I swung those flowers around quite a bit as I trudged up and down the hills of my college campus. I’m certain only a handful of people had any idea what I was going on about. Girls in black eyeliner regarded me warily from doorways. There was a dance that night in the dining hall — the tables had been moved aside and the salad bar stood gap-toothed and empty, pushed up against a wall. I sang out, between fizzy gulps of some horrible, illicit 40-ounce beer, and spun across the dance floor:

There’s a club if you’d like to go
you could meet somebody who really loves you
so you go, and you stand on your own
and you leave on your own
and you go home, and you cry
and you want to die