You don’t know what true love is boy!

The truth. That is the only way to possibly get through the story.

I remember little to none of our conversations during the long ride to Baton Rouge and back. Aside from the review of events that have yet to transpire in this story, it is a distinct probability that much of the conversation was, if not over my head intellectually, most certainly over my head in the realm of life experience. I was a sophmore on my transcript, but I was a true freshman in the school of hard knocks. What might I have said at 19 years old about the world? I like Run D.M.C? College is cool? I just shaved my legs for my first triathlon? I don’t eat cheese? Or did I do better than that? Did I take advantge of the chance to ask questions? Who knows? If not the three of us, then nobody will ever know again, and that’s OK too.

Anyway, the details, or what I recollect…

Within one hour of THE REIGN dropping me off at the LSU campus I had reuinted with my first true love, endured an abrupt realization that although I was learning a valuable life lesson, I was most definitely not in love.

Neither was she.

I remember arguing about something desperately wise and political before storming off. I would have to consult the periodicals of the era to venture which indignity I was struggling against.
Was it Big Cheese? The Berlin Wall? The lack of a Berlin Wall? I do know for certain that I stopped in the lobby of her dorm and used a toilet underneath the stairs to emotionally, symbolically, and quite physically evacuate her from my system.

I was hopelessly lost and alone in Baton Rouge. The drinking age was 18 at the time.
I walked into my first ever bar and ordered my first ever Scotch, and I hung my head with the “you thought you were in true love, but now you know you have no idea” Louisiana blues.

I knew, somewhere near that campus, THE REIGN was rocking, and I had to find them.

Not a bad go at it I think,

Juancho