Re-Post: Princess Brat

I originally wrote this last summer in a fit of grief. Decided to take it down, as it was still ouchy, and took some awesome comments down with it in the process.

But just now, Nitzer Ebb's "Join in the Chant" popped up in my iPod, and I thought of my friend Alan yelling, "Tired, tired, tired," at the DJ in 1995, dimply face turned skyward.

And I want to tell y'all about him. Again. For keeps.

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One random day in the mid-90s, my lifelong best friend was explaining to her boyfriend Alan that I had been less than a demure, studious, soft-spoken child. I balked at her description and she said, "Face it, you were a brat." "I wasn't a brat!," I protested, "I was a princess."

The two of them and my then-boyfriend and I were all joined at the hip back in those heady, youthful, dive-bar dwelling days. It wasn't unusual or weird at all for Alan and me to talk on the phone or go out drinking while our other halves were working dinner shifts.

Alan, with his shaved head, Einstürzende Neubauten tattoos and year-round leather was the ultimate rivet, so I was a little surprised when he decided to form a Hole-esque band and asked me to front it. "But I can't sing," I told him. "Doesn't matter," he replied, "You have cool clothes and can spit beer on people." He'd already decided on a name: Princess Brat.

So Alan set about teaching me to play guitar. He had an old spare electric, which happened to be missing a string. He showed me some basic chords that didn't require the missing string. I spent a few nights strumming them, unamplified as I didn't have a speaker. Took me three days to recognize, to my horror, that I was playing "R-O-C-K in the USA."

That was the only song I ever learned how to play on the guitar. I got bored soon after and we went back our old routines. The two couples eventually broke up, but Alan and I remained friends and kept in touch for a while after he moved to Asheville eight years ago.

Al-Pal left this mortal coil this week. Rest in peace, old friend. I'm spitting out this Bud for you.