Transformed

I was 16 I think. It was summer. There were some people talking to my mother in the kitchen. I looked through her album collection because I'd already enjoyed her Janis Joplin and The Turtles CDs. I also knew her boyfriend's collection too well and exhausted his Kinks, Hendrix, Violent Femmes, Pink Floyd and other CDs. For the first time I saw the spine labeled, Lou Reed: Transformer.

The Velvet Underground was my favorite band then. I was high as much as I could afford to be to the point of being high in front of my mother and forgetting I was high. Class though was one place I couldn't manage but the bus stop, my off-periods, and before gym and art classes were lighting up times, with the scratchy, mellow Velvet Underground playing in my head. They were just like any band except their long, one verse songs were more simple than the Kinks and felt shrouded in the mist of sleepiness and other worldliness, sad people found in the holy ghetto blocks of 1960s New York City and I blazed in my shrouded teenage suburbs in their soundtrack.

This was new. I knew the band broke up in 71 or other. What came later, I vaguely knew the that the singer, Lou Reed wrote Take a Walk on The Wild Side, which was all I knew. On the cover his face was death white against a black background. His eyes were thickly rounded in blackness, more death. He had a big round acoustic half-in the photo. It said Lou Reed on a yellow melting top border, Transformer. "What does that mean?" I thought. I snuck it past the kitchen and went to my room upstairs. I first lifted the cover off my stereo, opened out the 3 CD cartridge, reached in half to elbow length and took my eyeglass case from the bottom. Then I put the CD in & the volume to 12, a low level, not wanting my mother to hear in case it was embarrassing. Some ordinary electric guitar riff began and it was like regular old rock n roll, between Kinks and the Stones so I put it to 15, the case back on the stereo, took the bowl from the glasses case and filled it with pot. I put it to 16 and blew smoke out the back window. As it went on I felt it was much happier than Velvet Underground, much more alive and particularly flamboyant. It became much to let my mother know so I lowered it to 13 and then 12 but sat near the stereo and took a hit. I looked at the back of the album cover. There were two pictures next to the song list, a woman or man, maybe a transvestite emerging from dark curtains, making a kissing face. The other was a man in a tight t-shirt, muscles, a cop hat or other and very tight jeans. There was a huge, long bulge half way to his knee. "Is that supposed to be obvious?" I wondered. Then I felt very high. "Could mom hear the music?" There was a broadway element to the music. There was a very gay element. It was happy, proud, outlandish, very 70s and still very rock n roll. I remember half way through thinking that liking the music was a decision. Either be embarrassed by it and turn it off or love it forever and turn it up. So I turned the extravaganza up and felt very good. Later I'd tell my mother I took it and I never gave it back, ever.