It had been a long weekend: three days of music from Athfest and three days of wearing a neon yellow plastic bracelet on my wrist. When I bought my ticket, I asked the guy to put it on tightly because I can't stand movement on my forearm, and now it was stuck there until I found a pair of scissors. More important than scissors though, what I wanted was a beer.
I meandered into my usual bar of that summer: Village Idiot. The thing that made Village Idiot unique was its chalkboard walls. Pieces of chalk in every color were strewn about the bar. By the end of the night, phone numbers and naked stick figures in sexual positions reminded the city that this was a college town. Every night the chalkboard would be wiped clean, only to be defaced again the next day. It was a comforting feeling about college, starting over every night. Being brand new every night.
Partially drunk I left my crowd and wandered over to the wall by the staircase. I picked up a piece of lime-green chalk and began writing. I quickly worked out a stanza of verses, dancing with the chalk without thinking.
I stepped away and took a sip of beer as I examined my work. As I wondered whether anyone would be able to decipher my drunken scrawl, a random sorority girl approached me.
"Oh my god, I love it!" She slurred as she cooed to me. She pressed her hands between her knees and jumped excitedly. "I am going to call my answering machine and read this into it so I'll be able to remember it tomorrow!"
As she dug through her purse for her phone, a man approached. It was obvious that he wasn't a co-ed. His age, his scruff and his thrift-store clothes revealed that he was a Townie, a member of the underground society that Athens doesn't advertise in its college brochure.
"That's hauntingly beautiful," he said. "Very dark, but beautifully written."
I was secretly thrilled. I turned around to thank him, but his plaid shirt and his hat was familiar.
I eyed him. "I know you. How do I know you?"
He pointed to my neon bracelet. "I just played in Athfest."
"Oh yeah, what band?" I ransacked my brain: Drive-By Truckers, Jucifer, Fuzzy Sprouts.
He was the guitarist for the Jennifer Nettles Band.
The man who plays Jennifer Nettles' own hauntingly beautiful lyrics. The same lyrics I would copy into my notebook while some T.A. rambled on about Classic Greek Mythology. She was my idol. I still remember her lyrics; I don't remember much about Classic Greek Mythology.
And here I was receiving accolades by an extension of her.
As soon as my girlfriend realized he was a quasi-celebrity, she pounced on him, working hard to take him home for the night. I stepped back and watched her pursue him while he gently side-stepped her advances. I took another swig of beer and looked back to my piece of the wall.
It would be brand new tomorrow, but it was pretty alright tonight.
