of all the girlfriends that i have had there is only one who refuses to talk to me and that is amy jo and what a shame because we experienced some of the most memorable times - and most while being just friends. aj walked into the nexus with long red hair looking to be a writer. she was a dj on the radio station focusing on long hair metal bands and i told her that we were in dire need of more coverage of the genre and we were. little did either of us know, but Grunge was about to hit bigtime and both of us were going to end up right in the middle of the begining and the end of it - together.

if you ask her, in the begining there was Mother Love Bone, the predecessor of Pearl Jam, who lost their singer to an overdose and was replaced by Eddie Vedder. AJ played MLB all the time on her radio show. I played metal and hard core hip hop on my show and eventually she and I decided to team up and share a show called "The Speed of Sound". Basically I played the dumb guy who sorta knew about music but was always hitting on her and she played the role of the all-knowing vixen: very Moonlighting, but if you ask me it worked. She had a great voice and together we played some of the best hard rock of the pre-grunge era.

Meanwhile she was writing weekly for the paper and I was the Arts Editor. So needless to say we spent lots of time together, which was odd, because early into our relationship we tried and failed at the commitment thing, as she would call it. No biggie for me. Mostly because she was an awesome friend and we totally got along. But the best part was she was a huge inspiration to the music that I was listening to and the stories that I would write in my fiction class. Muse? Not really, but huge source of creative stuff.

I was taking a Diaries class at the time and in this class we had to read famous people's diaries and keep our own diary and once a week we had to Xerox one entry of our own diary and pass it around to the class anonymously. The stories that I told about she and I were easilly the most well-received because it was the weirdest brand of unrequited lust in a long time. Little would these people know, but soon AJ was to be accepted into my little creative college and the girl that they had read about would be a big contributor to their studies - in the flesh.

In a perfect example of our weirdo love, the above photo was taken at a dress-up party that our friends threw one warm Spring evening. A band played acoustically, Steve Coulter bartended beautifully, and magically everyone started making out as if we had all taken X - which we hadnt. These were all simply great friends who simultaniously wanted to just go for it. Well, I must have kissed 7-8 girls that night and in the middle of it AJ pulls me aside and says, "hey lets take a picture." No kiss, just this. But look at that perma grin, do I look sad? nope.