She had become obsessed with the Bruce Springsteen album Nebraska these days. She'd sit in her studio apartment week after week, playing the album, over and over, hour after hour, it's on vinyl, always vinyl, always analog, always scratchy, always loud. She had become obsessed with music about places musicians have never been to these days. Bruce Springsteen singing about Nebraska, R.E.M. singing about Coyohoga, Billy Joel and Saigon, U2 and God's Country, Uncle Tupelo and New Madrid, Brian Setzer and the Hopi Indian reservation. She liked touching the album covers, feeling the stark, barren black and white photos under her fingers, smelling the faux-neo-new-wave-No-Depression-alt-dot-country sub-sub-genre that was the mid 1980s. In a world where reality leads to nothing but bitterness and disappointment, she had come to believe, why, the only sensible choice left was to invent your own reality about real places you've never been to, real people you've never met, real events you'll never be invited to.

She had become obsessed with her bathtub these days. She took two baths a day, every day, 11 a.m., 7 p.m., scented oil from the Body Shop, scented candles from Pier One, Bruce Springsteen singing the ballad of Tom Joad as loud as her junior high school record player would go, flipping from side A to side B with soggy naked fingers. Life looked pretty good from the bottom of a bathtub, she had come to believe. White tile, white ceiling, white porcelain, silver nozzle hovering in the sky about a million billion miles away from her trembling, nicotine-addled soggy naked body. You could get lost from the bottom of a bathtub, she had come to believe. You could drown from the bottom of a bathtub, she had come to believe. Literally, you could drown from the bottom of a bathtub.

She had become obsessed with concepts from science fiction comic books these days. She wondered if there really has existed a night when every single human on earth has simultaneously dreamt of the person they love. She wondered if the Devil really did look vaguely like David Bowie, and the master of Dreams like that guy from Echo and the Bunnymen. She sat in her bathtub and felt the beads of sweat trickle down her back and wondered if, while she'd been walking around the city today, people could just look at her face and tell she'd gotten fucked last night. And make no mistake, she had gotten fucked last night, good and fucked. Nine months was an awfully long time to wait for Mr. Right but it was even a longer awful time to wait for Mr. Wrong, so she had gone out last night and gotten as drunk as a poet on payday and she had grabbed the boy who always made slightly lecherous and neurotic suggestions evertime he saw her and she had gone home with him and gotten herself good and fucked. She liked saying this out loud to the echoes of the white tile. She hadn't made love, she hadn't had sex, she had "gotten fucked." She had gotten nine months of libido fucked right out of her body last night. She had gotten nine months of cynicism and fear and masturbation and yelling at random strangers on the street, nine months of binges and staring at the walls and crying during every single episode of Felicity simply fucked right out of her body last night, six hours of red-hot Marlboros and white-cold Culligan, six hours of tattoos and Jane's Addiction and kissing and then some more kissing. And life looked pretty good from the bottom of a bathtub, she had come to believe, but she suddenly realized that life looked a hell of a lot better from the corner of Belmont and Clark on a warm spring day, holding a bag of donuts in your hand and staring straight up at the sun.

She got out of the bathtub without bothering to towel off, leaving little wet traces of herself on the hardwood floor as she walked across the room. She took the Bruce Springsteen album and she snapped it over her knee like a 1950s anti rock-n-roll preacher. She was tired of made-up stories about real places, she had decided. She was ready to go record her own critically-acclaimed solo project, she had decided. She put on a CD of the Spinanes. She turned it up to 10. And she danced naked around her studio apartment, she danced and danced and danced, flinging water all over stark black and white photos and science fiction comic books.