Miss You

The reason I had for having to hear Some Girls, and "Miss You," interminably in the mid-Aughts, is a typical one. McGlinchey's was a bar, on 15th Street between Locust and Spruce in Center City, that served as a night-by-night base of operations for the Philly Free School then. McGlinchey's in the mid-Aughts had two flagship albums filling up the nightly music roster— Some Girls and London Calling— so The Clash and The Stones were an imperious presence there. What I say about Mary Evelyn Harju in Buffalo 8 is the truth— for personal reasons, she wanted to be absolutely still, absolutely quiet in East Falls then. But what that meant in practice for me, is that with all the riotous drunkenness, there was still a quiet space in me somewhere that was lonesome for the sense of solid connectedness I'd had with her. Hannah was another tornado, but with the juggernaut her life was, no real space remained that I could see to bond with her in a marriage-like way, as I had done with Mary H. Abby similar, and the rest. I missed Mary. So that the deep-in-your-cups version of hearing The Stones, who I'd seen on their Steel Wheels tour as a kid, was the dominant version here, as the long, long drunken nights of the mid-Aughts in Philly played themselves out.