Twenty-three and some change years ago, I stood in the center room in your apartment on Grand and scanned the tall shelves of cds while you showered. You'd put on disc--pretty sure it was a disc, I don't remember there being a turntable--of Gaucho. Maybe we'd recently been at that party in the Gold Coast (the one thrown by the woman who'd openly flirt with you the first of multiple times that night and, eventually, convince you--as if it was a hard choice--to date her) where on the way, you and I and Fuller walked past some middle-aged dudes and you both stopped dead in your tracks and shouted in unison at each other: "Steely DAN!!" Maybe it was not long after that, so you played it, probably for my edification. Thanks. I mean that, thanks, this was as valuable--no, more, than the discs of Neil Young's Decade you burned for me.
Midsummer early evening sun slanted onto the dirty carpet in that room while this track played. I was frozen, by it, in it, for it. I was asked by it, can you remember this moment, later?
I'm in the kitchen of my apartment, now, and it just played on the radio we leave on to keep the cat company. (It really gives us more comfort than she.) I can go into the middle room in this apartment and look at other tall shelves of other cds. I've travelled to come back to the same place. Seven miles, more than three times that in years, a couple of Steely Dan concerts, and inumerable listens to Gaucho (most of them in Southern California).
I never got the chance to ask you to burn that one for me.
