I consider Sheena to be my first girlfriend.
Now, I realize that the above sentence sounds kind of self-important, stuffed through with the pretentious assumption that
1) anyone gives a shit who I consider to be my first girlfriend to be and
2) the word ”consider,” implying that I see distinctions between Sheena and other girls whom I’d dated before her
And yeah, there were a few before Sheena with whom I’d shared chaste kisses, and one whom I’d even gone to see Titanic with (who’d turned her head from me at the end when Jack is neck-deep in the North Atlantic, turned her head askance so I wouldn’t be able to tell she was crying…but I could tell…hell, I was crying too). There was the proverbial Girl Across the Street (I don’t know if she is supposed to be more exotic or even different in any way from the proverbial Girl Next Door but mine was as unexotic as I was and I’d rather skip her if it’s all the same to you.
I’m not some Casanova or anything. I just mean that there were a few girls before Sheena who I was, I suppose, “with,” but I didn’t consider them girlfriends any more than I considered myself – a skinny seventh grader who’d finally started actually interacting with girls after years of staring at them from a kind of zoological distance, graceful creatures, they seemed, unless they were upset…then they were to be avoided at all costs – a boyfriend.
I only have reason to think back chronologically when I see a movie or TV show where somebody is dating someone for the first time. It’s not as if I do interviews where people ask me “who do you consider to be your first girlfriend?”
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s think about Sheena. The assertive and totally punk rock Sheena. She was wild, tall (much taller than me, my face came up exactly, almost ridiculously so, to her considerable cleavage…she had large breasts for a seventh grader…she had large breasts just in general), loud, brash, opinionated. I considered her totally punk even though I was completely unaware of the Ramones song “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” Sheena was not a Ramones song. She could not be reduced like that. Sheena was herself. She had a gap in between her two front top teeth, a mischievous smile, and a very sexy look of disdain when she raised a single eyebrow. She dyed her hair so often I almost can’t remember the original color…except I can. It was red. Sheena was a redhead. She was exciting. She was alarming. And she could be pretty damn insulting. She once called me ugly, to my face, on our second or third date.
Straight up. “You’re ugly.”
Then why are we together?
That’s a good question.
Seemed then, seems now…unduly harsh.
Sheena had dated before me a very tall, very manly dude named Steve who shaved and was 13 but looked old enough to buy cigarettes and who seemed to show up everywhere (I would learn later this odious and threatening behaviour was called “stalking”), every time I was with Sheena.
Steve seemed almost like he was purpose-built in a laboratory, calibrated to be the exact opposite of me, to make me feel small-dicked and pathetic and not manly and certainly not good enough for the human tornado that was Sheena.
She was my first tongue kiss. We called it “Frenching” back then. Oh God, the mid-to-late 90s. Everclear. Aqua. Eiifel 65. Serial Joe. Sisquo. No Doubt (everyone owned a copy of Tragic Kingdom. Everyone.) No Doubt transcended genre and gender. Everyone had Tragic Kingdom. “Just a Girl.” “Spiderwebs.” The melancholia of “Don’t Speak.” The camaraderie of “Sunday Morning” (or at least the forced camaraderie of the video, with the band eating spaghetti). The fact that Gwen Stefani was dating Gavin Rossdale. It all mattered.
I suppose I extrapolated what I saw as Sheena’s wild behavior and assumed a wild future for her, so it is with some guilt that I admit the song I most associated with Sheena back when I met her was “Heroin Girl” by Everclear (of course guess who ended up becoming a junkie). Later on, I would relate almost religiously to the lyrics of “Self Esteem” by The Offspring, and relate that song specifically to Sheena (I guess that silly song became a prophecy fulfilled…”Self Esteem” made me think about Sheena months before she broke up with me, quite publicly, because she liked some other guy, a popular guy named Andrew who did not like her back and who said to me when he found out about the whole thing: “I feel sorry for you.”)
The girlfriend who was not a girlfriend who’d gone to see Titanic with me had apparently listened to Mariah Carey’s “Butterfly” on repeat the day I’d ended things between us. I’d done so for the sole reason that she was such a low speaker that I literally never heard a word she said. Our first date consisted of us sitting on swings, and me watching her lips move with almost no sound coming out (it was a serious moment, not a pastoral one, for I caught the drift that she was complaining about her family…but it was at least a forty-five minute encounter and I’m not exaggerating when I say I didn’t hear a single word she said.) I simply nodded, tried to look concerned, and waited for it to be over. So when it was really over, music had been the balm that helped the low talking girl her get over me.
Spread your wings like a butterfly.
I too turned to music when Sheena dumped me unceremoniously, about three months into our thing. I’m not sure why I didn’t simply walk away when she called me ugly, but I’ve always been attracted to chaotic individuals, for better or worse (mostly worse)
It makes me blush to even think about this, but I’d somehow gotten my hands on a cassette copy of Guns n’ Roses Use Your Illusion, whichever of the two tapes had “November Rain,” and I listened to that song non-stop for a full weekend. I had not yet seen the video, but if I had, I’m sure it would have made me feel very important, like I was sulking on the level of a 1991-Axl-Rose-in-“November Rain,” trudging sadly, as he does in the video, past a store that says GUNS. They must have cut the part where he walks past the florist’s shop.
Nothing lasts forever and we both know hearts can change. And I'll just end up walking in the cold november rain.
Axl Rose having a late night wander down the streets of a western ghost town. Lost in his thoughts. Stuck in a tragic kingdom. We all had them in our little lives. Our tragic kingdoms. We all call got stuck in social spiderwebs. We all experienced moments of long, torturous silence (“Don’t Speak”). We all lost friends. We even lost enemies. These are things that happen to kingdoms and those who (try to) guide them.
The only person I knew back then who did not own a copy of No Doubt’s breakthrough album was Sheena even though I strongly associate that album with her now. I try to think of other titles of albums by bands I was listening to at the time that might seem more appropriate, but nope.
Sparkle and Fade. Not bad. It was kind of a flash in the pan, wasn’t it? A measly trio of months? Track 2: “Heroin Girl” by Everclear in our halcyon days, when I’d toss and turn with the butterflies all night, feeling like I’d lucked into the coolest girlfriend in the world.
Smash. “Self Esteem” by The Offspring a little later on. The abruptness with which the relationship ended was like a judge banging a gavel while your defence lawyer is still mid-sentence.
Use Your Illusion. Nah. She wasn’t a goddamn magician. She couldn’t even juggle. Certainly there was the peculiar and specific ways in which she used her power, which stemmed from her attractiveness as much as her assertiveness. She knew she held a certain power over me, that she was an icon of sorts to me. You could call that illusory.
“November Rain” came after the breakup though, which had come out of nowhere. No lead-up argument, no tension. Sheena just stayed up late, all night without sleep, she later told me, and realized she had a crush on a popular boy. Even though this crush wasn’t reciprocal, and I probably would’ve put up with it (as I did the ultra-flirtatious and dreamy way she said “Hi Steve” every time we saw Steve, which was always, as I did her calling me ugly to my face), I couldn’t stay with her after she cast me aside for…what else can you call it? A feeling. An impulsive one, but a feeling nonetheless.
“You’re ugly.”
“I feel sorry for you.”
The gossip and gawking of an entire grade. My entire grade. Our grade.
Sure. Okay.
Our tragic kingdom.