Broken Down on Memory Lane Alone, Together Alone

By the time Saturday rolled around, I had finished all of my cleaning. I had also received a phone call from my manager telling me about a book signing on Saturday. I figured that Mara wouldn’t mind coming with me, so I didn’t bother to cancel our plans.

I quickly showered and dressed in my usual garb; jeans, vans classic slip-ons, a black belt, and an old Zeppelin t-shirt. I never got dressed up for anything unless it was mandatory. Nor did I usually dress my age; I was sadly clinging onto my youth by wearing my old t-shirts and jeans. And as long as I could still fit into them, I would wear them. That was for damn sure.

It wasn’t long after I finished eating my breakfast that Mara showed up. I ushered her out back out of the house, and out to my car.

“Where are we going?” Mara asked as I pulled out of the driveway.

“To the bookstore,” I turned on the radio, “I’ve got a book signing to do… I thought you might like to come along.”

“I didn’t know you were an author,” she looked surprised.

“Really?” I found a station I liked, they were playing Day Tripper, “I love this song.”

“Me too… so, what books have you written?”

I took a deep breath before listing them all off, “but I’m doing a signing for the biography I wrote about your grandfathers band, Fright Night.”

Mara just sat silently, looking dumbfounded at me. I wasn’t quite sure what she was going through, so I just assumed it was something teenaged girls did nowadays. Though it was kinda weirding me out a little.

“You y-you’re R. Stardust?” Mara managed to choke out after another minute of staring.

I nodded, “yup…”

“I love your books,” she gushed, “why’d you go by R. Stardust?”

I shrugged, “I didn’t really want creepers looking for me.”

She nodded thoughtfully, “any reason for that name in particular?”

“Well the R should be pretty self explanatory,” I chuckled, “and Stardust because I’m a big Bowie fan.”

She looked confused, “Bowie?”

“Yeah, ya know… David Bowie. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” she continued to look confused, “no. No way. I refuse to believe you haven’t heard of David Bowie!”

“I’ve never heard of him before,” she shrugged, “I take it I should have?”

“Yes, you friggen should have! What kind of shitty music have you been listening to?” I sighed, “Music went to shit in the nineties… I guess I shouldn’t expect someone from your generation to appreciate music from the seventies and eighties… it is two thousand sixteen.”

“Yeah,” Mara grinned, “your music taste is a bit dated… I actually had to Bing Guns N’ Roses when I got home last Saturday cuz I had no idea who they were, let alone who that Duff guy was.”

I raised an eyebrow, “what’s Bing?”

“Um… Bing is a search engine, like Google,” she smiled, “I half expected you to get mad at me for not knowing who they were.”

I shrugged, “I guess I can’t really be mad at you for not having a good taste in music, or not knowing about good bands… I still find it hard to believe you haven’t heard of David Bowie.”

“I guess you’ll just have to break out some old CD’s or something when we get back to your place,” Mara shrugged, “but now I think we should get back to your story.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes, “I suppose so… what did you want to hear about now?”

“How you end up with Dravin, and how you met. You can tell me at your own pace, you don’t have to skip right to it,” she grinned, “I know how you like to tell stories.”

I laughed, “Alright… well, I will skip ahead a bit though. To college. It was my first day…”