I'll Always Go Her Way - Now That I Found It Again

I’ve had several false starts with this one.  Strange how a song can leave you spinning.  Yes, the 90s were a 60s renaissance of sorts that I may in fact still be dizzy from.  Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way” was for Generation X what “Are you on the bus or off the bus?” was for those before us.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.  I want to talk about Janelle Boatright.  See, I was at Pizza Hut in Dalton, Georgia, for lunch one day, sweaty and grimy from a pressure-washing business I had.  She walked in… looked like Claudia Schiffer, very supermodelesque.  I was 17 and stunned.  Then she spoke to me.

I still don’t know how or why, but SHE actually ACKNOWLEDGED me.  We talked for a few minutes, I got her number (good god, how’d I do that?!), and eventually we were sitting under the stars, atop cemetery headstones, drinking wine from the bottle, sharing a joint and discussing things other 17 year olds – or so we thought – would never understand (a later stint as a high school teacher taught me otherwise – some kids are just born with ancient souls).

We drifted in and out of each other’s peripheral.  Janelle had a steady supply of impressive would-be suitors, and I was medicating heavily for a bad case of step-dad-induced low self-esteem.  At some point, we ended up at Chastain Park in Atlanta for a Blind Melon/Lenny Kravitz show.  I felt ill, but didn’t want to miss it.

By the time Blind Melon finished and Kravitz had begun, I had a bad fever.  Janelle insisted that she take me to a hospital.  I didn’t want to miss Kravitz (or, more importantly, spoil her evening), but I was really very sick.  I felt so weak and puny, especially next to her.  After a little more than half of Kravitz’s performance, she finally convinced me to at least let her drive us back home.  I was in no shape to argue.

I lost track of Janelle after that, but I never stopped looking.  Once I tapped into that Al Gore (actually, the Pentagon) invention called “the internet,” I tried searching for her now and then.  It was nearly a decade and a half later when I finally found her on Myspace.  I don’t know why that song in particular, but “Are You Gonna Go My Way” popped into my head as soon as I saw her photo.  We’ve both changed a lot, but I think we’re still ‘on the bus’ together, no matter if she’s in Frisco and I’m in Prague.