The woman saw where I was pointing, and her mouth fell open. "You're kidding. He let you write about a Fiery Boys song? Since when is he allowing rock-and-roll lyrics in this class?"
"Beats me. But since the Fiery Boys announced their reunion tour, I can't think about much else. So I went for it." I didn't bother telling her that the Fiery Boys were playing here in San Jose, seventy-six days from now. She might think I was obsessed.
To be honest, there was another reason why I wrote about "Fiery Life"-Jo made me do it. She knew all about my lame boyfriends and my issues with Zed. When I signed up for this class, she suggested that I work his story into one of the assignments as a way of processing his death. And Zed's death was intimately linked with that song.
At first, I pointed out that I was already beyond it. I didn't cry for Zed anymore-hadn't in years. But she told me I still had some work to do. I had to stop holding every man up to my idealized memories, because nobody-not even the real Zed-could measure up to the way I remembered him. She was right about that.
Zed had become something of a legend in my mind. The thing I remembered most about him was that he loved to push the boundaries. He was always on the lookout for the next car race, rock concert, or page from the Kama Sutra. Each day with him was like a trip to someplace new.
After he died, I sought out challenging activities that would remind me of him, things outside of my comfort zone. And whenever I did those things, I'd think of Zed and how he'd loved to have all those crazy adventures. I started renting race cars at the local track so I could pretend we were still racing together. I even rode my motorcycle everywhere, shunning my car so I could more acutely feel his presence.
I went to punk and metal concerts, the louder the better, and I danced in the mosh pit, bouncing off other people like human bumper cars. I even went parachuting a few times because Zed and I had talked about it. I didn't worry about jumping because I knew he was proudly watching over me. He wouldn't let anything bad happen.
Yeah, maybe I was a little hung up on the guy. But I couldn't deny that Zed's posthumous encouragement helped me to do all sorts of amazing things. The most recent example was this paper, where I'd ignored the class reading list and used a rock lyric to tell my story. Zed would have approved.