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Never Let Go of Your Soundtrack
Most of the men I dated hated Ani DiFranco. It made me love her even more.
I grew up on my brother’s music. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, later ska, Bosstones, Operation Ivy. As an archetypal kid sister, I vacillated between loathing and adoring him. I fought to exist outside of his much-more-academic shadow, flirted with his friends, dissed him in public, and took the band posters he tore off his walls out of the trash and taped them back together on my bedroom wall. That’s how I ended up spending my early teenage years under the gaze of Les Claypool, Anthony Kiedis, and a handful of other alt-rock patriarchs.
My brother went off to college while I stayed home to bum rides off boyfriends and listen to Sublime in the back of pickup trucks at Falls Lake. I’m pretty sure my brother hated me (I was riotously annoying) but one winter break he came home from school, put a cassette on my bed, and said, “She makes me think of you.”
For the next couple of years, my brother Seth supplied me with mixtapes that had “Ani DiFranco” — or sometimes just “Ani” — written in Sharpie on the outside. I never knew names of the songs and never saw her picture. She was just a voice, words I could fast-forward and rewind until I’d memorized them, words sent directly to me from behind her guitar. I spilled…
