allow me a few moments of nostalgia...

In a strange way, it seems that often the cliched moments in life are what turn us into the beautiful, complicated individuals that we are. These cliches wake us up, I think. They provide gateways of possibility. And regardless of how cliched they may be, of how many times they have happened to millions of people before....in the moment, to us, they are magical.

So many of these moments happened for me in one building...a former cotton gin turned bar just off the Square in Oxford, Mississippi. Named, of course, The Gin, since it really could never have been known as anything else. The bar was 18 and up, 21 to drink. IDs checked at the door. Those of age were marked with a random symbol of the night, jotted onto hands with magic marker. A red star one night, perhaps a blue triangle the next. Those of us under age were scrawled with a black X, if I recall. We took to carrying packs of markers in our oversized purses. Once in the door we glided past the bar on our way to the ladies room, pausing only briefly to observe the hands of those ordering drinks before darting in and heading straight for the sink to furiously scrub the black marker from our hands and replace it with the necessary symbol. One night I walked in to find a girl that I knew checking IDs. She waved me through with a conspiratorial grin, saying something like "oh it's OK, I know YOU'RE 21..." For the first time in my life I felt like I was in the loop with people my own age. That was huge.

My first college dance with a boy was on the dance floor at The Gin, to the sounds of a song like Sexual Healing or Let's Get It On, sung by a band called Super Tyrone. Tyrone himself was a wiry African American man who wore an ill-fitting superman costume with a T across his chest. Not the most romantic experience in theory, but for a girl who felt mostly ignored by boys her entire life, there couldn't have been anything more romantic than a boy feeling compelled to ask her to dance after glimpsing her across the room.

By the end of that year I was dancing on a table (albeit reluctantly) in the corner as the Kudzu Kings played on stage, and happily making the rounds on the sprawling back patio greeting friends and eating crawfish. I had seen musicians like Bobby Rush and discovered that there was so much more music out there than what I heard on the radio. That summer I would drive two and a half hours from my hometown, ironically homesick for Oxford, just to spend an evening enjoying Penny Pitchers at The Gin.

By the time that the word began to spread that The Gin was closing, I was practically a different person from the one who had arrived in town a couple of years beforehand. In many ways I was still unremarkable...I wore the same black leather jacket that most college girls at the time were wearing. I carried a leopard print bag (completely unlike me) and desperately wanted a boyfriend. Still though...the events that took place in that bar had set some wheels in motion. This girl walked with confidence. She started conversations with people she didn't know and wasn't thoroughly uncomfortable with people looking at her. She sometimes drank bourbon. Most importantly, she had learned to be OPEN. To new adventures, new music, new people, new clothes, new drinks, new bedtimes, new ideas, new places. New everything. Old everything too, but anything that was new to me.

When The Gin closed, my life was moving so fast that I barely paused to grieve. I'm sure that I wasn't yet smart enough to fully recognize what had happened. I went right on about my life, growing and expanding and refining. In the meantime, The Gin slowly decayed. Looking down over it from the Murff's balcony, the scene was almost haunted or post-apocalyptic. I chose to view it, as I suspect most dedicated Oxonians did, as a positive thing. I preferred the ruins to the alternative...another bland condo rising in its place. Plus, it always seemed that as long as the ruins were there, as long as the basic shell of the building existed...there was a CHANCE. Some magical chance that somehow, one day, it would be open for business and I would somehow have access to the same feelings and experiences I'd had before.

Last night my friend Tayla and I were sitting at the bar in Ajax Diner when a well known local came rushing by from a table in the back, pausing to call out to us that The Gin was burning before sweeping out the front door. We jumped up and followed, I suppose just assuming, as comfortable Oxford folk do, that we knew the bartender and surely our bags and beers were under safe supervision. Just a few steps down the sidewalk and we stopped, staring at the massive column of smoke rising into the sky just over the shoulder of the Courthouse. Over the southeastern skyline of the Square sparks flew upward from a warm and eerie orange glow. People were running toward it. Most who frequent the Square can tell you that it's rather commonplace for a fire truck to scream through the inner loop. As one wailed past me at that moment, it occurred to me that after over ten years, it was the first time I'd ever seen one pass and known where it was heading. Tayla, never the emotional type, briefly laid her head against my shoulder. We watched for a moment, and then turned to walk back up the sidewalk to our beers. On our way back to the car we wandered over as close as we dared. In the darkness we could only make out a black mass. It was easier to spot the continuing waterfall pouring down onto it from the fully raised crane of one of the several firetrucks. The entire Square was hazy with smoke.

I don't know how the fire started. I don't suppose that it really matters. One thing that I have learned from living in the town where I went to college is this: college towns are always evolving. As we passed through we heard giggly undergrads pause in their gawking to inquire "what WAS that building anyway?" One girl walked away from the scene quietly, the only quiet one amongst her gaggle, pausing to look over her shoulder with a look that I immediately recognized as just the teeniest bit of awareness. It made me smile a little. The time of The Gin may be over, but somewhere else in town, that girl will grow up and become herself, develop very specific tastes and opinions and a very specific future...even if it starts with underage drinking and dancing on tables. I wish that for her and all girls like her.

But as for me...I'll go back to trying new things, but I pause to raise my glass to The Gin.