Sparrow & I found a grrrl-rock mixtape circa 1994...

We went to the Goodwill in Oakland and there it was, lying in the gutter, as if it was just waiting for G-d knows how long, begging to be found by a couple of nostalgic Gen-Y dykes. We play it in the car and groove along with Sophie B. Hawkins, Lisa Loeb and the Cranberries and say, "Oh, I remember this song! They used to play this on the radio when I was a kid." We didn't get it back then. Now we do.

Sometimes I think one of the biggest injustices in my life is that there was this whole other world of music and culture in my childhood that no one ever deigned to expose me to.

In the tradition of generations of narcissistic writers who set their coming-of-age novels in the time of their own childhoods, as if that era is inherently interesting simply because it produced them, my novel-in-progress takes place in the '90s. This means a lot more painstaking research than I'd originally thought, you know, having actually been there and all. I have to Google virtually everything to make sure everything I remember actually existed in the precise window of time I'm writing about: When did the first episode of My So-Called Life air? When did the first Portishead record come out? Would teenagers in 1993 actually quote Pauly Shore? It's made even more difficult by the fact that I'm writing about someone older than I was; my protagonist is 14, but in the same time period, I was actually 11. That means there are things that wouldn't have entered my consciousness that would probably have entered hers.

But my point is this: I'm figuring out I can sneak in references to things I discovered later, too, like Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos and the Indigo Girls. They were around then, I just didn't know about them. And that's what I think is unfair. Here I was, listening to Ace of Base or some shit, probably, and all along Ani DiFranco existed and I didn't know. I could have been feeding my soul, not rotting my brain like teeth with bad candy.

I want to make sure my daughter knows about the alternatives. But the problem is, Ani and Tori are my generation's cool music. Like my dad playing me '60s acid rock. Meaningful, but not really helpful. I guess cool music is something you have to discover on your own, in your own time.