Buying your first guitar in the suburbs does not entail anything that resembles the folklore. There is not an old bluesman who gifts you a worn-out, worn-in instrument, with a sweat-and-blood-stained fretboard, neck dusty from the rails, possessing magic but also a curse. Rather, you go with your mom or dad to a carpeted store that smells of antiseptic, where everything is shiny and glistening with newness, where other parents are renting saxophones or clarinets for their kids to play in the school jazz band, where some other kid is being publicly denied a drum kit on account of his parent’s
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