Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

In the middle of the show, my fourteen-year-old friend turned to me and said, “I want to give George Michael a blow job.” I was confused. Wasn’t I there simply for the songs, to clap my hands and scream, “I want your sex,” without actually wanting your sex? But when my friend inserted desire, an actual longing and physical response, into what I thought had been an abstract idea, I had to think about the ways music really made me feel. In that moment, among thousands of people, I was light-headed and sweaty. I could not contain a smile; my body was moving in somewhat innocent shimmies but also in shudders, an act that certainly connotes a deeper, reflexive, ecstatic response. I turned away from my friend, nodding in agreement that, yes, the reaction to this music was embodied, was intense. But I also knew in that moment that I would much rather be the object of desire than dole it out from the sidelines, or perched on my knees.

Haha. The first of many cringes. 😖