Asbury Park, NJ during the off season is a wonderful place, if crushingly frigid, and tonight’s venue has a bowling alley and a 1950’s diner on site and the part of me that’s always been a thousand years old and loves reading newspapers and muttering get off my lawn-isms under burnt coffee smelling breath is gyrating arthritically and with disconcerting exuberance.

New Jersey represents what ifs for me - an Ivy League school, a relationship, and a few other forks in the road not traveled. So much of my life was nearly inextricably linked to the Garden State, and I feel almost guilty coming and going so burdenless.

Tonight, I’ll think I’ll play especially loud and smile especially wide, perhaps transcending this dimension and connecting with the version of myself that works at Goldman Sachs or some other deplorable place, and maybe that Trevor, in his bespoke suit and over-compensating motor vehicle, will tell his boss to shove it, and skip straight out the goddamn door, whistling previously unimagined tunes.