My Phantom Limb

for JLB

My Phantom Limb

I was driving to the library the other afternoon and listening to the radio station, WFMU, when one of my favorite songs from The Shins started playing. The song was “Phantom Limb” from the 2007 album Wincing the Night Away.

It is a song about teenage alienation. And while I never could fully understand all the lyrics, I had a sense that it was about disconnected youth which got me thinking about my own high school days.

After hearing the song, I decided to dig up the complete lyrics* (posted below) to read the words without the catchy music and find out what I was missing. And as it turned out, I was missing a lot.

In a 2006 Billboard Magazine interview, songwriter James Mercer said: “The song is a hypothetical, fictional account of a young, lesbian couple in high school dealing with the sh*tty small town they live in.”

The song was about the alienation many kids feel in high school. I could relate. Mercer claimed that he was referencing a particular school named Eldorado High School (EHS) in the lyrics, but it could just as easily have been LHS my old school or your old school, if you just change the initials.

This got me thinking about my own shitty high school days and my best friend who was a closeted lesbian, (even I didn’t know it until much later when she went away to college). “Salt and Pepper” they called us, inseparable, insular, and too smart for our own good. Unlike the kids in the song, we weren’t trying to conform. Instead, we were trying to reinvent a new “cool” even if it was the two of us venturing out alone.

Somehow we knew that if we did try to fit in, we’d fail miserably. But it was okay because we had each other.

I can see the popular girls now, “foals in their winter coats. White girls of the north” They seemed to float on an ethereal plane of entitlement. Snow blondes and polished chestnuts – their glossy manes swinging free. Their laughter was easy. They seemed to wield some invisible power effortlessly, enchanting everyone in their path. And we made way for them. Like the sudden appearance of royals, we’d defer to them, even if it meant slamming our hips into the lockers.

But we would not emulate them. Instead, we made our own fun: listening to the song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida for the thousandth time; driving around in my mother’s catmobile wondering about the lost continent of Atlantis; taking the 77 to Greenwich Village in the snow…

In our private haze, we left those designer-label girls to create their own weather as they sneaked sips from bottles stolen from their father’s liquor cabinets in the back of the Y dances on Saturday nights. They had snow-goggle tans in January and swim club tans in July. We were pale and ate Pop Tarts, but we were happy.

We had each other – until finally, we graduated, and university life called my friend to a state far away to reshape her into the human she was meant to be, while I stayed local, commuted from home and for a while, turned into someone else’s devoted girlfriend.

When she left I felt severed. Gutted. Left with a phantom limb that became a pulsing reminder of everything we’d had together.

We lost touch. Changed course. And went our separate ways, until decades later, at our 40th high school reunion we were reunited. Skittish and unsure, we were no longer like puzzle pieces that fit together anymore. But in hugging her, the years melted away. It felt like wrapping myself in an old, overcoat coat that still fit. The warmth returned, and after 30 years, we were now free to add a new chapter to our enduring friendship.

In hindsight, we look at ourselves now and laugh, amazed we turned out as well as we have. She, the doctor of troubled children. Me, the storyteller and librarian. We’ve shed our teenage skins and have become something else entirely. What magic! that the two of us can admire and respect each other as grown women, and still pick up from where we left off. At the table, we celebrate with our loved ones. We share good food, wine, and old stories as the music plays on. And for all of this, I’m forever grateful.

The phantom limb is healed. No surgery required.

Phantom Limb by James Mercer; performed by The Shins
(click the link for the song which follows a commercial)

[Verse 1]

Foals in winter coats

White girls of the north

File past; one, five, and one

They are the fabled lambs

Of Sunday ham

The EHS norm

[Verse 2]

And they could float above the grass

In circles if they tried

A latent power I know they hide

To keep some hope alive

That a girl like I

Could ever try

Could ever try

[Chorus 1]

So we just skirt the hallway sides

A phantom and a fly

Follow the lines

And wonder why

There’s no connection

[Verse 3]

A week of rolling eyes

And cheap shots from the tribe

And we’re off to Nemarca’s porch again

Another afternoon

Of the goat-head tunes

And pilfered booze

[Verse 4]

We wander through her mama’s house

The milk from a window lights

Family portrait, circa ‘95

This is that foreign land

With the sprayed-on tans

And it all feels fine

Be it silk or slime

[Chorus 2]

So, when they tap our Monday heads

Two zombies walk in our stead

This town seems hardly worth the time

And we’ll no longer memorize or rhyme

Too far along in our climb

Stepping over what now towers to the sky

With no connection

[Bridge]

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

[Chorus 3]

So, when they tap our Sunday heads

Two zombies walk in our stead

This town seems hardly worth the time

And we’ll no longer memorize or rhyme

Too far along in our crime

Stepping over what now towers to the sky

With no connection

[Outro]

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh, ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh, ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh

Oh, oh-oh, oh-ohh, ohh

Marilyn is a librarian and fiction author, currently in the querying trenches with two novels and writing her third, a middle-grade fantasy. She lives West Orange, NJ with her sweet, supportive husband, Rob Lieberman, and their support-cat, Miskit (short for Miss Kitty.) Their grown son, Matt, is making his own stories, sharing his heart, and rocking the world one day at a time.