HEY REMEMBER EARTH SCIENCE CLASS! KIT!

Suz has requested that "today, everyone should post a mesmerizing, quasi-sexual image that was a part of their teen-aged past. come on - it'll be fun!", and I agree. Thus, I present you the man who preoccupied me for all of ninth and tenth grade: Gavin Rossdale!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Long before he was Mr. Gwen Stefani, long before anybody knew how to spell BANANAS, there was Bush, and its devastatingly handsome, broody, British, floppy-haired alty frontman.

It's pretty embarrassing, actually, for two reasons: one, Bush is crap, and two, look at this man. He's like, thirty-five. Now, for those of us in the audience who are nearing such age, I'm not saying thirty-five is old. It's not. I can't wait to be thirty-five. I might actually own a home at that point. But look. There are giant crags in his face, and several veins in his huge, oddly bronzed forehead that might leap out and strangle you. If I'm being honest with myself, his skin is making a pretty good case for quitting smoking, immediately.

And yet.

Through the summer of 1996, I entertained this fantasy in which I would be reading quietly in the backyard, wearing a giant "GOO" concert t-shirt, and would hear a commotion in the front, almost as if a big tour bus had ground to a halt with engine trouble directly outside of my house, and upon further investigation it would be the Bush tour bus, and Gavin himself would be asking me for a phone, or a jack, and then he'd see my shirt, realize I'd been in attendance at his latest Buffalo show, our eyes would lock, and we would abandon the bus, the band, and Buffalo as we rode off on his motorcycle (which he would keep strapped to the back of the bus, much like people who tour in RVs and stay at KOAs) and into the sunset, thus living happily ever after. And this could happen, because if I can say so myself, in 1996 I was pretty fucking hot. Mainly because I cut my own bangs. With gigantic, dull kitchen shears.

Sure, eventually Gavin would tire of his friends asking if he'd really married that weird little Yankee, the one who had eyebrows the size of caterpillars, and Gwen would break us up, but those would be good years.

And if you really think I'm a tool, let me tell you this: the angry vegan had the same crush on Gavin, if not huger. So there.