I’m 17 and I’m in love. Hopelessly, ridiculously, sickeningly so. We’re lying in bed in my girlfriend’s dingy room in student halls, light streaming in through the sheet we’re using as a makeshift curtain and bouncing off the discarded pop cans and takeaway boxes that litter every available surface. It’s hardly paradise. But here, in her arms, it feels like it. And then a song comes on. It’s Both Hands by Ani DiFranco, and something about the way she sings makes this perfect moment even more so.
That was 14 years ago and, spoiler alert, we’re no longer together. We’re good friends though – the best – and it seems absurd that we ever dated. It was a lifetime ago. But one thing that always takes me right back there, to that dingy room all those years ago, is Ani. So when I pick up the phone and I’m greeted with a soft hello from none other than Ms DiFranco herself, it’s a little odd.