Just as a disclaimer, I'm 26. That means that when Exile In Guyville came out, I was 11. I know, shameful, right? I wasn't one of those lucky enough to be able to find out about this dirty jewel immediately. No, I came around the slow way. I loved "Supernova" when it hid my local alternative station. I wondered at Liz on the cover of the cassingle. But! She had brown hair! She had on a decent-ish amount of clothing! Whaaaaaat? All right. This might be something we can get behind.

No, it wasn't until I was 16 and a friend of mine, after hearing me riff like so many other overly old 16 year olds about the wit (not) and wonder (lacking) of my opposite numbers. It couldn't be that they were young, I was dating four years older. (Umm, in their defense, I was about two grades more advanced than I should've been. It wasn't that bad, was it? Girls mature faster?) It couldn't be that they were stupid, I was dating engineers. No, the difference had to be more fundamental.

"You're all just dumb."

"Don't I know it, honey. Hey, I have this cd you should go buy."

So, the next day, I made it a point to stroll a few blocks down to the local indie record store and pick up a used copy of Exile In Guyville. The first thing I noticed was that she couldn't really sing. Okay. The next thing I noticed was that the groove was pretty simple. It wasn't anything especially special. So I was pretty surprised when it ended and I hit play again. I'd caught just a little something in the lyrics I could identify with. This was not what I expected from the girl on the cover of the "Supernova" cassingle, but we could work with this.

I'd like to say that I tempered my discovery with some prudence, but, let's face it, I was a pretty brash little thing to begin with and Exile In Guyville became my sourcebook for life as a teenage girl. I knew about "Glory". Surprisingly, I also knew about "Canary", having dating a very definite WASP-y type. In fact, the summer I discovered Liz, I was still dating him. Just not, umm, exclusively. I figured Liz would understand. Girls these days, they do what they have to. They grow up too fast.

The mythology behind the album is a little murky. Rumor has it that it's a response to Exile In Main Street, which I can see, but Ms. Phair has gone on record as saying it's a direct response to the Chicago indie-scene and one member of it in particular. Whatever. It's a common language. I identified with "Divorce Song", having never gone through it (neither had she) but understanding what a miserable breakup can feel like. I hummed "Explain It To Me" under my breath whenever something was being said that I just didn't understand. We can ask all day long and the answers weren't always forthcoming. I put "Mesmerizing" on cds for boys I wanted to think I was intriguing and "Flower" on cds for boys that I just wanted to shock into wanting me and put "Shatter" on the first cd I made for my now-husband.

Oh, yes, most of us have sold out. All the Liz girls I've known, we've gotten our boyfriends and ended up in the suburbs. But what happens to the Liz boys? The aforementioned husband was one of them. Unfortunately, living with someone who can really, truly understand the Exile experience, having loved and lost and fucked her way through a few years (oh, don't purse your lips like that, we've all had "those" years) might have ruined it for him. He now leaves the room when I play this cd, claiming it makes him "nervous".

I've always wondered what he means by that but maybe it doesn't bear introspection.