Preston met Marla Starr when he was living in Cambridge in the mid-1990s, getting his Ph.D. but not even old enough to drink yet, ostracized, understandably, by the other doctoral students. He had begun the program when he was barely a teenager; his youth made it easy for him to communicate with the children whom he was studying, but in all other respects, his age was a severe hindrance, his self-possession and intelligence coming off as creepy when housed in such a slight frame. For Preston, the work was easy enough, almost too easy, and so he was left with so much time and, his parents back in New York, no friends to speak of, no one to talk to. He was also teaching a section in Contemporary Issues in Psychology to undergrads at Harvard, most of the kids as old or older than he was and, when the class ended for the day and the students left, he had the weird sensation of wanting to follow them to wherever they were going next, hoping they might lead him to something that seemed normal.
Marla was one of his students, a sophomore from Atlanta, Georgia, majoring in psychology; she was short and stocky, her brown hair obscuring her face, which was dotted with acne. Her eyes, green and depthless, would unsteady Preston if he ever looked her way during class, which was often. She came to his office hours frequently, though she made perfect grades on all the exams, seemingly without effort. She flirted with him, though he had trouble deciphering exactly what it meant or how to respond. She called him Professor Kid Genius and liked to punch his arm, which hurt more than she intended, or perhaps just as much as she intended. After she finished his class in the fall, she returned to his office the next semester and gave him a flyer for a show at TT the Bear’s that weekend. “I’m playing,” she said. “I’m really good. I want you to see that I’m really good at something.”
“I already know you’re good at something,” he said. “You were the best student in my class.”
“I want you to know that I’m good at something important, Professor Grind,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Something that matters.”
They were an all-girl punk band made up of Harvard undergrads called Plug It Up, who had just self-released their first album, Blood in the Rafters. “We love that movie,” she said, and when he seemed not to understand, she continued, “Carrie? It’s like the best movie of all time. All of us in the band, we all think we’re Carrie.” That night, he rented the movie and felt slightly disturbed by Marla in the best possible way.
When Preston showed up for their set that Saturday, the band opening for Sebadoh, which even he knew was a big deal, he stood near the front of the stage and watched as Marla carried out her drum kit and set it up. “You came!” she said when she saw him, doing a strange little jig as she ran over to the edge of the stage and waved to him. “You’re going to love this,” she assured him, and he began to feel certain that he would.
Their set lasted only twenty minutes and yet they managed to play every song on their album, a wave of sound that finally crashed over the audience only after the girls had already left the stage. The set had ended, Preston finally determined, not because their slot was over, but because they had no other songs to play. Though no one in the band seemed to have any formal training, Marla seemed the least interested in technique of all of them, her rickety drum kit held together with duct tape, always seemingly about to collapse under the burden of her intensity. It seemed, from Preston’s vantage point, that she had four or even six arms when she played, the sound so jarring and fast. She also sang backing vocals, without the need for amplification, her hair whipping around her head, blood seeping from under her fingernails, an unstable element under intense pressure. Preston fell in love with her, her wildness that he did not possess, without reservation or concern for how he would win her heart.
After their set, while Sebadoh was playing, Marla came over from their merch table and punched Preston in the arm, her teeth chattering with excitement. “I told you I was good,” she said, smiling. “You were the absolute best,” he told her and, before he had even finished the sentence, she was kissing him.