I never liked Counting Crows. I’m not sure whether it was because of this direct link to Max’s funks or because I just found them laughably pretentious. Pretense sets my teeth on edge. I hate pretense. Which is funny, when you think about it, because everything in my life is pretense, from my name to my oh-so-human teenage rebel without a cause exterior. That supposedly impenetrable stone wall? Total pretense. And much as I hate to admit it, crumbling fast at the foundation.

Which is why I’m at his window a lot these days, even if I have to listen to that guy’s grumbly voice on constant repeat for hours on end. I tell myself it’s because I’m worried about Max and Is, because I’m a warrior and warriors stand guard. Part of it’s true. Ever since the ETs phoned home and got the answering machine from hell, they’ve both been basket cases. And since Nasedo got whacked and the dandruff people started showing up, watching their backs has felt like a duty I can't deny. But then again, since we’re on the subject of pretense, I have to admit that being here also stops me from standing outside another window, someone else’s window. Her window.

So I’m sitting under his window, leaving an ass-shaped dent in the Evans’ perfectly manicured lawn while guitars and mandolins and whiny artsy guys narrate Max’s pain and the usual dark cloud makes itself comfortable over my head. And I try to ignore the music that must be covering Max’s sighs and probably sobs as well, but when you hear something for the umpteen millionth time it starts to seep into your brain cells, like some rash-inducing virus. You can’t ignore it after that.

And you know what? This guy has major problems, and it’s not Max’s life he’s narrating. It’s mine.

For one thing, he has a total hang-up about a girl named Maria. He sings about her a lot. “Round Here,” where he’s talking about some girl who wants to meet a boy who looks like Elvis? Her name is Maria. The black-haired flamenco dancer in “Mr. Jones,” who’s suddenly beautiful? Maria. That queen whose service he belongs in in “Rain King”? He never says what her name is, but I’d put money down that it’s got to be Maria. There must be something about girls named Maria, something about them that drives you so far up the wall that you have to drop out of Berkeley and write interminable outpourings of angst in their name just so you can breathe normally again.

Hey, wasn’t there some musical about a girl named Maria? Right, “The Sound of Music.” Before Social Services decided I really belonged in hell and saddled me with Hank, I got shuttled from one foster home to another, stopping for a couple of days or a couple of months, depending on how masochistic the foster parents were. Foster “parents.” What a crock. They’re all either desperately trying to be the selfless angels of mercy they secretly know they’ll never be, or they’re just in it for the welfare check, like Hank. Anyway, a couple of stops before Hank I landed in the home of Ms. Myra Roberts, who, God help us all, was not only of the former variety but also a colossal musical freak. Rogers and Hammerstein were like crack to this woman. She broke into show tunes at the drop of a hat. I think she thought that, if she could just fit her life into the right libretto, everything would be technicolor meadows and happily ever after. Didn’t know I knew words like “libretto,” did you? I do now. Thanks, Myra. Also thanks to Myra, I got to annoy the hell out of Maria once in junior high by belting out “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” at the top of my tone-deaf lungs in the quad. It made her insane. At the time, I found it immensely amusing.

Of course, that was back in my barely-pubescent days, before I realized that the burning desire to humiliate a girl in public meant that you must like her. That was before she learned all my secrets, refused to be pushed away, and crawled under my skin to become a hunger no amount of tabasco-laced sugar vectors could eliminate and a truth no amount of my usual trademark Michael cr*p could refute. That was before she ripped through my wall as though it were made out of tissue paper, which, of course, it is. That was before I saw, more clearly than I've ever seen anything, that loving me was bound to end up killing her, one way or another. That was then. Now, I’d kind of like to dig up the sadist who wrote that song and demand that he come up with an answer, because I sure as hell don’t know how you solve that kind of problem and this Adam Duritz guy clearly doesn’t either, or he wouldn’t be writing so many songs about girls named Maria.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Counting Crows. For another thing, despite all his whining about girls named Maria, he seems even more hung up on being alone and hating himself. Which, as we all know, is what I do best. You might not think at first that that’s what his songs are about, because the pretentious words just sort of float above your head. But let me tell you, after the umpteen millionth time you definitely hear the self-pity. Why would he be talking about wishing he was beautiful and grey being his favorite color in “Mr. Jones” if he didn’t think he was ugly and worthless? Why would he say something like, “when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely,” if it didn’t matter that he was alone? If he doesn’t hate himself, why is he calling himself a “dead man trying to get out” in “Perfect Blue Buildings”?

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m kind of curious as to how a human could crawl inside my head and figure out how to put my cesspool of a life into words, but otherwise it doesn’t get to me. It’s just an interesting phenomenon, this parallel between this Duritz guy and me. It makes me realize that pain is a universal, but it doesn’t get to me at all. How could it? It's just a string of notes and words, human notes and human words. Until...

My friend assures me, “It’s all or nothing.”
I am not worried. I am not overly concerned.
My friend implores me, “For one time only,
make an exception.” I am not worried.
Wrap her up in a package of lies,
Send her off to a coconut island.
I am not worried. I am not overly concerned
with the status of my emotions.
“Oh,” she says, “you’re changing.”
But we’re always changing.

It does not bother me to say this isn’t love.
Because if you don’t want to talk about it then it
isn’t love.
And I guess I’m going to have to live with that,
but I’m sure there’s something in a shade of grey,
something in between,
and I can always change my name
if that’s what you mean.

Oh, sh*t, until this song starts playing. It’s not about a girl named Maria. It’s called “Anna Begins,” not “Maria Begins.” Max obviously thinks it’s about him, because he hits “replay” every time the CD cycles this far, and he hits it about twelve times in a row each time. But it’s not about him and Liz, or him and Tess, or him and whatever the hell it is that’s bugging him enough to put us all at risk. It’s about Maria, and it’s about me. And it’s killing me.

My friend assures me, “It’s all or nothing.”
But I am not worried. I am not overly concerned.
You try to tell yourself the things you try to tell yourself
to make yourself forget. I am not worried.
“If it’s love,” she said, “then we’re going to have to
think about the consequences.”

She can’t stop shaking. I can’t stop touching her and...

This time, when kindness falls like rain,
it washes her away and Anna begins to change her mind.
“These seconds when I’m shaking leave me shuddering for days,” she says.
And I’m not ready for this sort of thing.

I can’t listen to this f*cking song anymore without starting to cry. I’m sitting here under Max Evan’s window, leaving an ass-shaped dent in his family’s perfectly manicured lawn, and I can’t stop the tears because I may be an alien but that doesn’t make me any less human.

But I’m not going to break
and I’m not going to worry about it anymore.
I’m not going to bend, and I’m not going to break, and
I’m not going to worry about it anymore.
It seems like I should say, “As long as this is love...”
But it’s not all that easy so maybe I should
snap her up in a butterfly net,
pin her down on a photograph album.
I am not worried.
I’ve done this sort of thing before.
But then I start to think about the consequences,
because I can’t get no sleep in a quiet room and....

This time, when kindness falls like rain,
it washes me away and Anna begins to change my mind.
And every time she sneezes I believe it’s love and
Oh, lord, I’m not ready for this sort of thing.

She’s talking in her sleep. It’s keeping me awake,
and Anna begins to toss and turn.
And every word is nonsense but I understand and
Oh, lord, I’m not ready for this sort of thing.
Her kindness bangs a gong.
It’s moving me along, and Anna begins to fade away.
It’s chasing me away. She disappears, and
Oh, lord, I’m not ready for this sort of thing.

I swear, I’m going to bust through that window, yank the CD out of his stereo and smash it into a million pieces. Then I’m going to slap some sense into our fearless leader, because his moping around feeling sorry for himself is going to get us all killed.

Just as soon as I stop crying, because warriors stop crying before they launch strategic assaults. Just as soon as I pull together the tatters of my wall and wrap them around the naked, needy child who never really left the desert. And just as soon as I listen to it for the umpteen-million-and-first time, because if I don’t, there will be nothing to stop me from running across town to that other window and banging on it until she lets me in and never lets me out again. There we go. He hit "replay."