My favorite albums

The first in what might become a series

The first time I heard Exile in Guyville was a few months before it was released, in 1993. I was 28 years old and living with my boyfriend, a rock critic named Charles, in North Williamsburg, back when it was still an Italian neighborhood full of old-school bakeries, aluminum siding on the houses, no bars, almost no restaurants, and only the occasional hipster. We paid $700 a month for two floors in one of those houses, and even then we knew it was an incredible deal.

Living together was fun; Charles and I threw parties and an annual seder, and went out to see live music together constantly. We were hanging out with a fun crowd. It was a good time of my life.

But Charles’ and my relationship, never that passionate to begin with, had slowly devolved into a kind of roommate-y friendship. That we both wanted more was getting increasingly obvious. And it wouldn’t be long before we agreed—quite early one Sunday morning after he’d stayed up all night with a woman he knew from my office—that it was definitely time to part ways. Which we did pretty amicably: when a $950-a-month studio with a sunken living area in a prewar Chelsea building became available, I signed the lease as soon as I could, even though it meant we’d need to stay in Williamsburg together for a few more months before the lease started.