In high school, I started going to a lot of punk shows in the Cleveland area. They were always held in one of three holes in the wall located in the abandoned forgotten areas of downtown. That’s what’s special about Cleveland; it leaves behind ruins and spreads outward and onward like a plague. Strip malls and strip joints. Chain-link fences that lead to series of chain stores. My best friend played the guitar in true brute fashion and I was beginning to devote my life to all the movements so closely associated with punk rock. So together, along with all the other attendees, we acknowledged that music is better when played faster, louder, more aggressive, and more passionate.
The majority of the crowd was composed of bored middle class young people drawn together by a common understanding that the world is far from the way it should be. However, the promise of college and a stable income didn’t steal us all away, and when you went to a show, you could always find a handful of true blue die-hards. The rest of us? We would grow up to vote Democratic, our registered so-called loyalty to the Peace and Freedom Party leftover from idealism at the age of eighteen as lingering notions of social equality guilt us into pitiful charity donations. The beauty of the whole punk movement, however, is the few that never make that leap. Their honest and sincere work ethic, the extent of their commitment and devotion, their punk squats and communes. They had made it, as we all grabbed our coats, sold out, and went home.
I remember when one of these die-hards kissed my mouth and took me out for coffee the following day. He was outstanding in his audacity, confusing in his perfect blend of both adorable cuteness and chiseled sexiness, hilarious in his rebellion. Evan was fast, sharp-witted, and spoke with a sword of a tongue. As we drove around in his wrecked Chrsyler always one sharp breath away from complete collapse, he made me feel gross and guilty. Our outings concluded in altercations with other small minded locals of my small town. I remember him yelling, “Burn the rich for warmth!” Laughing and running clumsily in my thick platforms, I imagined that line as a tried and true authentic punk phrase. Regardless, it stuck with me. Something about making a use out of useless people (not that all the rich are useless, but you get my point) and consuming the people who consume too much made perfect sense to me.
Now, it dawns on me that I have never again heard anyone utter that phrase, nor have I seen it tagged beneath a bridge or aside a building. I know of no Anarcho-syndicalists that upon a moment of triumph, shouted it in the greedy face of their boss and I have never seen it scrawled in white-out on the back of a leather jacket amongst handmade patches and crass pins. I have never heard it anywhere except the sincere in-it-to-win-it mouth of that dirty die-hard.
Today, as I sit curled up in my private liberal arts school dorm room, my Jeffrey Campbell boots that cost about the same price as a Georgian minimum wage worker would earn in a week glaring at me, a plastic bank card that knows the extent of my Tazo tea addiction happily residing in my Urban Outfitters wallet, I am a sell out. My eccentric donation record, a callback to my punk roots, cannot justify my lifestyle. Abolish rape culture, construct shelters for runaways, legalize gay, none of which hinder my consumption. Just like my hometown’s landscape, my consumption is a plague upon the world. In stereotypical middle-class fashion, my ability to seek new revelations upon looking back at my youth indicates a freshly heightened ego. All the sitting and thinking, sitting and writing, in the world cannot remedy the fact that I have grown old and comfortable, and all because I was afraid.
The majority of the crowd was composed of bored middle class young people drawn together by a common understanding that the world is far from the way it should be. However, the promise of college and a stable income didn’t steal us all away, and when you went to a show, you could always find a handful of true blue die-hards. The rest of us? We would grow up to vote Democratic, our registered so-called loyalty to the Peace and Freedom Party leftover from idealism at the age of eighteen as lingering notions of social equality guilt us into pitiful charity donations. The beauty of the whole punk movement, however, is the few that never make that leap. Their honest and sincere work ethic, the extent of their commitment and devotion, their punk squats and communes. They had made it, as we all grabbed our coats, sold out, and went home.
I remember when one of these die-hards kissed my mouth and took me out for coffee the following day. He was outstanding in his audacity, confusing in his perfect blend of both adorable cuteness and chiseled sexiness, hilarious in his rebellion. Evan was fast, sharp-witted, and spoke with a sword of a tongue. As we drove around in his wrecked Chrsyler always one sharp breath away from complete collapse, he made me feel gross and guilty. Our outings concluded in altercations with other small minded locals of my small town. I remember him yelling, “Burn the rich for warmth!” Laughing and running clumsily in my thick platforms, I imagined that line as a tried and true authentic punk phrase. Regardless, it stuck with me. Something about making a use out of useless people (not that all the rich are useless, but you get my point) and consuming the people who consume too much made perfect sense to me.
Now, it dawns on me that I have never again heard anyone utter that phrase, nor have I seen it tagged beneath a bridge or aside a building. I know of no Anarcho-syndicalists that upon a moment of triumph, shouted it in the greedy face of their boss and I have never seen it scrawled in white-out on the back of a leather jacket amongst handmade patches and crass pins. I have never heard it anywhere except the sincere in-it-to-win-it mouth of that dirty die-hard.
Today, as I sit curled up in my private liberal arts school dorm room, my Jeffrey Campbell boots that cost about the same price as a Georgian minimum wage worker would earn in a week glaring at me, a plastic bank card that knows the extent of my Tazo tea addiction happily residing in my Urban Outfitters wallet, I am a sell out. My eccentric donation record, a callback to my punk roots, cannot justify my lifestyle. Abolish rape culture, construct shelters for runaways, legalize gay, none of which hinder my consumption. Just like my hometown’s landscape, my consumption is a plague upon the world. In stereotypical middle-class fashion, my ability to seek new revelations upon looking back at my youth indicates a freshly heightened ego. All the sitting and thinking, sitting and writing, in the world cannot remedy the fact that I have grown old and comfortable, and all because I was afraid.
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