When I Was A Punk

I was never a punk.

I've been threatened by punks. Rich punk kids were always the worst. There was one in my high school who decided I had "Weak Ass" printed on my forehead and tried to terrorize me. Truth be told I was absolutely not interested in being beat up, I was scared of her. I knew I wouldn't fight her. She would stalk up to me all crazy-eyed punk spikes in the eyes and tell me to move from where I was sitting so she could have my spot. For a long time I just went with it.

But I got tired of the whole play. It finally dawned on me that if I just got beat up the whole game would be over and we could all move on to something less tedious. So one day when she ordered me to do something or other I said "Look, Karen, I'm not going to fight you. You know I'm not going to fight you and I know it. If you want to beat me up just do it now and get it over with." She was a little non-plussed. What do you do with that?

This, oddly enough, won her unending respect and she decided to be my best friend. Which was so unfortunate because I really couldn't be friends with a person who had spent a couple of months trying to terrorize me. I only won her respect when I lost all fear. The fact that her character preyed on the weak made her a person I couldn't like. Still she somehow clung to my side for months. I am a diplomatic person, I don't like hurting people, so I didn't really know how to break it to her that her kind of person was like dog-vomit slime mold to me.

So I let her hang out with me and my friends, who I think must have only barely tolerated her, and eventually she really did get me beat up. One dark and stormy...just kidding...one night me, my friend Lisa*, and punk-ass Karen went to the city so Lisa and Karen could score some tabs. Or something else illegal. We were trolling up and down upper Haight Street kind of late at night when a drunken skinhead exited a bar whose door we were standing near. The drunken person in question was very loud and it became immediately clear that she was not a happy Fred Astaire type drunk. She started harassing us and wouldn't you know it? Karen, the punk, decided to give some attitude back. I knew this was a bad move the second I saw Karen's posture stiffen in the classic "I'm punk rock-hear me roar" stance.

I had had enough of Karen's stupid attitude and awful personality. I started walking away from what was clearly a foul wind-a-brewing. I must have gotten about 20 feet away before I looked behind me to see where my friends were when a fist came hurling towards me like a cartoon and went KER-PLOWY!!! into my face, splitting my lip and giving me a bloody nose.

Ouch!! Getting beat up is so much worse when it's done by someone you love. When it's a drunk skinhead who won't remember a thing in the morning it doesn't hurt nearly as much. The ho-bag turned around and laid into Karen, ripping out several sets of earrings. We tried to use the bathroom at the Rock-n-Bowl joint but they wouldn't let us skanky bloody teens in. Damn them classy joints! So we huddled into the bathroom at the nastiest McDonald's I've ever been in. A place that cockroaches make reservations with for fancy feasts in the city.

I believe I found the motivation to cut Karen loose after that. I felt kind of sorry for her in the end because she had adoring parents, a room every girl dreams of, the nicest house in the nicest neighborhood and unlike my fridge- hers had lots of food in it.

THAT WAS A TOTAL LIE. I didn't feel sorry for her. I was just happy to get her out of my life.

I was never punk. I also wasn't truly a death rocker. I wasn't exactly a superstar, and I wasn't really ever a "cool" kid. I didn't fit in anywhere. I had a few good friends though, which is all anyone really needs.

I loved this suit which I bought at the Salvation Army. I also loved this tie which belonged to my Dad in the 1970's and I wish I still had it. I have always loved wearing suits and ties and would do so still if it wouldn't make me look like an obese Mr. PotatoHeadGangsta Version. See the Madonna style bracelet wad? That is the only style I think I got directly from her. Believe that I was very upset when everyone started attributing the vintage clothes craze to her influence! What you can't see in these pictures very well is the really stylish rat's tail I had going on. I'm not embarrassed by very many styles in my past, I tend to continue to enjoy most of them...but this one always makes me cringe. It's not any different from having a mullet.

Seriously.

You know, this is all so different from another bully story I have. One where I had an opportunity to kick my bully while she was down. Such a classic moment in a gradeschooler's life. My tormentor was getting beat up and I was invited to join in. I couldn't resist. For two years I'd been scared shitless. I kicked her while she was down. I remember feeling a little sick in my gut as my foot made contact with her side. It was so wrong. It was dishonorable, for one thing, to kick anyone when down. I knew that.

But it also felt wrong on such a fundamental level, to administer pain to another being. I still, to this day, 27 years later, feel lousy that I did it. But I suppose it was a good lesson to me. It didn't matter that this same person had pushed me out of my school chair onto the floor. It didn't matter that she threatened to beat me up in the alley right across the street from the school on the way home at least once a week. I knew that committing violence on other people was wrong.

A couple years later, when the two of us (my tormentor and I) were in Junior High I had lost all fear of her. As I found confidence in my weird-ass self I seemed to care so much less about Erin. She was a wasp with a bright blond stinger but my skin had grown into leather. She knew it. We both could sense when the game was up. I still remember the day when she made the first friendly overtures to me that she'd ever made in the whole five years we'd gone to school together. I didn't need her. It was a great revelation. When I didn't have fear of her, she ceased to have power and she felt me take it away.

I took it away from her. I took it away from Karen.

I think about what's happened to these two unfortunate souls from time to time. I see Karen as a high powered Marin County lawyer with a husband named Biff and two children as spoiled as she was herself, and a coke habit as well as a lover named Biff. Yeah, I know, what are the chances? Erin I always like to think of as having retained only 64% of her original teeth, one divorce and six kids later she's washing dishes at Big Al's Diner.