youth of today

I once came to the conclusion that I usually have dated younger men because men my age are bitter old farts who just want to complain or make babies. I don’t think this is true in all cases but …

I do enjoy being around someone my own age and when I go out with guys my age or close to it I get really happy because the weird stuff I think about they just…get it right away. There’s no explaining why “piano wire and a block of ice” is a funny reference when I see an emo kid, or why singing a certain riff from xray spex is awesome, why long duck dong said fast makes me giggle, why I think jocks suck, or or or…

I was born in the early 70s. I remember watching the monkees on tv. I remember brown and orange and avocado green rugs. I remember not worrying about accepting candy from strangers (much). I remember a lot of stuff that just…doesn’t exist after about 1981.

And I was just old enough during the 80s to finally take part in the culture. Like during the 70s I listened to the music my parents played, but once I was 12 or 13 I started getting my own records and watching my own movies that I liked. I started being able to create and participate in my cultural environment, and ever since certain things have had a very warm place in my heart.

I was a geeky, dirty, awkward kid. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Then I went to a punk rock show and people talked to me! Nobody really cared what I looked like, because I could write and draw and add and was smart. They made me tapes, took me in when stuff was rough at home, and showed me how to spike my hair. I found people that cared about the same stuff I cared about…I tried many ways of living. I experimented with my own life in ways I never would have thought were possible without their influences.

I tried everything.

I still do.

I wonder how it is for people younger than me- if the roles we cut out for ourselves then broke in that scene ever carried over? If they feel stuffed into boxes, if any of them escape how we did? In groups or alone? I see very few younger people that are really different from the majority … I see few leading the way to the future, really thinking about it. I like it a lot when I DO see it, though.

I hope I haven’t lost all my vanity, enthusiasm, all my drive to change the world. I’m doing it in different ways of course but I still have hope that it can be done…and that I think is what I miss in men my own age or older. I love extremism, idealism…I want more of that. No matter someone’s age.

This is really just more rambling. Glad you guys keep reading it all…I don’t know how you manage.

 

 

originally written in june, 2010