Free Punk Like Me by JD Glass

with both an intelligent and nonincriminating answer.
    Great. Just great. I Þ gured at this point she had enough on me to say whatever she wanted to whomever she wanted, and there’d be more than a little truth to it, and then people would start to say shit and—fuck it.
    I was punk, I was cool, and I never did like bullshit, not then, not ever. I might have been crazy, or stupid, or brave, but I did my best to be as honest as I could despite the trampoline dancers in my gut with what I said and did next.
    Leaning back on the bench in my oh-so-casual manner, I stretched my legs and crossed those beautiful boots. Then I lit a cigarette (which, by the way, boyz ’n’ gurlz, was and still is illegal now on any and all forms of NYC public transportation, so don’t try it!) and dragged on it.
    Cool, calm, and totally collected, I looked up and arched an eyebrow in self-deprecating mockery at my best friend. “I’d say it’s a case of PLT.” I exhaled at her, and let my hand dangle along the orange plastic bench
    • 59 •

JD GLASS
    backs. I let the smoke rise between us.
    “What the fuck is PLT?” Kerry asked with a cocked brow of her own.
    “C’mon, Kerry, you know, PLT—Pre-Lesbian Tension.” I took a drag on my cigarette and smirked like I knew all about it. Actually, I really did think I knew at least something, though not all, about it. I’d read a lot about “the gay thing” in some books, I watched PBS and stole my mom’s Cosmo magazines from time to time. That had to give me some handle on the psychology of this thing. Besides, one thing I knew and understood instinctively so far was where there was smoke, there was Þ re, one way or another.
    “I know you have to be covering this stuff in your health class, Kerry. For Chrissakes, you guys study birth control.” I continued to smoke while I watched Kerry’s reactions, now that I’d basically told her that I knew, really knew, what she, what I, what we were really doing here and that I, at least, wasn’t going to lie about it and, on the other hand, I was just so cool, I could dismiss this as just a “sophisticated conversation about normal teenage yearnings,” or some such shit.
    “Pre-Lesbian Tension,” Kerry practically muttered under her breath. “Give me a drag of that thing, will you?” and she reached across for my cigarette, which I handed to her. She dragged on it like it held the secret of immortality, her eyes focused or, rather, unfocused, on some point midway between me and the ß oor. She twisted her mouth into a grim smile and exhaled smoke through gritted teeth.
    Hmm…PLT. I didn’t know where in my brain that had come from, but it seemed pretty accurate to me at that time. Now too, come to think of it.
    “I guess…I think I could do the uptown thing, ya know?” Huh? I changed the smirk on my face to a quizzical look. As far as I knew, we hadn’t changed plans to go up farther than Prince Street.
    Kerry looked back at me as if I’d just dropped my mind on the ß oor, then realized that I had misunderstood her. “No, doofus, no, not that,” and she rolled her eyes and stood up. “I mean, you know, uptown!” and she gestured to herself, from the shoulders up.
    Oh, okay, I got it, I could go with that, I understood. “Oh, okay, I get it. Yeah, me too, I think,” I responded. I Þ gured it was fair, she admitted something, I would too. “Kissing’s, like, no big deal—people get accidentally kissed all the time, right?” I thought for a second, and,
    • 60 •
     
    PUNK LIKE ME
    my mind having just translated from “bases”—you know, kissing is Þ rst base, bras and beyond second, that stuff—to city zones, I brought that to its next logical step.
    “Well, actually,” I reß ected, “I think maybe I could do the midtown thing, too,” and I gestured between my navel and shoulder blades. “I mean, I don’t know, but, like, it’s just, you know, skin, like an arm, right? So that wouldn’t be too big of