Free Punk Like Me by JD Glass Page A

a deal, right?”
    “Right!” she hurriedly agreed, “yeah, that would be so not a problem, because, well, everyone does it sort of anyway, ’cuz I mean, look at straws and stuff, and that’s just sort of a nip—um, anyway, every girl touches her own boobs every day”—and here she blushed crimson—“I mean, putting her bra on.”
    I laughed for about a second, maybe because of Kerry’s discomfort, but then I got what she meant about straws and stuff. My ears grew warm and I stopped laughing. I hadn’t ever really thought that far about it. I mean, I guess, maybe I had, but not really, not so, uh, speciÞ cally.
    “But I don’t think I could do the downtown thing. I mean, there’s just no way,” she continued emphatically, shaking her head from side to side and crossing and uncrossing her hands in a warding gesture. I began to nod my head in agreement, I think I might have even been about to agree, but as I looked at her face and actually started to think about what she was implying, my brain suddenly locked like a camera set on “blur,” and I had no idea how or what I really felt or thought.
    I wasn’t sure whether or not I was lying, and I wasn’t proud of it if I was.
    Then again, I was also feeling a little foolish. I mean, here Kerry had obviously thought about the “whole thing,” whatever that was, and me, what had I been thinking about? Skin? Arms? Kissing? That’s it?
    So now, I was not only weird and maybe a fag, I was a stupid fag, too.
    It occurred to me that maybe I had better think about this a whole lot more, and I wasn’t sure what any of this meant for me, my personal future, or my friendship with Kerry, never mind anyone else.
    I scowled in concentration at my cigarette, as if answers would be written in the falling ash. In fact, I was a little numb—I’d been shocked into thinking about what all of this might mean. It was Þ ne to talk and think in intellectual abstractions, but to feel, I mean really feel, these different things and attempt to actually deÞ ne them and then to really, truly think about what the logical end of the road was to acting on
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JD GLASS
    all of that, well, those things were worlds apart, and I had the less-than-comfortable suspicion that I had a foot on each one as they drifted farther and farther away from each other.
    “Hey, we’re here!” Kerry jumped up and announced as the train screeched and slowed into the station. “Dump the frown and let’s get slammin’!” And she grabbed my hand to pull me out through the doors and onto the platform.
    As we walked east toward the Bowery (CBGB’s is 315 Bowery, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention), I was overwhelmed with excitement—I was actually going to CB’s for the Þ rst time in my life! It was all I could do to keep myself from practically skipping the rest of the way and dragging Kerry behind me for once.
    The streets were Þ lled with interestingly dressed people of all kinds, and art littered every stationary space, from grafÞ ti to ornate spray-paint murals. I felt like one of those orphaned animals that’s saved and then has to be gently reintroduced back to its natural environment.
    If this was supposed to be home, I was going to like it.
    When we Þ nally crossed the street in front of CB’s, a huge crowd overß owed the sidewalk, and as we made our way through the throng, I was ß oored.
    Punks, punks of all kinds—Mohawks, skinheads, helicopter haircuts (back and sides gone, top left to grow wild as weeds), boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls, punk boys and punk girls with punk babies (and I mean toddlers) dressed up in little combat boots—my eyes drank it all in and thirsted for more. All the different types of people that could possibly be represented, and everyone just hanging and waiting to have a good time. A general friendliness pervaded the crowd.
    Until this very moment, I had never felt so comfortable surrounded by a tremendous group