Phallic Trickster

Sorry for the extended absence. Things have been a bit manic lately and I think a leave is better than faking your way through it. Ask Pearl Jam.

I miss the punk scene from high school. It's weird writing about this, considering how the punk elitists foam at the mouth when they smell an outsider. But fuck 'em. They're bigger posers than the ones they try to protect against.

I don't know how punk it is, the middle-class suburbs of New Jersey, but it felt alright. If I had to conceptualize it from nothing; to create a scene just from the feeling I wouldn't change a thing. I wasn't punk. I was in the smart classes. I got good grades. My parents were still together (I don't know which category that should fall under). But it was real. And that transcends everything, I think. That's why so many of us weren't "punk." And maybe we were the only ones who really got it.

You try to go back now and understand what the hell you were so in love with then. But it doesn't click because once the feeling's gone, everything else goes with it.

Listen to Gogol Bordello, you'll understand. It's completely thoughtless and absolutely brilliant. Just like the real thing, it melts your left brain and makes you feel ashamed to venture beyond the Id. And that's what I remember now, trying to remember how I tried to rationalize this to my parents. Trying to explain the connection. And it's so fucking sad to think that me trying to remember that passion is like listening to myself at 16 and attempting to understand the logic of the rawest fucking thing you ever felt.

There's no context. No backup plan. Just this profound belief in yourself and the sheen you naturally exude. There was only beauty because flaws were just part of the perfection. And I miss it. I really do.