WHEN I WAS ONE AND TWENTY
"I'm feeling old by 21." -Tori Amos
I have just passed my 21st birthday. I suppose it is some sort of testimony to the inherent uselessness of age that
I feel more compelled to sit here and write about it rather than try effecting
some sort of change. To those who feel this to be an odd and unwarranted bout
of self-pity, I have nothing to say. Just because one has not arrived at his
travel destination doesn't mean it cannot be seen as one approaches; and it -is-
a destination, it cannot be avoided. Either you get it or you don't. But what is to be done? I'm still young enough to be
not only disgusted but offended by the state of our little mudball (Earth), but now
I'm old enough to start being assailed by thoughts of compromise. After all those who
I've been considering comrades in the revolution of youth now call me 'sir'.
Those I have been fighting "with" (if one can call anything I've done 'fighting')
I now have to fight "for", as in I can't consider myself a member of the fold.
Youth is the one society left that still turns its old and frail out to the
wilderness to die. By definition it has to. So, now by having crossed the line, committing the one
truly unpardonable sin of youth (that is growing older) and thus finding myself
outside in the cold with the rest of "Them", what do I have left to
rebel against, so to speak? My motto used to be "Damn the Man!" But if I, by
no other path but that of age, am relegated to his side of the argument, what's
to be done? For when one spends his youth with a severe disrespect for authority,
it is lauded as a "vigorous spirit", or forgiven as the fire of youth. But
cross a numerical boundary, and one is immediately dismissed as a "hippie burnout"
or a potential enemy of the state, or just plain wacko in the style of the Unabomber.
So what's left?
After all, if revolution is so revolutionary, why has nothing changed? I mean, for such
a repulsive way to live, the bourgeois sure have staying power. And I still
don't know whether to lay that longevity down at the feet of human stupidity and
blind self-service or the law of averages. So the choices aren't particularly
appealing: self-serving yuppie materialist joining in the suburban arms race,
or washed-up hippie burnt-out holdover criticizing the former from the safety of
a coffeehouse consuming three-dollar coffees and four-dollar croissants.
I'm
afraid I don't have many role models in this to choose from. I've always
admired Henry Rollins, for example--he seems to be facing age kicking and
screaming, with just enough grace that keeps it from looking more pathetic
than laudable. But: I sat front row for one of his spoken word tours recently,
and while I did thoroughly enjoy it, some things kept tugging at me. He kept
contradicting himself: telling one story about how he wanted to murder people
who kept him waiting in lines, he immediately followed it with a story about how
much he hates when people behind him in lines get impatient. He spent a half-
hour on a diatribe on the Cure and their fans, and then fawned about how he has no problem
with the Cure or their fans. It's as though he were apologizing for every
possibly inflammatory statement he made--this being from one of the few men who
can afford not to, whose whole identity has been defined by adversity (whether
real or contrived). And yes, on top of all this, he kept making deprecatory
remarks about his age.....
So if there's no hope for the Ghostrider, Mr.
Black Coffee Blues, why the hell should I even try? I could say that if nothing
else I should spend this time answering this question, but (ha ha) I've got
too many bills to pay now. College expenses, rent payments, car payments, simple
amenities like food and toilet paper. Maybe I've already been sucked in. I don't
know. The rest is silence.
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