I remember the days of teenage exuberance
Or, rather, I don’t deny them
They were just a different kind of miserable.

We would walk in the bitter cold
Hooded zipper sweatshirts and eroding sneakers bearing us through two feet of snow
Northeastern Pennsylvania, ladies and gentlemen
I would jingle when I walked
The chain on my pants, the pins on my hat, my pockets.
I didn’t have money you could fold, just pockets full of change
Lunch money carcasses to bear me through the day
Suckered out of Mom and Dad or chided out of that kid in the cafeteria
He didn’t care. Rich parents and no social skills
He’d gladly pay a dollar or two for a minute of smalltalk.
I was more than happy to oblige.

We would all walk through the streets together
Me and these rotting subhuman gutter punks
Who am I kidding? I was one of them
We were like cats
Prowling through the streets through all hours of the day and night
Screaming songs, howling and yowling and getting the cops called
Disturbing the peace.
Noise pollution.
We’d roam through the biting wind, and we’d call
TURNCOAT KILLER LIAR THIEF
CRIMINAL WITH PROTECTION OF THE LAW
To no one
We were indignant toward authority, although it never wronged us, really.
We dragged our boots and our chains and our attitudes over cracked and broken concrete
Snow blowing into our faces
Breathing in the smell of frost and onion rings and shit
This was my youth
These were my precious beautiful days.

We would walk for miles and miles
Scratching on the doors of the young girls who would feed us
CRISTEN, YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE!
STEPHANIE, YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE
CHRISTINA
JESSICA
Sarah.
Kelly.
megan
celia
We were ugly, crass, classless
They were beautiful. They were goddesses.
They would take us out of the cold
We would entertain them,
Tell them stories,
They’d laugh until they cried and I’d grin and know
This is what I must do with my life.
This has to go on forever.

Sleep-drunk, at school all day and out all night
The Punk Rock years of my adolescence
There was one man, he may as well have been the messiah
We groveled before him
He hated me, I didn’t know why
We all aspired to be him
He worked at the record store and knew everything about music
It was all we wanted to become.

Now he is a thirty-five year old man working at a casino
Paying child support to a stripper.
That’s kind of cool, but Jesus, man,
No glove, no love.
Nobody likes fucking a plastic bag
But I, personally, I like babies even less.

The summers and winters that made me what I am
Lay shattered behind my eyes
The days when we’d wear heavy coats
We’d scrape and save and take a bus to the mall
Then steal, just take whatever we wanted into our coats
And leave
Trying to conceal the bulges and irregularities
The corners poking us in the ribs
We’d catch the bus back and get dropped off and carry our haul the mile home.

The golden, frozen days where smoking pot was a highly surreptitious affair
None of this bullshit about “mountain rides” or going over people’s houses
We would sit under a bridge
And pass a two dollar corncob pipe back and forth
And talk about the beautiful, kind girls we were going to intrude upon tonight
Which ones we would fuck
Which ones we wouldn’t fuck
Those were much rarer.
And the twice a month when we could afford it, we’d get high and walk
Walk and walk and sing and talk about girls we had no chance with
Until we got to one of their doors and scratched
And they’d bring us into the basement and give us macaroni and cheese
And then they’d wait to be entertained.
They knew the quid pro quo
I was, again, more than happy to oblige.

The self-loathing, the rejection,
The sparks of pneumonia,
The petty teenage drama,
The anarchistic punk-rock aspirations,
The knowledge it would go on forever,
If I could do it all over again, I would.

But the days are gone now,
And so are the girls,
And so are we.