cardboard adolescent

Hey, this is a story I just started working on today. I'd much appreciate it if some of you guys could read through it and tell me what you think. It should be a pretty easy read, it's very free-flowing and stream-of-conciousness. I'm writing it for my Creative Writing class, hopefully my teacher can appreciate it:

From the Diary of a Revolutionary

I was eighteen when I decided to join the revolution.

I’d read about it in books and stuff, and all my favourite musicians were always yelling about it, so it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Unforunately, the year I got into it was 1992, and to most on the outside, the revolution seemed pretty dead. The beats were long gone, the hippies cut their hair, and the punk revolution had collapsed in on itself. Hell, even the disco revolution was dead.

Our new “Generation Spokesmodel” Mr. Cobain was more concerned with his feelings than inspiring social revolution, and so it was up to us to succeed where all others before us had failed. To replace the corrupt triad of religion, government, and property with sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. To bring true, unadulterated freedom to every man, woman, and child. To free people from the oppressive system which had dictated their lives for the last couple thousands years, and to bring the Party to the streets.

This was our manifesto.

Step 1: Join a Band

Let me tell you something about myself. My theme song as a teen was the Dead Kennedys’ “Too Drunk to ****.” It follows then, that I spent most of my formative years drunk with friends, often blaring out tunes on the guitar. But when I finally said

“Guys, we should start a band!” they were baffled.

“But, we’d need a name!”

“Yeah man, what would we call ourselves?”

“Who cares!” I shouted back.

They all seemed to think about it for a second, and then they all grabbed another beer.

“Alright man, let’s do it.”



We recorded a mixtape before we ever even booked a gig. It was basically just one long jam session recorded on some crappy equipment borrowed from somebody’s brother. We didn’t really know what the hell to do with it so we just kind of handed it out around school and shows and stuff, trying to get some support. But people weren’t really interested in listening to a couple of punks murdering their instruments for twenty minutes straight without a break. In the seventies that kinda stuff would’ve blown minds but in 1992 that just wasn’t grunge enough. We knew we were gonna have to go underground.

So it was that I found out about Jimmy. Jimmy was this 24-year-old cat who dropped out of school before he even got to high school and who, between his dead-end jobs, threw crazy parties at his dilapidated house in a bad part of town. These parties had a pretty bad rep among our uptight classmates, seeing as how they involved coke and meth and generally ended up in violent outbursts or somebody OD’ing. Now, we weren’t really into that kind of thing, but that seemed like as cool a scene as any, so we met up with Jimmy and asked him if our band could show up at his place and kick out the jams while him and his brethren got ****ed up.

He said sure, and a week later we were there tearing **** up, feeling pretty pleased with ourselves that we were a part of something that normal people couldn’t even understand, and that we were milking life for all the visceral pleasure its swollen tit could produce.

The other kids there were sketchy as hell, and some of em were so out of it that they were actually digging our sounds. So when I heard one of em yell
“PIGS” I thought he was just being a fool.

Next thing you know though, the men in blue have busted down the goddamn door, junkies are crawling out the windows and running in every direction. We dropped our instruments and ran out right with them, even though we hadn’t technically done anything. The cops coulda busted us for something.

That was basically the end of Jimmy and his scene for us. That night was exciting as anything to remember and talk about, but in the end we decided that we wouldn’t be able to incur social change from prison, and that to spark a revolution you have to be out on the streets. When we asked Jimmy about our instruments, he told us he was on probation and to **** off. That presented a pretty big setback for a while, but we ended up buying some pretty cheap second-hand stuff off a drunk and we were back on the road to becoming underground superstars.




Our next gig came a couple months later at a little nightclub downtown, after we had written a few proper songs and made a decent mixtape. I wrote all the lyrics, which were basically just nonsensical poems, which I convinced the others was cool because it was dada.

When it was finally time to get up on stage and perform though, we were pretty messed up and a little jittery, so we decided to get up there and just kick our instruments because that seemed pretty avant-garde and we were into all that jazz. We said we wanted to challenge our audience, but really we just wanted to piss them off and maybe get a riot started if they were drunk enough. They just ended up getting confused and a little pissed ten minutes after we got off the stage and they realized we weren’t coming back but at that point they were too drunk to really care. We gave ourselves a pat on the back and decided to scrap writing songs for a while, and instead be more of a free improv unit, like AMM or something, but with more attitude.

Unfortunately, there weren’t too many clubs in the area interested in hosting free improv units, we were too far-out for even the most pretentious joints. So we started getting people over to Charlie’s house, who was our drummer, and while people sat around and chilled with each other we’d be jamming away in the background. Sometimes we’d get really into it and start a crazy crescendo with our instruments wrapping around each other in an orgasmic tidal wave of feedback, and someone in the audience would yell to keep it the **** down but we wouldn’t listen and it would end with a bunch of people getting really pissed and leaving. But it was worth it. I’m pretty sure we changed a couple of lives on some of those nights. Most of those idiots didn’t realize what they were witnessing.