re: #434 WindUpBird

try being a lil’ gender confused in an isolated suburb of Seattle in 1990, nowhere to go, and having to jettison half your friends because you feel like Uncle Tom, sitting quietly when they bitch about the “fags” and how they’d “kick some fem’s ass if they got picked up on” and then trying NOT to tell your parents about it, because you reeeally weren’t sure how they would handle THEIR friends (see, all my child friends wer emy childhood friends because our parents were friends!) being told that their kids were being nasty.

And then in the next breath, they’re all devout church going, yes ma’am, no ma’am, every sunday.

Sorta affects your politics, it does. You start hanging with the freaks and geeks because they’re the only people you can trust. even the dirtbags cutting class and dealing weed behind the bleachers. They were more my people, they were marginalized too. They didn’t hate. They liked art, and music, and they were right. Straight As and crossing your ts., and looking away when people were hateful, that was the lie. The love of art and music? That’s the real wisdom.

Come to think of it, I knew a lot of (really nice) criminals for a kid who came from some money. I knew a lot of Judd-Nelsons-from-Breakfast-Club. right down to the abusive dads :(