I don’t know what it was like to watch Dylan plug in and feel betrayed. I’m not that old. But I do know what it was to watch Billie Joe put on a skinny tie over a black shirt.

I got really lucky to experience punk before Blink and emo came in.

When I hear millennials wax nostalgic about the bands they loved and their razor cut hair and skinny jeans and their love of MySpace, I can’t relate. I was so swept up in the DIY/punker-than-thou bullshit at that time. It’d gone out of fashion. I’d never been IN fashion.

Most of the punk from the late 90’s/early 2000’s doesn’t hold up. The pop stuff does though. Britney, Christina, TLC, Destiny’s Child etc. I had to listen to that stuff when I was alone, like a lot of young women I’d imagine, who had partners who thought pop stars were worse than Cambodian dictators.

So why shit on Billie Joe for wearing a skinny tie?

It wasn’t so much that he sold out. It was that he no longer belonged to me and my rebellion. He belonged to someone else’s. He’d been a Pooh bear of sorts through my youth and my time for rebellion had passed. I was so busy trying to grow up and be an adult in law school that I couldn’t express myself as an individual anymore. It was time to put away childish things. I bought my clothes at Ann Taylor, for God’s sake.

I was 24, frigid and scared most of the time.

My friend Jonathan came over last night and said my place was “fun.” Jon’s said the same thing. I’m fun now because I’m finally free to be me. None of it is a put on. Fun is my reward for shaking the people in my life who sat on my chest and then demanded I fly. And then ignoring their voices that echoed in my head and told me everything I did was wrong.

I wince when I hear people my age say that they wish they were more fun. When they wish for anything really. I’ll indulge them. I’m not about to lecture everyone on their lack of ambition. But wishes are a sign of defeat. I don’t wish for anything. I imagine things that could be. I don’t lament the things that can’t. If it’s in my power to change, I do.

I’ve gone only so much time and I don’t want to spend it with people who whine.

My friend Jonathan and I met up at Pilar for empanadas last night. I was hoping we could take them to the park and drink booze I’d brought with me but it was too hot. So we ate them there.

But then the heavens opened up and rain poured down and neither of us had umbrellas. I rode the bus and he biked to my place. We were soooooooooaked.

I gave him a shirt and I changed clothes. We drank jalapeño tequila with mango nectar and lime and tried to one up each other with the nerdiest videos we could find. We both love History, Weird Al and Bad Lip Reading. He’s college friends with one of the brothers who made the “Hide your kids hide your wife” video, so we watched a few of those.
And old Lonely Island stuff.

I cannot tell you how wholesome and nerdy it was.

Oh and we watched some Yebba/Mark Ronson videos because Jonathan has this series called “Scales and Friends” and Yebba wants to come out on it. It was a good night. I am no longer a grumpus.