I Was A Teenage Anarchist

Before she coughed in clouds of tear gas; before she threw her first brick through a corporate window; before she was tackled at the Republican party convention for dumping bloody tampons over the head of a congressional candidate; before screaming into microphones, megaphones, and the face of ignorance; before she became known in memes and headlines across the world for direct political action; before she was a famous punk rocker, fashion icon, activist, and all-around badass—

Before any of that, I just knew her as Ximena.

More on in a minute.

#

"Huh. There's lipstick on my mic," I observed absently. Must have been from the opener. I overheard her band from the greenroom. Good set of lungs on that one.

The mic picked up what I said, and I heard a few chuckles from the audience.

I was all but checked out from this show. I sang the songs and worked the crowd, but deep down I was over it.

The scene was dead. No one at punk shows were true anarchists anymore. Half the people who turned out to see a punk band were frat boys and fascists, the kinds of people I'd been singing against since the beginning. They weren't here for the music. They weren't here for the message. They were bullies who came to shows for the pit, looking for an excuse to hurt someone.

Those who were true to the scene sold out ages ago. Old millennials and young Gen-Xers who threw on a leather jacket on a Saturday night from time to time went to see the occasional show for nostalgia's sake. But once the weekend was over, it was right back to their cubicles, right back to their desk jobs, right back to working retail or flipping burgers or whatever it is people do to survive capitalism these days.

A lot of punks my age have teenage kids. I lost a lot friends to conservativism that way.

I don't mean to sound self-righteous. Truth is, the holdouts like me are the sorriest sad-sacks of them all. I'm almost 40 years old and I still dress like a teenage anarchist. I have hemorrhoids up my ass, a few gray pubes, and a balding spot where my mohawk used to be. I'm like a rapidly-aging Peter Pan who never learned how to fly, but still refused to grow up. I never made it to Neverland. Never will.

When I was young, I thought I was hot shit. I thought I was Jesus Fucking Christ. Now I'm just a loser.

Maybe I always was.

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" I said.

I heard a couple shouts. They didn't get it.

My drummer played a fill. His passive-aggressive way of telling me to get on with it.

"This next one... ah, fuck." I trailed off. My legs all but gave out on me. I took a knee right there on the stage.

"Less talk, more rock!" someone yelled.

"Right, let's get this over with," I said. "One-two-three-four!"

#

After the show, as I was walking backstage, a little brown girl passed me in the hallway wearing black lipstick and dressed in an oversized black t-shirt and baggy black pants. Her hair was up in two buns on either side of her head and there was a spiked collar around her neck.

"What happened, dude?" she said. "Did you shit your pants on stage or something?"

"Fuck off," I said.

That was the first time I met Ximena. I didn't know it, but she was about to change my life.

#

All I wanted was to crash somewhere and sleep, but my band, the Violent Layoffs, had a reputation for afterparties. I didn't give a shit anymore, but we didn't have anywhere else to crash.

So there I was, at a random fan's house, taking swigs of vodka straight from the bottle, trying to get drunk as fast as possible. We were at some random fan's house. More and more people were showing up by the minute.

"You really sucked today," someone said.

I turned to see the same girl from before. It occurred to me that I was probably old enough to be her father. I chased the thought away with another mouthful of vodka. I walked away without another word, making my way through the kitchen and toward the sliding glass door that led out to the pool.

She followed right on my heels. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

"Why not?"

"I'm nothing if not persistent."

"What do you want? An autograph?"

"I wanna know why you don't seem to care anymore."

"Oh my god. Leave me alone."

She jumped in front of me, barring my way outside. "Nope. Not until I get an answer."

I pointed a finger in her face. "Okay, I highly doubt you're old enough to be here."

"I'm twenty-one," she said defensively.

"I doubt that. It's prob'ly past your bedtime."

I pushed past her and slipped outside. I sat on one of the beach chairs and resumed my private pity party.

A minutes later, I heard a car honking. It sounded like my van. I stood, walked around the side of the house, and out to the street.

My van pulled up. Ximena was behind the steering wheel.

"What the f—" I felt around my pocket for my keys, which had obviously been swiped.

"Hop in!" Ximena shouted, reaching out the window to slap the car door.

"Get out of there right now!"

She made a pouty face. "If you don't come with me, I'm stealing this car!"

"Hey! Stop!" I shouted. I sprinted at the van as she pulled away.

The side door was open. There was no way I was letting some teenage punk steal my van. All my stuff was in there.

I dove into the backseat and she hit the gas, whooping and laughing. I held on for dear life bouncing around the backseat.

"Pull over!"

"You sound like a pig!" She giggled. "'Pull over, pull over.' Calm down. We're almost there."

At long last she hit the brakes and I shot forward, nearly breaking my nose on the dash. She cackled with glee and hopped out of the van, taking the keys with her.

When I finally righted myself and climbed out, she had a shit-eating grin on her face and brick in her hand.

"Give me my keys."

"Oh these?" she dangled my keys from my Poké Ball keychain (I grew up in the 90s, okay?).

I tried to swipe my keys from her, but juked out of the way, then tossed them down a storm drain.

I screamed. "Why?"

"Don't worry. I'll fish 'em out myself once we've had a chance to talk."

I was trapped. "There is something seriously wrong with you, kid."

"Ha! Oh, you have no idea," she hefted the brick in her hand.

"Clearly." I opened the back door of the van and fished around. "You gonna tell me what this is all about, 'cause I've had it up to here with this babysitting gig."

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for drugs."

"Nope." She slammed the door shut, nearly severing my fingers. "Follow me."

"I hate you so much!"

"I'm just getting started. My name is Ximena, by the way."

I made childish mockery her condescending tone and she gave me a suffering look. I felt justified in being immature, but the fact of how much older I was than her took all the fun out of it.

"I'm JJ, but I guess you knew that already."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance. Now, drop the attitude."

"You stole my car!"

She hummed a quizzical note. "Is it technically stealing if you were in the car when we drove off?"

I gaped at her, then ran a hand down my face. "I do not want to spend all night arguing with you. Could you please just get to the point."

"Sure! Right this way."

I followed her to the courtyard of some tech company's office building. There was no one around, it being the middle of the night.

I had a bad feeling about this.

My suspicions were confirmed when she stopped, turned, held the brick out to me, nodded to the glass frontage, and said, "throw it."

I scoffed. "You're joking."

Her humorless expression said it all. This chick was dead serious.

"What is this, entrapment? Blackmail? You plan to pin this on me or something?"

She raised her eyebrows at me. "All your songs about class war, about stickin' it to the man, about doing shit like this; I wanna see if the person who wrote those songs is still in there."

I folded my arms and set my jaw. "Well, he's not. Okay? There's your answer." I pointed a thumb over my shoulder. "Now fetch my keys."

"What happened to you, dude? I've listened to your songs a million times. You were ready to set the whole world on fire."

"You wanna know what happened? Life happened. Grow up, kid! I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you can't beat them! They've won! The revolution was a lie. It's all over."

She shook her head, dripping with disappointment. "We can still make a change."

"Yeah? With what? That?" I pointed at the brick in her hand. "You really think that's going to change anything? You really think music and fashion and art fucking matter at all in the face of capitalism? They get exploited just like everything else, then you're back at square one."

"That's why we educate, raise class awareness."

"Oh yeah? You wanna pass out a few zines you printed out at Kinkos? Nobody reads that shit anymore. Nobody reads, period!"

Ximena scrunched up her nose. "What the hell is Kinkos?"

"Oh my—" I face-palmed so hard I about knocked myself over. "Look. You don't know what it's like yet. You don't know what it's like to fight the police state for twenty years only to see the course of history bend towards fascism. You don't know what it's like to fight so hard for change, then see everybody around you give up, and give in, one by one, until there's no one left! Things are worse than they've ever been. What's the point? I mean, seriously, what's the fucking point?"

"Okay, I get that it's hard. But what did you think would happen? Did you think there'd be a full-blown revolution right after your very first concert? Change takes time."

I threw my hands up. "Look, you're a musician, right? Lemme break this down for you. If you want to record your music, or go on tour, or get your message out there on any significant level, you have to go through the music industry, right? See, I was like you once. I had hope. Real fuckin' hope. But suddenly there's millions of dollars changing hands around you between the label and the distributors, and you're stuck in the middle of it wondering why you don't have a soul anymore. If you actually catch a break—and that's a big fuckin' if—this goes one of two ways. You either die in obscurity, or you sell out and watch yourself turn into your own worst nightmare. The game is rigged, okay? The house wins. Every. Time."

There was more emotion in my voice, more moisture in my eyes than I though there'd be. I didn't care. Let her see it. Let her see what believing in something gets you in life. Better she learn that lesson now rather than later.

She was quiet for a beat. "So that's it. You're just gonna give up on everything you believe in."

"Oh, honey. I gave up years ago."

"Sure. That's a real mature way to handle disappointment."

I sniffed. "You know what? Talk to me in twenty years after you've spent half your career playing nothing but old hits, and no one cares what you have to say anymore."

I turned on my heel and walked away.

I made it most of the way across the courtyard before she did something I didn't expect.

She started singing. "Where do you stand in the hierarchy? Can't afford rent, but you still gotta pay to play—"

It was one of the first songs I'd ever written. Only the most die hard fans even knew about it. I turned to look at her, hardly believing my ears. She knew every word.

With no accompaniment, she slapped the beat on her thigh, and bounced on the balls of her feet. "Where do you stand in the surveillance state? They're listening, man, ain't you got somethin' to say?"

She sang loud, staring me down as she did, a challenge in her eyes. She even sang into the brick in her hand as though it were a mic. I had to hand it to her. She had a great voice. She pointed at me when she came to the chorus. "I wanna see your fist in the air! Stand with me, stand!"

I nodded along to the tune. I remembered writing this song in my bedroom on a crappy guitar I got at a pawn shop. I remembered sitting in my cold, damp apartment, barely emancipated from my parents, surrounded by library books. I'd checked out nearly every book they had on economics and political theory.

Ximena took the song up an octave. She was really wailing now, with a voice that could wake up a whole neighborhood. I mumbled along with the last half of the second verse. "Where will you stand when they take it all? Will you stand with me up against the wall?"

Memories came flooding back to me. I remembered stapling fliers for our shows to telephone poles. I remembered organizing with the community. I remembered food and clothing drives for the homeless. I remembered showing up to town halls in liberty spikes. I remembered the demonstrations, the protests. I remembered the hunger, the rage, the passion, the hope.

Before I knew it I was singing with her, harmonizing on the chorus. "I wanna see your fist in the air! Stand with me, stand!"

We sang the final refrain together, screaming in each other's face. "Stand with me, stand with me, stand with me, stand with me. STAND!"

My cheeks were wet. I shook my head, breathless and awestruck. "Who are you?"

She put a hand on her hip and blew an errand strand of hair out of her face. "I'm Merry Poppins, bitch. Who are you?"

Once again, she held out the brick. This time, I took it. I felt its weight in my hand, its grit.

"For the revolution?" I said.

She smiled.

I raised the brick, took a step, and hocked it with all my strength straight through the glass.