Forty years ago, I was in the middle of high school. Enough time has passed that I can remember the good stuff – like the bullying from grade school was over – and forget the bad stuff – like, uh, I forget.
In high school, I was a nerdy punk. My best friends were a flutist (nerd) and a girl who worked part time at a local funeral parlour putting makeup on dead people (punk). I didn’t fall in love with either of them. Check out the pot leaf coke spoon necklace (punk) with long hair and a monogrammed shirt (nerd)!
I didn’t drop acid – I didn’t even drink until I was legal age. That long ago, taking acid was for (gasp) hippies. I was a punk – an anti-hippy. Read voraciously, never cheated on a test, and hung out on The Yonge Street Strip in downtown Toronto. I’d hit the gay sex shops looking for cool punk accessories, but was such a nerd I had no idea that studded leather thing I was looking at wasn’t actually a bracelet for girls with slender wrists. All that S&M leather and punk stuff made for very cool clothing for a teenager from a small town. Over the years, I would listen to outrageous music – I still remember the first time I heard Wayne County’s “Fuck Off” (click here for the Not Safe For Work song). I would scour alternative bookstores for Broadside, Fireweed and other radical feminist and lesbian magazines. Fight the patriarchy! Or at least, read about other women fighting the patriarchy!
The Book Review
Which kind of has nothing to do with Tegan and Sara’s autobiography, High School. Except, their high school days and my high school days were really, really dissimilar. And here’s the thing – although well-written, High School does zero for me. I am not interested in Tegan and Sara dropping acid and going to a rave. I am not interested in whichever one fell in love with her best friend. I am not interested in whatever else I have read because I have already forgotten and I’m only halfway through.
It’s an easy read, it flows nicely. But I kept thinking, are they going to do something soon? Aside from sneak out late at night (I was too nerdy to do that) and learn to play music? I just wanted the book to be over. And it wasn’t over, so I just put it down, halfway through, and I’m not finishing it.
That’s very punk of me (or irresponsible, your choice). So is writing a book review that’s more about me than the book. But my Lord, if my high school life is more interesting (to me) than their lives, well then, down the book shall be put. And for anyone wondering what happened to the nerdy punk… I became an auditor (nerd), but a forensic auditor (punk), and I write lesbian book reviews (nerd) that only you 5 cool people read (punk).
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