Bugs

It took five guys to load the jukebox into the back of JR's pickup. We had to switch club spots fairly often. Neighbors complained about the noise, the drugs, the kids weaving up and down the country road. It wasn't until that kid who wore the bullet around his neck wrecked and killed his girlfriend that the cops closed us down.

That day we were moving spots to a shelter house at the park. Five dollar cover to watch three bands. I took this seat on the ledge of the half wall where I could lean up against the wooden post and not risk falling through the top screened half of the building.

The kids filed in, black eyeliner sticking out of the top zippered pockets of leathers. The girls with lips perfectly outlined in black and hooker red lipstick smeared on the inside always stood in the middle of the room. Their eyes darted over the crowd, heads turning, looking for someone to claim.

The kids all knew me by name. They watched me dance. Occasionally a girl would come up and dance next to me, grinning like she was part of a party of two. Most of the time I just smiled, kept my distance, and nodded my head to the beat.

I sat in my corner all night watching these kids. Knowing that the following Monday I would be sitting at a desk at college and looking at the students there with the same amazement. They sported thirty dollar Chuck Taylors and wrote down a leather on their list to Santa just to look like the kids I saw every weekend; the kids who dreamed big but took pride in never finding a way out.

This night, a couple of kids showed up in brand new leather jackets, no fuzzy gray worn elbows, or broken zippers on the pockets. And the other kids laughed at them.

In my head, I thought of all people to be laughing, these kids didn't have a reason to laugh. They were stuck. They were stuck in a world of violence and abuse and dead end jobs and welfare and having kids before they were old enough to take care of them and they laughed because they were better than someone trying to fake into their world.

The thing was though, I came from wealth. I had the education. I had the means to get out and I was getting out. And they still, they always took me for one of their own. In my own way, in my own place at the back of the room or on the ledge, I was always one of them.

I don't know what they sensed in me. I rarely spoke. I kept to myself and my bottle. In my world, the time they shared it with me, I was never really with them. I knew I wasn't like them. I knew I wasn't like the kids at school. I knew that I would never find a mirror in any of them. But I loved them. Because they were there, and WITH me, and experiencing this part of my life that was real, alive.

Johnette's voice smothered my ears, my heart rose to my throat, and these kids closed their eyes, moving to this stirring from a voice that I felt inside myself.