Punk Girl Quotes

What a waste my life would be without all the beautiful mistakes I've made.

She smashes her knuckles into winter As autumn's wind fades into black She is the saint of all the sinners, the one whose fallen through the cracks... (iViva la Gloria!)

Anything to not need you, Anything to not fall for you, Anything to look at a girl who’s not you, But baby, there’s nothing but you.

Why are you worried about him? Des is a punk. (Urian) Desiderius is dead. Kyrian killed him. (Tabitha) Yeah, and I'm the Easter Bunny- see my fluffy tail? You don't just kill a Spathi, little girl. All you do is take him out of commission for a while. (Urian)

I am not a perfectionist…if you believe that your best is good enough, you will find happiness. The unknown can be exciting and full of opportunity but you have to be involved and you have to be able to evolve.

The longer you live, the more dreams you should have to keep you occupied.

And I know right then and there I want to be the only girl he ever looks at like that.

I’ll feel better when Trent gets his punk ass here.” “I’m here, you whiny little girl,” Trent said in a hushed voice. I could barely see his outline in the darkness, but his smile gleamed in the moonlight. “How ya been, sis?” he said. He hugged me with one arm, and then playfully shoved Travis with the other.

In Paranoid Park there is this Punk girl that keeps looking straight into The camera when she speaks, It’s like she’s speaking to us.

He was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious. He was a punk, she did ballet, what more can I say. He wanted her, she wouldn't tell, but secretly she wanted him as well

He was a boy, she was a girl Can I make it any more obvious, He was a punk, she did ballet, What more can I say, He wanted her, she wouldn't tell, but secretly she wanted him as well, All of her friends stuck up their nose, They had a problem with his baggy clothes He was a sk8er boi, she said "see you later boy" he wasn't good enough for her, he was a sk8er boi, she said "see you later boy", he wasn't good enough for her. Five years from now, she sits at home, feeding the baby, she's all alone, she turns on TV, guess who she sees, sk8er boi rockin' on MTV, she calls up her friends, they already know, and they got tickets to see his show

Eventually, I started to cringe at the elitism that was often paired with punk and the like. A movement that professed inclusiveness seemed to actually be highly exclusive, as alienating and ungraspable as many of the clubs and institutions that drove us to the fringes in the first place. One set of rules had simply been replaced by new ones, and they were just as difficult to follow.

It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

My protective instincts were going into overdrive and I wanted to go smack the shit out of the punk for getting my friend wound up like that. No one messed with my girls. Ever.

For me performing has a lot to do with being fearless.

He was a boy, she was a girl Can I make it any more obvious He was a punk, and she did ballet, What more can I say He wanted her, she wouldn't tell, but secretly she wanted him as well, All of her friends stuck up their nose, They didn't like his baggy clothes He was a sk8er boi, she said see you later boy, he wasn't good enough for her

Okay, news flash. Jealousy is not something I enjoy. I hadn’t felt it much before. But I’d also never been in love. And I’d never been 3,300 miles away from the girl I loved while some punk sat next to her on a couch. A punk who had designs on her, according to Dylan. I needed to lay eyes on this guy.

Funny, cute and kissable I've found a girl that makes me lose control Every night's like the first night Never gettin' old

Everyone knew that girls who admitted to liking girls stopped being whatever they were before and became a cross between a lumberjack and a punk-goth-anarchist. - Adena Galinksy, USA (p. 38)

Fuck Tris. I would give body parts to have a guy write something like that for me. My kidney? Oh, both of them? Here, Nick, they’re yours—just write more for me. I’ll give you a start: boy in punk club asks strange girl to be his girlfriend for five minutes, girl kisses boy, boy kisses back, boy then meets girl—what did you notice about this girl? Nick, let’s hear some lyrics. Please? Ready. Set. Go.

Noel shook his head. "You think better of this scene than I do, Ruby. Don't you see how fake those girls are? Let it go. Have a laugh about it when you're older. Forget that junk." I wanted to believe him, to skip off to some punk-rock hangout and develop ironic distance and start over in a universe where it didn't matter what any of these people thought about me. But I couldn't. I just loved them.

Marked.” My face was on fire, my limbs shaking. “All of you. I will take all of you out with my own bare hands!” There was laughter building in Bram’s voice as he responded. “As cute as I’m sure that would be, your attempt…if we thought the people who might try to trace that chip could make you absolutely, one hundred percent safe, I would carry you to them and hand you over myself.” I gingerly rested my fingertips against my forehead, breathing deeply, trying to calm myself down. “There are some very bad men out to get you, Miss Dearly.” “You have got to be kidding me.” “By the way, you have quite the vocabulary, for a princess.” He still sounded amused. This statement was random enough to get my attention. “Princess?” I asked, confused. “You know, a princess. A New Victorian girl.” My lips parted to fire off another question before it clicked. “You’re a Punk.” “Born and bred.” “Fantastic.

All that young-girl idealism is someone else's now.

The girl slid into the back seat of the town car, tugging at the hem of her dress like she was afraid she might leave a stain on the upholstery.

I thought those were pretty big words coming from a guy who covered AC/DC songs.

Ripples shoot across my body, shooting from his thumb straight to my ore as he continues caressing my face, all the time watching me with those breathtaking, heartbreaking, beautiful blue eyes as though engrossed. His voice is velvet on my skin. “Until I saw this lovely girl in Seattle, with big gold eyes, and punk, full lips…and I wondered if she could understand me…

Why do I care so much what the other girls think? Why do I want to be friends with them? I try to be nice, but it’s never good enough. But they’re mean and everyone loves them. Why is that?

Why was fabulousness important? The world was a scary, sad place and adornment was one of the only ways she knew to make herself and the people around her forget their troubles. That was why she had opened her store almost five years ago. Everyone who entered the little square white house with miniature Corinthian columns, cherub statues, and French windows seemed to leave carrying armloads of newly handmade and well spruced-up recycled vintage clothing, humming sixties girl-group songs, seventies glam and punk, eighties New Wave one-hit wonders, or nineties grunge, doing silly dances, and not caring what anyone thought. Weetzie loved the old dresses she found and sold, because they had their own secret histories. She always wondered where, when, and how they had been worn. What they had seen. Old dresses were like old ladies.

When did you guys even start speaking again?” Ernie shrugged and popped a peanut into his mouth. “He’s probably just sniffing around here so I leave him my property when I kick it.” He drank his beer and leaned back into his easy chair. “Eh, he’s a good kid. My sister’s only son. He’s family. Family’s family. Never forget that, Conrad.” “Ernie, two commercial breaks ago, you told me that if I didn’t try and break up my brother’s wedding, I was a punk!” Picking at his teeth, Ernie said, “If a girl’s the one, all bets are off, family or no family.

It was June, and like everyone else Paul made himself extremely busy going to queer art openings and queer punk shows and queer spoken word showcases and queer evenings of performance art. He was exhausted and broke from being so queer...

THEY FOUND LEO AT THE TOP of the city fortifications. He was sitting at an open-air café, overlooking the sea, drinking a cup of coffee and dressed in…wow. Time warp. Leo’s outfit was identical to the one he’d worn the day they first arrived at Camp Half-Blood—jeans, a white shirt, and an old army jacket. Except that jacket had burned up months ago. Piper nearly knocked him out of his chair with a hug. “Leo! Gods, where have you been?” “Valdez!” Coach Hedge grinned. Then he seemed to remember he had a reputation to protect and he forced a scowl. “You ever disappear like that again, you little punk, I’ll knock you into next month!” Frank patted Leo on the back so hard it made him wince. Even Nico shook his hand. Hazel kissed Leo on the cheek. “We thought you were dead!” Leo mustered a faint smile. “Hey, guys. Nah, nah, I’m good.” Jason could tell he wasn’t good. Leo wouldn’t meet their eyes. His hands were perfectly still on the table. Leo’s hands were never still. All the nervous energy had drained right out of him, replaced by a kind of wistful sadness. Jason wondered why his expression seemed familiar. Then he realized Nico di Angelo had looked the same way after facing Cupid in the ruins of Salona. Leo was heartsick. As the others grabbed chairs from the nearby tables, Jason leaned in and squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “Hey, man,” he said, “what happened?” Leo’s eyes swept around the group. The message was clear: Not here. Not in front of everyone. “I got marooned,” Leo said. “Long story. How about you guys? What happened with Khione?” Coach Hedge snorted. “What happened? Piper happened! I’m telling you, this girl has skills!” “Coach…” Piper protested. Hedge began retelling the story, but in his version Piper was a kung fu assassin and there were a lot more Boreads. As the coach talked, Jason studied Leo with concern. This café had a perfect view of the harbor. Leo must have seen the Argo II sail in. Yet he sat here drinking coffee—which he didn’t even like—waiting for them to find him. That wasn’t like Leo at all. The ship was the most important thing in his life. When he saw it coming to rescue him, Leo should have run down to the docks, whooping at the top of his lungs. Coach Hedge was just describing how Piper had defeated Khione with a roundhouse kick when Piper interrupted. “Coach!” she said. “It didn’t happen like that at all. I couldn’t have done anything without Festus.” Leo raised his eyebrows. “But Festus was deactivated.” “Um, about that,” Piper said. “I sort of woke him up.” Piper explained her version of events—how she’d rebooted the metal dragon with charmspeak.

I opened my mouth and said, “Because no one has listened to me my whole life and I really want to be heard.

(Like a lot of middle-class kids, I needed my punk rock and rebellion underwritten by my parents.)

Making sure the girl who got out a few minutes ago is tucked back inside, down deep.

It wasn't just the dude masturbating or the guys calling me a bitch. It was the fact that these fuckers stole my ability to be friendly and then screamed at me for not being friendly.

On the way home from church, I felt like I was walking on clouds, as pure as an angel. I wished a car would run me down at that very instant, so I could die and go straight to heaven before I had a chance to sin again.

Prizing elegance, sweet emotions, and fantasy more than morals and truth; wallowing in fleeting romance rather than trying to give meaning to life, when who knows what's going to happen to you anyway; ignoring virtue and conventions to cherish only the pleasures you are definitely experiencing now: this is the Cocoro of Rococo. No matter how much deep thought, hard work, and agonizing effort went into coaxing out some insight, if that insight is boring, or not beautiful, it doesn't matter. And even if something is made just for laughs, if you find it pleasing, it has value. Other people's opinions and labor do not figure into your assessment; choosing things with your own personal sense of "I like this, I don't like that" is the ultimate individualism that sustains the very foundation of Rococo. Rococo, therefore, embodies the spirit of punk rock and anarchism more than any philosophy. Only in Rococo—elegant yet in bad taste, extravagant yet defiant and lawless—can I discover the meaning of life.

Charlotte Caffey played lead guitar like it was a totally normal thing for a girl to do, which made it a totally normal thing for a girl to do. It didn’t seem shocking or revolutionary to me—they were just a fucking great band.

If you’re someone who hasn’t been heard your whole life, it makes sense that when you’re newly radicalized you could be overzealous and tear people down needlessly. It also makes sense that if you don’t process your own traumas, you may dump them onto others.

We stood under a roadlamp, thumbing, when suddenly cars full of young kids roared by with streamers flying. 'Yaah! Yaah! we won! we won!' they all shouted. Then they yoohooed us and got great glee out of seeing a guy and a girl on the road. Dozens of such cars passed, full of young faces and 'throaty young voices,' as the saying goes. I hated every one of them. Who did they think they were, yaahing at somebody on the road just because they were little high-school punks and their parents carved the roast beef on Sunday afternoons? Who did they think they were, making fun of a girl reduced to poor circumstances with a man who wanted to belove?

...politically charged punk that combined activism and art. Forged out of a meeting of friends who decided they wanted to start a “girl riot,” the women gave rise to bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, addressing rape and violence in their songs, publishing zines, popularizing “girl power"...

I miss talking to you, Fallen.” “That’s too bad. I don’t ever miss anything about you.” “You’re fun.” His eyes sparkled like sunlit gems. “You’re never afraid to go tit for tat with me.” “I don’t want anything to do with your tits or tats.” He laughed again, his eyes darkening back to brown. “Did we really just get beat up by that little Junior Guardian?” “If anyone asks we’ll say that there were fifty of them.” I touched my cheek and hissed. “Goddamn ninja punk.” “I feel terrible and I don’t mean my wounded ego. I feel really bad.” He groaned and rolled to his side, not moving from the floor. “I can’t believe we just got our asses handed to us by a goddamn Jonas-brother wannabe.” “He had the hilt piece. Did you see it?” “No, I was too busy crying like a girl.

I realized that sexism was telling me to stay home and not par pate in the larger world. "Dance to records by yourself in your room would say. "Stay at home and read alone!" it would yell. I decided I gonna do everything in my power to make Bikini Kill shows a brief prieve from sexism, even if it was imperfect and fleeting.

So I had this date last night,” Dane goes on, ignoring my order. “Do you remember that girl from Sigma Kappa Whatever? She was at the gig last night, and everything was going great, both of us eye-fucking for like four frickin’ hours…” He pauses and turns to me, his voice turning urgent. “She takes me home, dude, and I’m sitting in the living room while she’s in the bathroom, and I’m so ready, because she’s so hot, right? And who walks in?” “Dane.” I close my eyes, willing him to shut the fuck up. “Her mom, dude!” he bursts out. “Her mom in her light pink nightie with legs for days. And let me tell you, man…Stacy’s mom has got it going on?” I can’t help myself. I break out in a laugh at the song reference and pinch the bridge of my nose, tired but a fraction more relaxed, even if I’d never admit it to him. Such an idiot.

All your doing is keeping wayward teenage punks off the street. You should leave the real investigative work to us big girls with the pens and paper.

I could be the girl who was Delilah’s friend again. The girl who stood up to the mean kids and didn’t need a spirit animal, because she was her own.

I’ve had half a dozen girlfriends, and all of them I knew ten times less than I know this girl.

I don’t want it,” she insists and tosses it at me. “Another girl’s perfume is on it, so you should let your skank know she left it in your backseat.

Is a woman a building you enter? Is a woman a wall you can paint your name on?

I don’t feel much like a “rebel girl”—most of the time I feel more like a dirty napkin. But Dirty Napkin is a terrible title for a book. It’s also not who I am.

My weakness: Punk rock girls with death-wish eyes.

All my memories are things I gave away, traded for new days after days after days...

There are certain things a girl just knows, like that a fourth minute on a punk song is a bad, bad idea,

I give Iggy credit for deconstructing the very idea of entertainment.

You’re not actually going to marry this fucktard, are you?” –Jack

I didn’t know the grim reaper looked like Sid Vicious. – Jen

I realized that night that there was something really powerful about counseling women at places where they already hung out instead of at a crisis center.

I thought it was interesting, but selfishly I just wanted to relive my own childhood and win this time.

She was the only woman on the whole record and hearing her gave me the first thought that someday I could be in a band.

Poetic lyrics were important, but it felt like women sometimes hid behind poetry as a way to say something without actually saying it. I was on a mission to just fucking say it.

I wasn’t going to let him step on the gas pedal of my empathy till he drove me off a cliff.

... choosing things with your own personal sense of 'I like this, I don't like that" is the ultimate individualism that sustains the very foundation of Rococo. Rococo, therefore, embodies the spirit of punk rock and anarchism more than any philosophy. Only in Rococo--elegant yet in bad taste, extravagant yet defiant and lawless--can I discover the meaning of life.

Project Princess Teeny feet rock layered double socks Popping side piping of many colored loose lace ups Racing toe keeps up with fancy free gear slick slide and just pressed recently weaved hair Jeans oversized belie her hips, back, thighs that have made guys sigh for milleni year Topped by an attractive jacket her suit’s not for flacking, flunkies, junkies or punk homies on the stroll. Her hands mobile thrones of today’s urban goddess Clinking rings link dragon fingers no need to be modest. One or two gap teeth coolin’ sport gold initials Doubt you get to her name just check from the side please chill. Multidimensional shrimp earrings frame her cinnamon face Crimson with a compliment if a comment hits the right place Don’t step to the plate with datelines from ‘88 Spare your simple, fragile feelings with the same sense that you came Color woman variation reworks the french twist with crinkle cut platinum frosted bangs from a spray can’s mist Never dissed, she insists: “No you can’t touch this.” And, if pissed, bedecked fists stop boys who must persist. She’s the one. Give her some. Under fire. Smoking gun. Of which songs are sung, raps are spun, bells are rung, rocked, pistols cocked, unwanted advances blocked, well stacked she’s jock. It’s all about you girl. You go on. Don’t you dare stop.

She’s the reason he will probably become an embittered old fuck before he’s even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying cheating sluts because one of them broke his heart. He’s the type of guy that makes girls like me frigid. I’m the girl who knows he’s capable of poetry, because, like I said, there are things I just know. I’m the one who could give him that old-fashioned song title of a thing called Devotion and True Love (However Complicated), if he ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I’m the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who for one too-brief kiss fantasized about ditching this joint with him, going all the way punk with him at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have treated him to borscht at Veselka at five in the morning, maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with him at sunrise, holding his hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in him. I would tell him, I heard you play, I’ve read your poetry, not that crap your band just performed, but those love letters and songs you wrote to Tris. I know what you’re capable of and it’s certainly more than being a bassist in an average queercore band—you’re better than that; and dude, having a drummer, it’s like key, you fucking need one. I would be equipment bitch for him every night, no complaints. But, no, he’s the type with a complex for the Tris type: the big tits, the dumb giggle, the blowhard. Literally.

The more you like a girl, the less she likes you. It’s like fucking scientific.” “What about you and Kim?” “That’s what I’m talking about, little dude. If I start being nice and acting cool and saying things and being on time, she starts acting, you know, fucking uninterested. But if I act like a total dick, then she calls me all the fucking time. It’s fucking crazy, because I really like her and all, but when I say nice shit to her, she gets all freaked out and says she needs some fucking space and all. So I just act like I don’t give a shit, you know? It’s all part of God’s plan,” he said, nodding.

But if you ever wonder why so many well-off kids were in nineties punk bands, that's why. They could afford to not get paid. They could also afford to look generous by donating their services more than we could.

wondered about what he said and then thought hard. I could never be a dick, not to Gretchen anyway, so I guess I was doomed; doomed to go for this girl that didn’t go for me. But that was OK as I long as I did everything I could.

How else could we identify another weirdo or outlier? These symbols intimated a belief system, a way of thinking not just about music but about school and friends and politics and society. It was also a way to separate yourself, to feel bold or try on boldness without yet possessing it. A little inkling of the nonconformist person you could be—you wanted to be—but weren’t quite ready to commit to. I papered my walls with band posters and what little I could find in mainstream magazines about alternative and punk, maybe a picture of Babes in Toyland from Spin or Fugazi from Option. The iconoclast images and iconography covered my room, a jarring contrast to the preppy blue-and-white-striped wallpaper I’d insisted on in elementary school. I resented the parts of myself that were late to adopt coolness, late to learn—I wanted to have always possessed a savviness and sophistication, even though I clearly had neither.

What am I going to do with this girl? Just when I think I have her figured out, she pulls at me a little more. Just when I think I can't stand her, and I can leave, never looking back, I turn right around and want to make sure nothing hurts her.

Girl, I’m sorry, but I’m leaving, we’re both at fault, we’re both to blame. And it wasn’t the other men ’cause there were other women. This just isn’t love, it’s just the remorse of a loss of a feeling. Even if I stayed it just wouldn’t be the same.

I am still so grateful that a guy we'd never met put his time and energy into what most people considered a shitty opening band. It made me see myself as worthy in the underground scene. It also undid a lot of shit other men doled out to me on that tour.

have no idea who she was,” Brandell said, “although I did recognize her from somewhere—I had the feeling that it was something bad. She was tattooed and pierced and all that crap and looked like a heavy rocker or goth or punk, plus she was as thin as hell.

I yelled "Revolution girl style now!" before "Double Dare Ya" like I'd been doing live and reassured myself that the session was meant to take a snapshot of our songs, not to make them sound perfect. Maybe being sloppy would inspire other girls to start bands.

I'd always dismissed "transcendence" as an experience that divorced music from activism, but I walked away from that show a changed woman. I didn't have to choose between being a socially conscious person and being a singer who could connect with magic onstage.

RONNIE CUTRONE: I loved Jim Morrison dearly, but Jim was not fun to go out with. I hung out with him every night for just about a year, and Jim would go out, lean up against the bar, order eight screwdrivers, put down six Tuinals on the bar, drink two or three screwdrivers, take two Tuinals, then he’d have to pee, but he couldn’t leave the other five screwdrivers, so he’d take his dick out and pee, and some girl would come up and blow his dick, and then he’d finish the other five screwdrivers and then he’d finish up the other four Tuinals, and then he’d pee in his pants, and then Eric Emerson and I would take him home. That was a typical night out with Jim. But when he was on acid, then Jim was really fun and great. But most of the time he was just a lush pill head. RAY MANZAREK: Jim was a shaman.

And so you go out with a girl and you’re driving… “So what are you reading right now?” “Well, I’m not much of a reader…” *screeching car brakes* “I’M NOT MUCH OF A DINNER BUYER! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!” “But we’re lost in the stucco sprawl of L.A.” “I DON’T CARE!” But every once in a while you meet the one who reads… “So what are you reading?” he asked (you know, the date killer question)…“So what are you reading?” “Well I’m right in the middle of a book right now--” Oh my god, she’s in the middle of a book. Be still my beating heart. “So what are you reading?” he asked expectantly, nerves tingling, body aquiver “Well, I’m in the middle of this Harry Potter b—” *screeching car brakes* “DON’T BE AN ADULT WOMAN WHO READS A FUCKING CHILDREN’S BOOK IN MY CAR, GET THE FUCK OUT!

In order to win the femininity game, women and girls must abandon the valued "masculine" characteristics of self-efficacy and self-determination. However, this is the catch: the femininity game ultimately presents girls and women with a "no-win" situation. Although failure to live up to the expectations of femininity can have devastating effects on girls' and women's self-esteem, so can success in attaining them. A "winner" of the femininity game has effectively stripped herself of valued human characteristics in adopting an undervalued identity.

They thought I was troubled after noticing the cut marks I'd made on my arms and legs, a habit I'd picked up to impress cute girls in school. I'd carve a crush's name into my shoulder, or make slashes on my forearm to win their attention. The pain was intense, but it paid off.

Before I found out about Olympia's punk scene, I thought that everyone making music was untouchable and magical. But when I saw Tobi from the Go Team at the Smithfield Café, I realized, She's in the Go Team and she goes to the same coffee shop I do. If she could be in a band, maybe I can too.

It’s worth remembering that from the beginning, rock and roll was never based in musical training or technique, just as punk rock was never about being a good musician and No Wave was at its core about pure expression. Punk rock changed everything, including the whole idea of being a “rock star.

Ryen. The beautiful, perfect girl who’s so different from all the others. I run my hand over my forehead and through my hair, my throat tightening into a knot and my eyes burning. Fuck. I put the pen to the paper and scrawl what my goddamn heart can only whisper. I miss you every day, I write. You’re my favorite place.

I was finally ready to mourn the girl who was excited to show everyone our new zine, the girl who was amped to go on tour and move to DC. She was gone and I was exhausted trying to pretend she wasn't. But now some new person was in her place, and maybe letting her exist would let me feel some of the joy I used to feel.

Emos don't dance much to our music. They actually hate snow patrol and Girls allowed. How could anyone hate them? I haven't got any punk or metal stuff they would like but actually, when they'd had some cider they were dancing along happily to 'Mamma Mia' with us, no probs. Even though they're Emos, they are still like human.

Up till then, I'd dated people by default, because I either needed help paying rent or was afraid of what would happen if I rejected them-but Luke was different. I chose him. I ended up going home with him after a party a few nights Inter and woke up so deeply in love that there aren't enough poems or songs or words to ever explain it.

Was it really so bad that a working-class guy who couldn't afford to play five-dollar shows for the rest of his life had signed to a major label? Was it really so bad that his band wanted to reach an audience that didn't have access to labels like K or Dischord? The indie-vs.-major labels thing started to seem like a silly hill to die on.

Big Jason walked into the club, stared at the band beginning their sound check and quickly walked over to the bar. Lily looked up from her rinsing and smiled. "Big Jason Gulliver, back in town. Raquel said Godzilla returned to Tokyo, I wondered how soon you'd drop by here". "Front me a soda, Lily. How's the night club racket?" Jason barked over the noisy band. "Guys still hitting on me, including your stupid friend King Steve", Lily shot a jet of soda pop from her beverage gun into a water glass. Jason chortled. "He's slow on the draw. You're a fuckin' dyke but a cool fuckin' dyke. I don't even care if you sleep with my girl". "Why thank you, Caveman", Lily smiled, handing him the soda with a cherry on top.

I’m not saying it’s a biological thing. Society made it that way. A little boy cries about something, he gets yelled at by his parents. They tell him to man up. Unlucky sons with stupid parents are demeaned and called ugly names like faggot and punk. From the very beginning, boys are trained to not deal with their emotions. Girls on the other hand are free to be emotional.

I felt like no one was really looking out for me, that I was marginal and incidental. I compensated by being spongelike, impressionable, and available to whatever and whoever provided the most comfort, the most sense of belonging. I was learning two sets of skills simultaneously: adaptation - linguistic and aesthetic - in order to fit in, but also, how to survive on my own.

I cannot explain to you how utterly crazy these comments by my "punk family" made me feel. I had just seen the most important band in the world. All I wanted to do was to get their information so I could invite them to play at Reko Muse, All I wanted was to be near them. They were everything. I'd seen God and she was three women playing songs in a shack in the middle of nowhere.

[From Sid Vicious's letter to Nancy Spungen's mother Deborah] P.S. Thank you, Debbie, for understanding that I have to die. Everyone else just thinks that I'm being weak. All I can say is that they never loved anyone as passionately as I love Nancy. I always felt unworthy to be loved by someone so beautiful as her. Everything we did was beautiful. At the climax of our lovemaking, I just used to break down and cry. It was so beautiful it was almost unbearable. It makes me mad when people say you must have really loved her.' So they think that I don't still love her? At least when I die, we will be together again. I feel like a lost child, so alone. The nights are the worst. I used to hold Nancy close to me all night so that she wouldn't have nightmares and I just can't sleep without my my beautiful baby in my arms. So warm and gentle and vulnerable. No one should expect me to live without her. She was a part of me. My heart. Debbie, please come and see me. You are the only person who knows what I am going through. If you don’t want to, could you please phone me again, and write. I love you. I was staggered by Sid's letter. The depth of his emotion, his sensitivity and intelligence were far greater than I could have imagined. Here he was, her accused murderer, and he was reaching out to me, professing his love for me. His anguish was my anguish. He was feeling my loss, my pain - so much so that he was evidently contemplating suicide. He felt that I would understand that. Why had he said that? I fought my sympathetic reaction to his letter. I could not respond to it, could not be drawn into his life. He had told the police he had murdered my daughter. Maybe he had loved her. Maybe she had loved him. I couldn't become involved with him. I was in too much pain. I couldn't share his pain. I hadn't enough strength. I began to stuff the letter back in its envelope when I came upon a separate sheet of paper. I unfolded it. It was the poem he'd written about Nancy. NANCY You were my little baby girl And I shared all your fears. Such joy to hold you in my arms And kiss away your tears. But now you’re gone there’s only pain And nothing I can do. And I don’t want to live this life If I can’t live for you. To my beautiful baby girl. Our love will never die. I felt my throat tighten. My eyes burned, and I began to weep on the inside. I was so confused. Here, in a few verses, were the last twenty years of my life. I could have written that poem. The feelings, the pain, were mine. But I hadn't written it. Sid Vicious had written it, the punk monster, the man who had told the police he was 'a dog, a dirty dog.' The man I feared. The man I should have hated, but somehow couldn't.

The first time Amy Carter played live I felt like I was gonna puke all over the microphone. But by our third song, the feeling I had being Annie in grade school and the feeling I had opening for Acker morphed into one thing. We performed a couple of times at Reko Muse and then the band fizzled out when senior year started, which was fine. I knew who I was now. I was a singer in a band.

I would fall in love with someone’s potential rather than with who they actually were. I’d walk in, find a guy who was smart and funny but a complete mess, and light up like a talent agent from the 1950s. I’d think to myself, “This kid’s gonna be a star!” I’d take on a guy the way Michelle Pfeiffer took on the punk-ass kids from Dangerous Minds, seeing the best in them and pushing them to be better. And also like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, I had to teach a couple of guys how to read. Of course, this dynamic caused my relationships to feel maternal, making my partner resent me and making sex feel like incest. To add insult to injury, I basically ended up coaching a guy to be the best he can be for the next girl who came along. To anyone dating my exes, you’re welcome for getting them together so you could have the perfect boyfriend. Love you, girl.

When she was a little girl, her aunt, in order to frighten her, insisted that the vampire - the ones that sucks human blood by biting its victims in the flesh of the neck - casts no reflection in the mirror. She reckoned that it might not be such a bad thing being a vampire, for the blood would add a touch of punk to her sallow complexion. For she gave the impression of having no blood unless a day might come when she would have to spill it.

Many of the domestic violence survivors had to work jobs an hour away from where they lived to save money to buy generators. That way they could move into cabins in the middle of the woods and not have any bills so their exes couldn't find them. Before living off the grid was an environmentally friendly, small-footprint thing or something that right-wing Armageddon preppers did, battered women were already doing it. For them, the apocalypse was every day.

There are these Precious Moments figurines, they’re like porcelain, little kids with giant eyes handing each other a heart that says LOVE on it, or rolling around with a puppy? Maria stumbles into a whole aisle of them. Tears start welling up in her eyes, again, which is totally not tough and totally not punk but which also you totally can’t lie about. Like, they’re depictions of this idealized childhood innocence, right? This idea that little kids have the potential for sadness in their giant eyes, but really they just know these pure emotions: love, happiness, whatever. It’s totally hokey and stupid and obviously a construction. Real little kids are as dirty, impure, and complicated as the adults they’re going to grow up and be. But this sort of thing gets her all melodramatic and choked up specifically because of how fucked up she was convinced she was when she was little. She didn’t know she was trans, she couldn’t put into words that she was a little girl, but she did know that something was horribly wrong and she blamed herself for it. Other kids could stomp around and punch eachother and sleep at night, but she was this self-conscious mess who liked books a lot because sometimes people in books seemed as bewildered by the world and themselves as she was. She was never a little kid who could get a puppy and be happy about it. If you’d given her a puppy, she would immediately have started worrying about what if she trained it wrong, what if it ran away. She would already be sad that it would die.

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather." He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it." I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive." "Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile." "I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall." He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?" "Isn't that life?" He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?" "Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily fed while her children sit back and watch. Where a father is murdered bacause he made the mistake of wanting a van for his family. In that world, it seems like it's raining all the time. A cold, hard rain that seeps into clothes, chills bones, and makes people feel utterly wretched. Many times, I see people on the worst day of their lives, when they feel like they're drowing. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer. I just know that if they make good choices, and accept the right help, they'll come out of it all the stronger for it. What I do enjoy comes after. Three months later, when I see that thirteen-year-old former prostitute pushing a mower across the front lawn of her foster home, a quiet smile on her face. Eight months later, when I see the girl who was raped walking home from school with a guy who wants nothing from her but to make her laugh. Two years later, when I see the junkie mom clean and sober and loading a shopping cart for the kids that the State finally gave back to her. Those people have seen the sun again after the harshest rain, and they appreciate it so much more.

The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.

The girl enters the room wearing work boots, torn jeans, and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt bearing the word PRINCETON. She is waif-thin, with a long neck, prominent cheekbones, and narrow eyes spread apart in a way that suggests eastern Europe. Her hair is in one of those styles I’ve never understood, the right side of her head shaved in a military buzz cut with  longer hair hanging over it, down to her bony shoulders. A cross between a Calvin Klein model and a Eurotrash punk rocker. She scans the room, but not the way most people who enter the Oval Office do. First-time visitors soak it all in, eagerly devour all the portraits and knickknacks, marvel at the presidential seal, the Resolute desk. Not her. What I see in her eyes, behind the impenetrable wall of her face, is pure loathing. Hatred of me, this office, everything it stands for. But she’s tense, too, on alert—wondering if someone will jump her, handcuff her, throw a hood over her head.

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

Maddy’s going to pop soon,” Cooper said, finishing his beer and getting ready to head out. “Tucker is attached to her. It’s pretty fucking adorable. The guy about wets his pants every time she makes any noise that might be labor pain.” “You’ll be an uncle soon.” “I’m already an uncle,” Cooper mumbled, sliding on his jacket. “I just can’t hold the kid yet.” “You and Farah still planning on trying?” “No planning. We’re just trying now. She’s off the pill. Whenever it happens, it’ll be cool. Farah worries she’ll suck at being a mom. Can you believe that shit?” Cooper asked as his dark eyes warmed at the thought of his wife. “The way she takes care of Sawyer and me and everyone else and she thinks she’ll be a bad mom. These girls with their shit families get all fucked up in the head and no logic is going to fix it. They just need to face their fears and see how amazing they are when their idiot parents aren’t around to fuck things up.” “Should I fix things for Lark?” “I don’t know. If it was me, I’d go smack her stupid brother and father around. I don’t know if that’d be a good idea though. Those fucks aren’t low life drifters like Farah’s parents. That Larry asshole is a respectable member of the community. If you want to smack him around, you’ll need to do it in a more subtle way. Of course, if he ever fucks with you, we can just remind Mister Upstanding how his kind doesn’t run Ellsberg. It’s us dirty biker types who keep his house from burning down or his head from getting cracked open. If it comes down to it, I’ll help you take him down. Pop says behave. I say I’ve got my bud’s back.” Grinning, I shoved him away from me. “Crap. I’m worried you might hug me next.” “I was thinking about it,” Cooper said, smiling. “Farah’s turned me all nice and shit. I’m getting manners too. It’s disgusting.” “Horrifying,” I teased. “Thanks for the offer, but I feel like Lark needs to make a move. If she needs me to, I’ll burn down houses and crack open skulls. Right now, I feel like maybe she needs to find her way back to me. If she does, I’m keeping her and ruining anyone who tries to take her away.” “Now, there’s the punk ass jerk I became friends with.