Frank Miller and Simon Bisley, �Bad Boy�
[Warning: Long entry. Looooooooong entry. Long, long, long entry.]
Well, I blew it. I was planning on including this piece with the last review that was also by Frank Miller, but I forgot. I�m not even sure this qualifies as a book, as it�s more of a magazine sized-comic book, hence no Amazon link � this thing doesn�t even have an ISBN number.
But I suppose it�s okay that I left it out, as this isn�t like any Frank Miller work I�ve read before. This is more of a sci-fi story for god�s sake. That�s very weird for Frank Miller. The story line, short as it is, follows that standard train of thought that children are supposed to have, where they wonder if the rest of the world are robots, or aliens, or cannibals, or (brrrrrrr) Republicans.
This is what I originally planned to talk about when I reviewed Summerland, which follows a similar premise � that things are not quite what they seem.
I never had those kinds of suspicions about something being wrong with the rest of society. I just figured there was something wrong with me.
I don�t know why I felt that way. I was ok with my behavior, which was pretty much that of a loner. It probably started with the house that my sister and I grew up in � a huge two-story house set up off a hillside so the second story was actually below you. There wasn�t another house near ours, and so the only thing my sister and I had to do was exploring the enormous sloping back yard that went on forever with no fences or boundaries that led down to a small stream. We�d slide down the side of the rocky hill on cardboard trying unsuccessfully to avoid the trees and rocks jutting out of the ground, inspect and collect insects, and throw the rocks that had impeded our slide into the water.
Sounds great, right? There were times that it was. But we were also completely isolated, far away from other people, and there weren�t any other kids for miles. So while I remember the exploring and discovery, what I remember the most was being bored out of my mind.
My sister felt the same way, and so we plotted. We confronted our parents and said that we wanted to move. We wanted to have friends outside of school, as we were too far removed for frequent visits. We wanted a social life. Our parents tried to placate us with more visits to parks and playgrounds. They knew the find that they had with this house. But we held fast with our pleas, and eventually wore them down.
We moved to a more populated suburban area, where the houses all looked similar and there were dozens of families in a three-block area. For the first time, my sister and I had friends we could visit, and they could visit us. It was severe culture shock at first. We transferred out of the private hippie holdover school that had a curriculum of math, English and tie-dye lessons, into the public schools.
There I learned the societal pecking order. Having forged numerous expeditions through the forest by myself, it was easy for me to lead a crew on a mission through the girl�s bathroom. There was a short time when I was the leader of the second grade Mafia. But I soon learned that others can be jealous of power, and the way to perform a coup is through violence. I got tired of the constant challenges, and withdrew again to my one-man crew.
Every other child seemed to want to play these games and roles by the standard rules, and yet I didn�t care. Why was I so different? Why wouldn�t I want to participate? Was there something wrong with me? After begging and pleading to move to a populated area, I had the desire to be by myself again. I didn�t understand.
Then my parents divorced.
Details of why that happened are still sketchy, still a version of �He Said, She Said.� I long ago stopped trying to figure out the truth. My mom couldn�t find work in the hick town that we lived in, and my parents were still lodged in custody battles, but in the meantime, we stayed in California. Finally, as she knew she had to get herself situated, my sister and I went to Hawaii to live with my father.
Third and Fourth grade for a pasty, skinny cracker like myself wasn�t fun. The papers liked to refer to it as reverse racism, which never made any sense to me � racism is racism. And I got a handful. I leaned quickly to wait until I was invited to play, and if that didn�t happen, I shouldn�t make a scene about it. I don�t mean to make it sound like I was alone. I wasn�t, and had a fair group of friends. But I also learned how to deal with the boredom and the isolation that happened at times. I went back to being the lone explorer.
Eventually, we both came back to California. Kids stopped being simply kids. Cliques were made, identities forged. Not that I found my niche immediately. My sister informed me recently that they didn�t worry about my punk phase initially, as they figured I�d move on to something else soon enough, just like I had done for the last couple of years.
What they didn�t know was that I had found something with this new punk group. We had forged bonds with others not out of popularity or ability, as most groups demand, but from the lack of said attributes. You didn�t have to try so hard to fit in, and if you did, you would probably be ostracized.
I also think I came across these people at the perfect time, as the labels weren�t so defined. Goths, skins, punks and skaters all hung out collectively. The goth girls would come to the punk shows, the skater kids would go to the dance clubs, the punks would show up wherever there was beer, and nothing was considered weird about it.
I don�t see that now, and I think it�s a shame. I watched the lines get divided first hand, however, starting with the skins being recruited by racist ideologues, and many balked at the separatist agendas now floating around. Fights happened at shows for the first time that I could remember. I recall being a tiny 15 year-old skipping through the pit at a Doggy Style or Circle Jerks show, and having skinheads going out of their way to let me play without fear of threat of injury. It wasn�t long after that I had to start watching my back because of the Crass symbol I drew on my second-hand Army jacket with a black Sharpie.
Soon after came the first wave of people who dropped out of the scene, looking for acceptance from the masses they once rejected. It was simply safer that way.
Most of our circle of friends still managed to avoid that, luckily. Diversity in the ranks was fun. I lived with two other people, one being an enormous reggae fanatic, the other partial to blues. We all got along wonderfully, and our parties would be filled with people of all different social circles. And again, there were no conflicts, and if there were, the people responsible were set straight quickly.
Since then, over the last five, even ten years, there�s been a steady decline in the social group that I was once so close with. Some people married and moved. Some had children. Many simply got their own places and lost the energy to socialize, preferring to unwind in front of the television.
And I�m not absolved from the stagnation. I found it hard to make an effort to hang out with friends who did nothing but watch bad television which I hated. My house had a fair amount of cathode ray entertainment, but it was geared around movie nights or MST3K parties. It was a social situation. It�s a different dynamic than watching some lousy UPN sitcom because �there isn�t anything better on.� And so I stopped visiting.
And again, I wondered why I didn�t feel the same sort of passive contentment like others seemed to find. Others weren�t complaining about the lack of energy, of ideas, of excitement. What was wrong with me, then?
Antsy and bored, I went to school and probably ostracized some of my other friends, as there were times that I would spend days at a time on campus working on the student newspaper. I simply wasn�t around like I used to be.
Since graduating, I�ve made the effort to be sociable. I�ve been doing the DJ thing for a while, and before that you could always find me at the local dive bar hangout every Thursday. This socializing is still just another version of exploring on my own, however. I go there by myself. I leave the same way.
But my workweek is also weird. I work on weekends and thus don�t really venture outside on these days. During the week I start late in the afternoon, and don�t finish until nearly 10 p.m., when most people are either ready to call it a night, or are too far gone in some sort of alcohol haze. But I still feel like exploring.
I�m writing all this down because I�ve had a lot of people talk to me about my upcoming move. �You don�t know anybody there,� they say. �Won�t you be lonely?�
What they don�t seem to understand is that I�m already lonely. Feeling that way in a town filled with people you know feels that much worse.
Recently, I saw an old friend quoted in a little fanzine, where he said he was sick of hearing older people complain that things aren�t fun anymore. He insisted that things are just as fun, but you have to work harder to remember that, because not so much of it is fresh and new and exciting.
That�s what I�m doing with this move. There are plenty of places I haven�t explored. And it�s about damn time that I tried a little harder.
Not for acceptance into a group.
Not for a lack of others like-minded.
But for me.
