Poison Ivy

We were beautiful and venomous. We looked good while traveling in packs and we knew it. We discovered and procured the vinyl of all the cool bands you had never heard of: The Viceroys, Pall Malls, Lucky Strikes… We were an assortment of discreet varieties: the chemist who built designer drugs and drove a rusting, floorless BMW, the voluptuous polyglot who created art out of paint chips and old pianos, the aspiring arsonist who lost his life savings investing in a puppy mill, the bespectacled Buddhist who lived under the stairs with only a bass guitar and a pack of Tarot cards…It was like being in an old war movie where you had to get to know the whole platoon real fast: the professor, the cowboy, baby-face, and you wonder who is going to be the first to go. At times we breathlessly contemplated the possibility that we might at last be the generation to utterly destroy all that had come before and offer nothing to take its place. We did not like birds, and we detested children. We believed that the most pathetic and contemptuous act a person could commit was to publicly express a desire to be one of us. You wanted to be seen with us, but you did not want to be with us. When we were bored, we set about the task of tearing each other apart. We were always bored.