As a lifelong punk coming up on my 29th birthday, I’m starting to have a lot of realizations about life: maybe my dad was right about the secret benefits of having a reliable income. Maybe a new toothbrush every year is worth the $ 7.99. Maybe my planters fasciitis would go away if I didn’t wear Doc Martens year round.
I know what you’re thinking. No, this isn’t me “settling down.” No, I’m not “naturally aging out of a phase in my twenties that was inevitably set to end once I got tired enough.” This is simply a change in my understanding of the word “punk,” a maturation of it, if you will. There are a lot of people who will tell you different things about what it means to be punk. Have any of us ever stopped to consider that perhaps the most punk thing was right under our noses all along? What if the most fuck-the-man, nonconformist thing one could possibly do was to find a pleasant man of 6’2, move to South Jersey, and buy a Vitamix for soup?
Listen, I’ve gone through the whole gamut. I know what it’s like to be you young bucks. I’ve bummed cigarettes from people at death metal basement shows. I’ve moshed at poetry readings in a junkie’s RV. I’ve boycotted Vitamin C. Don’t tell me I don’t know what punk is. If anyone knows punk, it’s me. I’ve simply come to the realization in my later years that none of that is as hardcore as waving to my neighbor Sam while he mows the lawn on a Sunday, getting 8 and a half good hours of sleep and owning an Australian Shepherd.
Dare I say nobody’s doing that. It’s like going “fuck the system” by acknowledging when the system makes my life better, which is pretty much all the time now. Did you guys know the system has some pretty neat farmers markets? I just got three radishes for 4.50. Not a lot of people know about this underground “exchanging money for goods and services” thing.
I know I still have it in me: if I wanted to mosh, I could. I am simply choosing the simple life, the free life, the life where my body has all its required vitamins. I’ll say it: I feel good. Healthy. Within the confines of the law. Is there anything more dangerous than that?