Day 31: Valentine’s Day…

While a single chubby man could wax on and on about the grimness of life on Valentine’s Day, I won’t because I’m bothered by something else entirely today.

I opened up the Indy and saw an ad for a show at the Wilma in May, a show involving the band NOFX. At first I was la little excited, but then something hit me that I wasn’t expecting. Age.

Back a few years ago – okay, about 10 – my brother visited for Christmas. He’d been living in Phoenix for a few years, and wow was he different. He had tattoos, piercings, and a shit load of cds, punk rock cds. I had never heard anything like it before in my life. See in Anaconda you’ve got two music options: radio and MTV. We didn’t have a Rockin’ Rudy’s or Ear Candy. All we had was crappy crap crap coming from Carson Daly, and the always terrible “Y-95,” which has since sold.

The cds my brother had were of bands like Bad Religion, NOFX, Lagwagon, Propaghandi, etc. These were bands made up of angry guys how couldn’t sing, and could barely play their instruments. The anger part got me into the music. I’ll never forget the first time I heard the NOFX song “Murder the Government,” a string of somewhat barely coherent indictments of right wing thought with lines like: Wanna tar and lynch the KKK, wanna pull and shoot the NRA.

Lots of laughs.

My brother had me listen to these songs, bought me some new clothes, and then he bought me some cds later on: Lagwagon’s album Hoss, the Violent Femmes self-titled disc (not exactly hardcore, but perfect for an angsty teen), and the NOFX cd Punk in Drublic (I had already bought So Long and Thanks for all the Shoes, my first punk cd ever).

I was the only person in the Anaconda High class of ’03 listening to these bands in 1998, and one of only a few in town. That gave me an identity, something I could say made me different. When the football team gave my flabby little ass crap, I’d go home and blare these records and know that while maybe I couldn’t run fast, I was still something damn cool – an individual.

In 2000 the Van’s Warped Tour came through Montana stopping one day only in Bozeman. The big headliner: NOFX. My little chubby heart filled with glee, or a plaque clog, it’s hard to know at that age.

I got tickets and went with a few friends. We had a blast. I got into a pit, punching, pushing, kicking, jumping, and loving every minute of it. It was amazing. We went to the Warped Tour the next two years as well. Same results: awesome time.

But now to come back to the present…

When I saw the ad today for NOFX I remembered my blue hair, green hair, spiked bracelets, Fat Wreck Chords hoodie, chained wallet, studded jacket, and “eat shit” attitude. I remembered flipping off the football players and then wagging my sizable backside at them while they yelled homophobic slurs and such. And then it hit me: I’m 23 and I’m not fighting the football team anymore. I haven’t even listened to a NOFX song in about three years. I think I threw my Fat Wreck hoodie out a few years ago. The spikes? I gave those to the drummer of my short lived punk band “Suburban Excursion” (we named it as such because we thought the two SUV names were funny…plus it sounded cool when shortened to Sub-X).

I’m not that kid anymore. I don’t get that angry.

I’m…I’m…Oh god – I’m lame!

I listen to indie bands. I drink coffee. I write a blog and alt-weekly news. I’m not some angry little punk kid trying to figure out a way to leave Anaconda…I did.

Suddenly I felt old when I looked at that ad. I realized that part of me was gone into that great abyss of “when I was your age.” I shivered in my seat a little and wondered seriously for a few minutes if the little punk inside of me missed those days of wigging out and going violent. Does he? Probably, but that kid was kind of a little jerk, and all pent up as well.

I can still turn up the overdrive on my amp, blast out a track from Hüsker Dü, or…sigh… the Decemberists. And the worst part is that I’m okay with it. I think it’s all right to be different than when I was 16. In fact, it’s pretty much essential.

As for love and loneliness on Valentine’s Day? Phht! Who gives a damn? The whole holiday is kind of a sham anyway…and besides, the little punk in me doesn’t care about it all that much, and sometimes he’s still worth listening to.