still trying to throw off the shackles

of a repressed, middle-class, suburban childhood.

Met a kid the other day (late teens, early 20s? Can't tell any more, in my dotage :-) who was absolutely covered from head to foot in tattoos, had the hugest ear-piercings you've ever seen (you know, the kind that look painful, like you could throw a basketball through them?)

He was incredibly open about everything, blabbed non-stop about his fake/phony black rappa/gangsta 'accent' (which I poked a little indirect fun at him for since he looks, aside from the tattoos, like an average, middle-class white kid). He took the indirect comment at face value and said, "Yeah, people think I'm a phony. Even I think I sound phony. But I can't help it - it's what I grew up with, and I slip back into it when I get comfortable with people."

He also told me about what has to be the weirdest, most unbelievable phobia I've ever heard of: Fear of being a certain distance from home???!!?? WTF! I think he was messing with me. But, whatever. It made a good story :-)

I think I was impressed that, by his still obviously wet-behind-the-ears age, he seems to have already made some of the mistakes that most of us don't get to make until we're long out of the nest and have no one to rescue us any more. It's like, he's fucked up so bad and in so many ways that he bottomed out (or possibly, touched bottom?) in a way that seems to have really grounded him in his own sense of self - of who he is and what he wants from life.

I'm so freaking JEALOUS!!!! What I wouldn't give to have a Tom Sawyer phase, a phase where I'm that grubby, grimy little boy who gets to go everywhere and do anything just because I damn well please and because every man who sees me sees a little of himself as that boy, and gives him a hand along because he knows what it's like to be that boy.