Punk Gen-er-ation
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Sorry, the '60s opened with me in diapers and ended with me transformed into an avid collector of Monkees bubble gum cards. Sure, I listened to the Beatles. My sisters and I turned the transistor radio up loud and rocked until nap time.
Groovy. As for protests, the closest I came was the third-grade play. My dead-on impersonation of President Lyndon Johnson got me the role of a lifetime�the commander and chief who died of air pollution. Ah choo.
A member of Generation X? Those born in 1961 and later? I think not, dude. Douglas Copeland, the author who popularized this most annoying of terms, may be about my age, but just mentioning a transistor radio
should disqualify me. That and not having a tatoo or a pierced nipple. And Xers did the unforgivable by glorifying the '60s, Boy George and disco (though they had to dub it "trash disco" to qualify it as kitsch). My recent experience with a member of the angst-ridden group of twentysomethings should close the case.
Here's the scene: I had a need only she could fill. Thirty minutes after phoning her, she knocked on my door. I welcomed her supple frame into my humble abode. God, she smelled spicy. Her eyes lit up as she spied the high-tech electronic gear in my living room. It was clear I had her attention.
I waited for the adoration to flow from her lips. "A turntable?," she squeaked. "You have records? Cool. I've read about those." I was afraid she might report me to the MTV police, so I quickly ended our discussion. I gave her cash, took the pizza from her nubile hands and drowned my sorrow in pepperoni.
So, if I'm not a Boomer and not a Buster, what am I? This is the question that perplexes those of us caught in that hazy line between two generations of bell-bottoms wearers. Oh, we hide it well. Those of us who made it into corporate America with only nicks and bruises claim to be cash-hungry Baby Boomers and try to look enthusiastic when those Woodstock and Vietnam tales come up again and again ("Charlie let off a blast that tore my sergeant's head off. We just loaded up the bong again and grooved"). The hazy-liners who got caught in the crunch of tough economic times�recent studies show that all of the Boomers EXCEPT those on the tail end of the generation are doing just fine financially, thank you�have learned to love grunge and have tried to hide the fact that those trendy flannel shirts we're wearing have been in the backs of our closets (where the button-downs are now) since high school. We pretend to welcome the disco revival and don't admit we
only tolerated it the first time to get laid.
We've been living a lie, and it's time to come clean. We're not Baby Boomers and we're not Generation X. To both of you we have this to say: Jim Morrison bores us. We refuse to wear Birkenstock sandals. Eating a hamburger and fries occasionally is not a mortal sin. Your two generations combined gave us political correctness and Neil Young. Take it all; we're fed up.
My generation's problem is a lack of definition. We contain traits from both of our better-publicized cousins, but we are different. If music defines a generation, then call us the Wavers or the Punks. We came of age in the late '70s and early '80s listening to the Sex Pistols, Devo, Talking Heads, B-52s, Elvis Costello, Ramones, etc. Austin Punks still long for the days when the Huns, the Standing Waves and the Skunks drove us to a pogoing frenzy at Raul's and Club Foot. We took from our era's music an attitude, a swagger that said "authority sucks, but just a little."
The Kennedy assassination (sorry, I don't remember where I was then, probably getting potty trained) defined the Boomer youth; Xers' adolescence was indelibly marked by Reagan's colon surgery. Punks were weened on Nixon and Watergate. Think about it.
Punks were sexually promiscuous before AIDS hit, then we calmed down and kept our mouths shut. We have no problem with the concept of making money, after all, most of us voted for Reagan (we were drunk at the time). But we want more meaning from life than a 40-hour-a-week grind can provide. We waited, and some still are waiting, to get married out of a fear of repeating our parents' failures. We are artists and stock brokers. We're probably a lot more liberal or a little more conservative than you imagine us.