I know you’ve all been baffled at how The PEN15 Club has seemingly gotten rid of any grammatical errors and confused references in its posts. But now I shall let you in on the secret: I haven’t posted anything in awhile, and Rob has aptly kept the boat afloat. So now that I’m back at the keyboard, you’ll have to excuse us as our collective prose returns to its previous levels.
But tonight, instead of the latest news criticism and Dakota Fanning joke, I’m going to try something a little bit different. I am going to tell you a story. A story about baby dykes and Freddie Mercury. Bear with me. I found it quaint.
This half of the P15 Club is located in Jamaica Plain, which is the bearded clambake capital of Massachusetts. What I mean by that is that there’s a lot of lez to go around. If you’ve never seen a Dunkin Donuts that makes almost its entire profit off of hazelnut ice coffee and cherry pie, you’ve never been to JP.
I was on the subway returning from a film (read: cruising in the Common) and I spotted something that is becoming more and more common in these parts: a baby dyke. You know who I’m talking about. She’s about 5′1“, 150lbs, striped polo shirt tightly tucked into her baggy jeans, buzz-cut hair, and two or three variations of the Livestrong bracelet on her wrists. She wears the smug look of gender superiority on her shiny face, and the tail end of an Ace bandage peeks out through her sleeve.
This particular baby dyke wore a baseball cap with the Queen logo emblazoned on it. Yes, that Queen. The Queen that rocked us, socked us, picked us up and dropped us. On her back was a rolling backpack the size of a mini fridge, but seemingly empty. And to top it off, our baby dyke – let’s call her, ummmm, Lisa – carried a Discman. You remember them, right? And if you’re in a metropolitan area, you still see them sometimes being carried by the ”alternative“ set in some bold act of defiance. No, fucktard. They’re not retro-chic. Get a fucking iPod. Loser.
About four stops into our journey, Lisa took a seat directly across from me, and hoisted the luggage from her back. She gingerly unzipped it and rustled around inside for a moment. Form my vantage point, I could clearly see that there was only one object in the giant backpack, which Lisa soon withdrew from its opening: a huge fucking case of CDs. You know; one of those books - two CDs tall and two wide.
That little Lisa lugged around a rolling backpack twice her size for the sole purpose of carrying her CD collection was nearly enough to make me hand over my iPod in an act of pity. Are you really that unsure which of the CDs in your entire collection you may want to listen to at any given moment that you must bring them all with you? Hell, is music that important to have with you if it means caddying 12lbs of media with you on the T? I would rather listen to the fat slut sitting next to me scream into her Nextel for 15 minutes than carry a bag that carries a book that carries my CDs with me on my commute.
But it gets better.
Lisa removed the CD that was in the Discman. Queen’s Greatest Hits. “Oh, what a coincidence,” I think to myself, noting her baseball cap again. “Or maybe she has a hat in her bag for each CD she has in her collection. Wouldn’t that be interesting.” I was waiting for her to put on her Indigo Girls hat (definitely not a baseball cap!), but that never happened. As she unzipped her CaseLogic book of CDs, I quickly learned that I had missed the obvious (and terrifying) solution to the conundrum: every single fucking CD in the giant book was a Queen CD!
Lisa flipped page after page in that big book of CDs, and unless my sharp eyes missed something, there was no other artist represented in her collection. Lisa’s lifestyle suddenly became very clear to me: She lives in someone’s attic. She has a collection of woven leather belts. And her severely-pitched ceilings are adorned with every Freddie Mercury poster in existence, and a few that she made by herself. She works as a food runner at PF Changs. And she fucking rocks out to Queen non-stop. This also explained why she didn’t have an iPod: Until the Queen special edition iPod is released, no iPod would be good enough for her cargo pockets, by god.
Within moments, a new CD had been selected (Queens Greatest Hits IV), and the book disappeared back into her bag. She whisked herself off the train before I had an opportunity to snap a picture with my cellphone. In my head, I pleaded, “Oh baby. Can’t do this to me baby. Just gotta get out. Just gotta get right out of here.”
Lisa, friend. Here’s to you. Your story on a blog for tens upon dozens of people to read. You don’t even care that Queen is too dorky to even be “cool-dorky.” It doesn’t bother you that you might just like the Goo Goo Dolls if you ever gave ‘em a chance. No. You’re kickin’ our can all over place and proud of it. Rock on.
Someone really should give her an iPod just to play with for a few minutes. I was all “:rolleyes: iPods” until I actually tried one and now I have a 60 gig 5th gen. I don’t understand how people can live without one.
Wow, that was long, but decent writing, I really felt like I could see “Lisa” and hear Queen. What causes people to focus so intensely on one thing to the point of pursuing questionable behavior like carrying Queen with you everywhere? “If mommy and daddy won’t love me then Queen can fill that void,” or something like that heh. She must have big balls though; making a conscious choice to be uncool to the point of alienation is about one of the coolest things anyone can do of course. I knew girls like that in high school, they would walk in the baggy pants, and they couldn’t have weighed maybe 95lbs, so fragile but definitely tied down to the whole teen angst thing, a sick cry for attention/help. How old do you think Lisa was? Around 18 or more towards 22? The more act they put on, the more desperate er uh.. cool it seems.
I wouldn’t have put her any younger than 22, even though she looked like a 12 year old boy. And I don’t think any of it was an act for her. I really came to feel like that was just…. her.
Jesus, you’re scaring me - I already miss Cambridge.
that is such a well-observed and touching story; nice~!
thank you.
fat bottomed girls.
fat bottomed girls.
I like this editorial decision. I’ve been wondering lately why so much Internet is devoted to making fun of celebrities when there are so many more normal people in desperate need of being mocked. I’m not even being sarcastic. I’d love to read more cunty critiques of the unbearable people one sees on the street, bus, and train every day.
test
Test
Test
test
test
you have to admit she’s hardcore.
Well, I do not own an Ipod and will probably not get one any time soon. That said, I love baby dykes. I’ll be one when I grow up (I’m a gay male). And I think they’re hot. They have more personality (and balls) that all those Muscle Marys put together. Your rant comes across as vacuous (NOT everybody owns an Ipod or wants one, for that matter) and listening to CDs is the same than listening to your 2 Gigabytes of music in your little white sybol of dumbness. It’s that conformist, spoiled, up-to-the-minute attitude what makes lennings jump off cliffs. Bravo for te brave baby dyke. May three or four gay men follow so we are not all condemned to Aberzombied and Bitched comoformity.
Well, I do not own an Ipod and will probably not get one any time soon. That said, I love baby dykes. I’ll be one when I grow up (I’m a gay male). And I think they’re hot. They have more personality (and balls) that all those Ipoed Muscle Marys put together. Your rant comes across as vacuous (NOT everybody owns an Ipod or wants one, for that matter) and listening to CDs is the same than listening to your 2 Gigabytes of music in your little white sybol of dumbness. It’s that conformist, spoiled, up-to-the-minute attitude what makes lennings jump off cliffs. Bravo for te brave baby dyke. May three or four gay men follow so we are not all condemned to Aberzombied and Bitched comoformity.
Good for her! That’s too flippin cool….. you know damn well that there is no one else in the world quite like her. She’s found her favorite, stuck with it, and has apparently found it to stand the test of time. FUCK YEA, LISA. FUCK YEA. Don’t stop her now!
what is with the hate on ipods, here, anyway? its not a symbol for anything, its a useful and lightweight device that allows me to listen to “u got it bad” whenever i feel like it. instead of enduring 45 minutes of the sound of someone breathing down the back of my neck and bitchy hipsters yaking on their razrs, i listen to the npr 7 oclock news cast. instead of being alert and helping fellow commuters in distress and giving up my seat, i can pretend to be oblivious and continue reading the weekly dig while children are flung to the ground due to the bitterness and jarring braking of mbta employees. and why would you want to lug around a heavy, useless piece of crap that skips all the time? if convenience, obliviousness and pure sonic isolation aren’t worth $400, i don’t know what is.
and lisa rules. i would if she does the fandango?