The Youths (Kulture)

I had just turned eighteen. But I was deep in my Eurotrash (that word is simply not global enough) phase, in its imprecise, gooey center, really. In school outside of Boston, I frequented a handful of clubs near that city's Chinatown (Aria, Venu, pron. Venue [which became Rumor, where Paris is pictured above], Whiskey Bar, and Pravda) with my new best friends, a girl from Warsaw who was fresh from Le Rosey and a boy from Palm Beach via Caracas (from which his powerful familia fled when ousted by the populist Chavez). The Swiss boarding school and South American politico connections brought us into contact with a constant stream of Dior-eyewear-sporting Turks and Indians and Colombians and Russians and Mexicans and Saudis and Koreans and indeterminate Middle-Europeans (I suppose you call those Swiss?).

My weekends had an architecture especially formed for nightlife. When I wasn't dancing or sleeping or brunching at Armani Cafe (such shames), I was at Copley Plaza or along Newbury Street buying new get-ups--bags and bags of mini minis and premium denims and plunging little tops and throwaway stilettos and synthetic fabric dresses and giant earrings and clutches in various skins and truly stupid pink and red underthings.

When we two girls, one blond and one brunette, had grabbed prime spots, atop platforms, lifted from the fray in order to perform beneath the lights, to sometimes jump up and down to climactic stretches of electro symphony, I felt as if the ecstatic music was made to celebrate us and and keep us company. And by us, I meant: youths.

The old axiom, "youth is wasted on the young" may well be true, but as a youth, I was always terribly aware of my own little powers and freedoms. As I was easy with time and money and people, I was ever ever winkingly, gigglingly, jumping-up-and-downedly pleased with myself (you know, whenever I wasn't listening to The Velvet Underground and weeping or checking into mental hospitals). And every now and then, these Euros would bring their parents. Bring their parents to the club. I understand that "over there" people don't consider aging such a punishment as we do, and I'm sure that's quite proper and healthy. But a great deal of that smugness in my own youth was to do with how fleeting I assumed it would (or ought to?) be, my American-ness I suppose, my Puritan-feelings (those I thought I was too semitic to feel), the notion that I was doing something wrong in the absence of my parents and some future "adult" seriousness. These dancing, shot-taking parents alarmed me (in no small part because they were wholly unlike the wholesome academics what borned me).

I would soon move on from that Euro stuff in Boston to more exclusive addresses in la Nueva, shedding the costumes and customs of others for clothes and conversations far more like myself. This was only a svelter, stronger stab at youth-ness. At 19 and 20, I was even more certain that I was experiencing/making something finite, dancing and drugging and loving and squealing and paining like I rarely would again, pitying the old scenesters all about me. I would never be them, them that kept company with kids in order to feel relevant. And of course, at 21, back in Memphis, an art student, I self-fulfilled that prophecy. A few days after my great legalization, I stopped. I stopped smoking cigarettes (or buying them at least—sorry all); I stopped taking cocaine (mostly); I stopped talking to a few people; I stopped demanding of myself that I have some wild social life. I focused more heartily on my work and my true friends and my mornings and my maudlin hometown.

And sometimes I wonder if any of it was right. I think, at 23, I'm far too "young" to feel so removed, "old," so like a fried, sleepy hippie. I see agemates still chasing the proverbial dragon (opiates and attention), a few because they're addicts and a few because they have not yet had such a dumb, bright and explosive time as I used to (I guess). Should I let myself feel that callow youth-ness again? Or, was it always a rather unworthy pursuit? There's the rub. You see, this narcissistic rambling was all due to a song, an album really—Passion Pit's (oh the name!) Chunk of Change, six tracks and a remix. They're not the first clever techno outfit that has made me want to dance and sing and generally revel. But as I walked up Park Avenue this morning listening to this stuff, I was full of such a jarring mixture of joy and regret. Joy at the noise, regret at the ebbing feeling, the feeling that the noise was not made to "celebrate us" so much anymore. Listen friends and tell me what you think of them and this aging psychosis. Love.