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1999

Greek Week was some UPenn/Drexel shit where all the frat dudes decorated their houses and had competing events to see who could throw the best frat house party. It’s massively lame and it provided distraction for our generally derelict activities. We went to steal shit from their bedrooms, start static, and try, with little success, to mack on their girls. We’d somehow beat the admission price, through manipulation or bum rush, and get in squad deep.

There was one night where we got straight up denied entry. Maybe frat dudes talk to each other:

“hey frat bro all these uncool dudes keep getting into our awesome parties and stealing our totally rad shit. Look out.”

So anyway…

They wouldn’t let us in. The house had a porch and a bunch of jocks came out to defend their manor from it.

“You guys are not wanted here, bros only.”

Jesse and me went down the alley next to the house and found a pile of old wet, moldy books. They had a fenced in backyard filled with partiers. We started tossing books over the fence into the crowd.

“You college nerds like to read right?!”

The wet books thumped down on them. Post teenage kicks in the night.

We went to the college WaWa to steal eggs to throw at the house. I remember looking at a newspaper cover. All the faces of the kids killed at Columbine. Yearbook photos. This mass killing shit was new. I didn’t really know what to make of it.

I hated jocks. I really did. They were part of suburban america’s crushing homogeneity machine. As a whole they beat up or tried to beat up anyone different from them. Skateboarder, punk, skin, goth, gay, nerd, whatever. If you weren’t like them they wanted to crush you until you were like them or you were gone. It was the theme of the late 80’s and early 90’s.

As a different kid I had to fight and after a while I liked to fight. I saw beating up jocks or guidos as some kind of reparation for all the damage they did to so many other different kids. I looked for it. I did not want them to die, I just wanted to punch them in the face.

I assumed the gothy video gamer types that shot up that school were just bullied pussies that never learned to fight back. I saw not fighting back as some frail punk thing to do. Skins and hardcore kids fought, punks and goths got the shit kicked out of them and cried about it while getting shitfaced. They bragged about getting beat up. Nothing I saw from jocks was as scary as the violence I was seeing at hardcore shows. So the fear for me was long gone.

We went back to the house and threw a few dozen stolen eggs at it. Some jocks came out to fight us. Esher took off his shirt and the jocks got scared into a standoff. Someone called the cops from inside the house and we scattered when they showed up. Some of our squad went into the trolley tunnels, others just blended into the neighborhood. The night ended as a non-event.

That was all 20 years ago. The events of the night don’t really stick with me, there were many similar nights, and the details are blurry. I remember the newspaper cover under those fluorescent convenience store lights. That sticks with me.

Today:

There’s another mass shooting. They happen every few weeks, every couple of months. Some kids killed and maimed by some piece of shit with a gun. The targets are mostly young. There’s politics, racism, sexism or hatred behind the shooters. I do not believe they are insane. They’ve had 20 years of normalcy added to their mass murder plot. They’ve seen no regulation or check on their radicalized weapons and hobbies. They believe we are at war. A social war. An undeclared civil war that they are fighting.

No one will stop it. Our politicians will bow to gun lobbyists. America just spirals down killing itself from within. There is no foreign army needed to invade us. The invaders are inside the gates. They thrive in the suburbs and the backwoods connected by social media. They view diversity, differentness and urbanity as the enemies flag and they are right. That is our flag. These are our people. Landlords is a crew. If there is a side to choose you know where we stand.

I don’t have an uplifting message at the end. I just remember looking at that newspaper cover and thinking

“What the fuck is this?”