Punk Love Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by L.J. Shen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial use permitted by copyright law.

  Resemblance to actual persons and things living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Books by L.J. Shen

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  “I can’t seem to face up to the facts

  I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax

  I can’t sleep ‘cause my bed’s on fire.”

  —Talking Heads, ‘Psycho Killer’.

  “Youth is wasted on the young.”

  —George Bernard Shaw

  Based on a true story. Names have been changed. This was previously published as a newsletter series. For more exclusive L.J. Shen content, please sign-up.

  If we start at the beginning, which I believe is the best way to start almost every story, we need to look at the context of the thing called My Life.

  This is all going to be very quick and very messy, so please just pretend it’s your first time having sex and lower your expectations. Spoiler alert: you are not going to find pleasure in this chapter. But, like your first time, it’s a rite of passage. So welcome in. It’s good to have you here. Your hair looks great.

  I would like to preface this novella by saying, this story is based on a true story, although some liberties were taken, and names were changed to protect the privacy of people.

  This story is also PG-13. I mean, I’m pretty sure I included a scene and a half of explicit sex, but nothing worth plugging your Magic Wand into its charger.

  Another thing I should note is that I wrote this novella at a time of existential artistic crisis, and it really helped me. I mean, it didn’t help me with what I wanted to do next in my career, and it was also a huge timewaster, but it helped me in a sense that it rekindled my love for the craft.

  So thank you, little novella, for being a pal.

  Yours,

  L.

  I was a bored teenager from a middle-class family. A straight A minus student. Quiet, observant, and moderately artistic. Not queen bee by any stretch of the imagination—and I mean, even when you reallyyyy stretched it—but popular enough to believe, or rather hope, that I would have a pleasant high school experience. After all, I was the best thing one can be—average. Not too pretty, but not ugly, either. Not a brainiac, but not a dumbass. Not an athlete, but I could get from point A to point B without stumbling over my own feet.

  It was perfectly expected that I would have a nice, boring high school experience.

  But that’s not what happened.

  One thing I knew even before I set foot in high school was that I wasn’t going to mesh well with the jocks.

  The outliers, the freaks, and the punks were way more interesting to me. Not only because most of them had artistic streaks, but because they listened to great bands, read books about philosophy, and had ideas. Bad ideas. Good ideas. But ideas that weren’t just limited to what to wear to prom or how many Skittles you could shove into your nostrils to win a bet.

  There was only one tiny problem—my high school didn’t get the memo that it was the early 2000s and didn’t have any freaks.

  None. Nada. Zilch. Gornisht.

  I lived in a small beach town filled with surfers, jocks, and more surfers. Those were the only three categories to choose from, and I didn’t fit in with any of them.

  It was a curse. To be the macabre, eyeliner-enthusiastic kid with the fishnets and black clothes when everyone around you wore Billabong and smelled of surfboard wax. The laid-back summer vibe of my town was a burden I had to carry like a mark of Cain.

  When I was a sophomore, my life changed. Finally—finally!—a punk rock kid moved into my neighborhood.

  He was a junior. Everyone knew he was in a band. Not just a band, but a band that once warmed up another band that was pretty big at the time. The rest of the band members were from a neighboring city. Punk Rock Kid had just moved to our beach town, and, to put it mildly, he wasn’t really happy about it. See, his parents got divorced and he had to descend from the rich suburbia Olympus to my town, which was more concrete jungle than manicured lawns.

  I was immediately fascinated with him.

  It didn’t matter to me that he had bad acne. That his lanky, pale posture made him look like a wrinkled bookmark, and that his eyes were too close together. It didn’t matter that he spoke with a voice too low, or that he was immediately picked on by all of the jocks, or that he seemed unnerved by everyone around him. He had a wry sense of humor, wore cool band shirts, and he was a self-proclaimed anarchist.

  An anarchist! What a great idea.

  Now, let me just say, even my fifteen-year-old ass knew that Anarchism, as a concept, sucked sweaty balls. But there was no denying that an anarchist friend sounded WAY more interesting than the same, cookie-cutting surfer dudebros I grew up with. My entire town smelled of brine, surfboard wax, and sunscreen. They all listened to Blink182 and Green Day and thought that if you didn’t wake up at five a.m. to catch waves, you were a loser.

  This guy, who wore everything black, was vegan, quoted Karl Marx, and was like an exotic bird to me.

  I had to talk to him. Failure at becoming his best friend was simply not an option. He was my ticket out of the mind-numbing bore that was this town. We were going to have great conversations and even greater time exchanging notes about new, cool indie bands.

  Now, here is something you should know about fifteen-year-old me: I still very much looked like a good girl who wore fishnets as some kind of a rebellious, cute statement. I had a really wholesome appearance. I was still very much torn about whether I was a punk rock chick or a normal girl who (tragically?) didn’t surf. The commitment to being a part of the freak crowd…well, it freaked me out.

  And so, aside from the fishnets, I wore the expected uniform of pastel miniskirts, fancy sneakers, tattoo chokers, and high-neck stripy shirts.

  At first, when I approached him, I thought Ryan for sure suspected I wanted to mock or taunt him. I could see his shoulders square as I bulldozed my way to him, swatting people from debate club like they were bothersome flies in the process. But then I showed him my sketchbook, and complimented him on his music (which I’d never heard) so he relaxed.

  To make a long story short, two months after the school year started, Ryan and I were practically besties. We talked about his music and veganism and about my sketches and aspirations of becoming a fashion designer (aspirations not even I believed in, mind you, but I needed a goal, right? The first thing they teach you at creative writing school is that a heroine needs a goal, an aim, a passion. Fashion design seemed like a safe bet. I couldn’t just be That Chick Who Doesn’t Know How to Surf).

  I was only half-listening whenever he talked about his bandmates. After all, this was pre-Facebook, and I had no indication whether they were hot or not, so why would I care?

  I did gather that there was Tom, the vocalist, who sounded like an ego-maniac, Daniel, the guitarist, and also the perpetual stoner, Ryan was the bass player, and then there was Alex, who was the dr
ummer. Ryan said very little about Alex, and none of it was good. Alex sounded like a real jerk, which, naturally, instantly piqued my interest.

  About three months after we became good friends, Ryan asked me if I wanted to hang out over the weekend. He didn’t ask if I wanted to watch Daria or MTV2 or hang out at the mall (PARTLY BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO PHYSICALLY ENTER MALLS. HE WAS THAT AGAINST CAPITALISM. TRUE FUCKING STORY, GUYS). He asked if I was interested in going to a semi-violent demonstration against force-feeding geese for foie gras.

  All I heard was “violent”, “dangerous”, and “illegal” and my adolescence brain immediately said—yes, please.

  By that stage, I was flirting with vegetarianism and wanted to learn more about the subject. My mother was horrified because I’m the most anemic person on planet Earth (80% sarcasm, 10% blood, 10% bullshit, she fondly says). But anyway, I said yes, and Ryan and I agreed that I would come over to his place and we’d take the bus together the evening of.

  Fast forward to The Day That Changed My Life.

  I arrived at Ryan’s place ten minutes early, the thirsty ideological bitch that I was. I still remember what I wore because I replayed that evening again and again and again in my head weeks after. A red kilt, dirty Chucks, and a cropped top. I said hi to his mom and petted his dog. We went into his room and I tried to push away the idea that his mom probably thinks we’re bumping uglies, because aw.

  That’s when Ryan said, “Oh, hey, and by the way, we don’t have to take the bus anymore. Alex will give us a ride. He should be here any minute. He’s a bit of an asshole so don’t mind him.”

  Famous. Last. Words. Y’all.

  “Cool. Whatever.” I nodded. I mean, Alex DID kind of scare me, just from listening to stories about him, but I’d never met him before, so it felt unfair to judge him based on what Ryan had said about him (all of which would make Lucifer’s mom proud).

  I did know that he was always happy to get into fistfights, always won, was rude to everyone around him, and was an only child of two elitist doctors who wished nothing more for him than to become a doctor, too.

  I also knew MY non-elitist parents were going to ground me well into my next decade for getting into a car with two seventeen-year-olds I barely knew, but considering we were heading to a fucking illegal demonstration, I didn’t think now was the time to grow a conscience. Or a working brain, for that matter.

  “I’m going to hop into the shower real quick. Feel free to start that sketch on my wall,” Ryan offered.

  Ah-ha. THAT sketch.

  Earlier that month, while we were both listening to Crass and Anti Flag during breaks, Ryan came up with the idea of my painting something elaborate on his wall. It was the first inkling I got that Ryan might be interested in exchanging more than ideologies and ideas with me. My “normal” friends told me he was for sure crushing on me hard, but I didn’t want to assume.

  He never made a move on me, and I made sure we always kept things super platonic, so I was safe, right?

  WRONG. But we’ll get to that in a second.

  So Ryan got into the shower, and I stood on his bed, barefoot, my back facing the door, and started outlining my sketch. I heard the front door open and shut in the distance, and knew that Alex must’ve made his grand entrance.

  I forced myself not to turn around or stop what I was doing. I was cool. Collected. A woman of many parts and virtues. I wasn’t going to stop what I was doing to acknowledge the almighty Alex.

  The door to Ryan’s room flung open. For a few seconds, everything was silent. I wasn’t even sure Alex was in the room. I kept working on my sketch, but my fingers quivered and the outline became wobbly, jagged.

  “And who the fuck are you?”

  That was his opening line. I kid you not.

  I didn’t turn around. Ryan’s words reverberated inside me.

  Alex is an asshole. Don’t pay any attention to him.

  “Name’s Lara.” I popped my gum without turning around. “Who the fuck are YOU?”

  Rather than answering me, he flung himself on the bed, shoes intact and everything, his head landing on the pillow. I gasped. Actually gasped. My seventeenth century girl sensitivities were shot. I was wearing a kilt, and he had a great angle to see my underwear. How dare he? And also—what underwear was I wearing, anyway? The cute ones, right? Gosh, I hoped so.

  Rather than jumping back, I scurried to the end of the bed and continued my sketch.

  It was a mural that was supposed to take over the entire wall, and I knew I screwed up the middle section and half-assed it just so I could scurry away from Alex. Or rather, the shadow of Alex, since I had yet to find the guts to look directly at him.

  The silence was so thick in the air I thought I was going to choke on it. The more we didn’t talk but shared a space, the more I wanted to cry and laugh simultaneously. And suddenly, I did remember ONE thing about Alex. I remembered Ryan telling me that Tom had a girlfriend, and that Daniel was fooling around with a few girls from his old school, and that Alex, and this is a quote: “Never had a girlfriend. Never will, too. I bet the bastard is still a virgin.”

  That gave me new confidence. Not that I wasn’t a virgin. I was more virginal than a really good, upscale Italian oil. But Alex’s lack of conquests robbed him of his superior shine.

  Finally, I chanced a look at him.

  He was reading a book. Hell if I noticed the title on the cover.

  Because Alex. Was. Fucking. Stunning.

  In a totally unpredictable way.

  I knew he was originally from Russia. That his parents moved here when he was eight. Honestly, though, it didn’t take much to see that he was not from here. He looked like a Viking in comparison to most people I knew.

  First of all, he was six three. I kid you not. And he was only seventeen at the time. Second, he had a shock of white-blond hair, buzzed on the sides, with a bun he obviously wrestled into a Mohawk whenever they had a gig. He wasn’t thin and lanky like all the other boys who tried to ask me out. He had broad shoulders, even though he didn’t look like he worked out, and huge hands. Huge everything, really. And although he wasn’t classically beautiful, everything about his face was alluring and sharp. Like he was one of my sketches.

  Suddenly I knew, I just KNEW, that Alex’s lack of conquests had nothing to do with his looks OR his attitude.

  He simply wasn’t the kiss and tell type.

  Alex cocked one eyebrow at me. “What?”

  I didn’t know what.

  I felt…unequipped. And for the first time, I realized what Boy Crazy meant. Because I suspected I could be very, very crazy for this boy.

  “Ryan said you’re an asshole,” I said flatly. I didn’t know what else to say.

  His face remained expressionless. “And?”

  “And he’s right.”

  He offered me half a nod, completely unmoved by what people thought of him. He flipped a page in the book. I got back to drawing. Or pretending to draw. A few seconds later, he asked, “You vegan, or just trend hopping?”

  I knew he was vegan.

  They were all vegan.

  Anarchist-vegan-punk-rockers who wrote for online fanzines and wanted to change the world in ways I frankly thought were insanely naive at best and dangerously delusional at worse. Although, at that point in time, I would forgive Alex had he started World War Three singlehandedly, in that very room.

  “Yeah,” I heard myself blurt out, rather haughtily. “Actually, I’m vegetarian, but I just stopped eating eggs and honey. So. Yeah. Vegan. Totally. That’s me.”

  I’d actually had an omelet that morning and still sneaked McNuggets whenever my dad brought McDonald’s home and I knew no one would catch me eating it, but whatever. I still did better than the rest of humanity.

  Alex was about to say something when Ryan pushed the door open. The hatred I felt toward Ryan at that moment shocked me. This was Ryan! My best friend!

  …and also the guy who just interrupted Alex and me.


  In the span of minutes, he became the odd one out, because I wanted nothing more than Alex’s approval.

  And words.

  And thoughts.

  I idly wondered, if we had kids, would they have my blue eyes and his blond hair? Or my brown hair and his hazel eyes? I really wanted them to have his eyes. Kind of hazel.

  “Hey,” Ryan said. “You met Lara.”

  Alex didn’t turn to face him. He was still looking at me. But not in the same way I suspected I was looking at him. He was intrigued, not starstruck. And also a little annoyed, I suspected. That he had to talk to people.

  “Yeah,” Alex said.

  Ryan began gelling his frizzy hair. “Leave her alone. She is not a groupie.”

  Even I knew Alex would take that as a challenge. And I didn’t know Alex at all.

  I could actually feel the moment Alex decided not to leave me alone precisely because Ryan wanted him to.

  That was the day I switched to veganism for a dude.

  Not knowing that in the upcoming weeks, months, years, I would look back and think…veganism is not even on the list of top fifty insane things I did for Alex.

  The three of us gathered our stuff (meaning the boys collected their backpacks and I shoved my tongue back into my mouth, because, as mentioned before, Alex was stunning), and we made our way out to Alex’s car to hit the road.

  And then, lo and behold, another surprise.

  Alex drove a Volvo.

  One of those super suburban, soccer-mom type SUVs you see in Most Safe Rides lists every year. So anti-punk, I was surprised the vehicle didn’t come with a complimentary #MomLife bumper sticker.

  The chuckle erupted from my body like a volcano. I couldn’t control it.

  “Shut up, or walk there.” Alex scowled at me, unlocking the car.

  Even the SUVs beep was feminine. I swear.

  This, of course, only made me laugh even harder. Alex whipped his head to Ryan, pointing at him with his index finger. “Tell your little friend here to shut up.”