I'm Just A Teenage Dirtbag Redoux

I just finished reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, not my usual type of read, but I like to keep an open mind. The truth is, the book was just something I pulled off the library bookshelves in desperation while I waited for my "on holds" to turn up. I was aware of all of the hoopla over these books when they came out, and nothing registered for me at the time. I had zero interest. I may have even been going through blood issues myself when the first book came out, or the movie, due to severe anemia (which has since disappeared,) but not before some nasty testing and treatment. If you want gore and pain, try a bone marrow biopsy, Stephenie.

I was surprised some Gothbag teen hadn't smeared his or her own blood over the pages of the book in some perverse allegiance. Someone did drop black ink all over the pages, so that it was like reading through brimstone.

Beelzebub Publishing -- A Bit Of Brimstone On Every Page

While reading the book, I had the unsettling feeling I was back in high school, and I'm guessing that's who's been reading these novels? But it sure wasn't my high school. My high school was rebellion and Rimbaud and Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild One and beat poets and George Groz and this one sofa at the Phillips Gallery where you could be tucked in away from the Van Gogh freaks and think about the use of orange in the Renoir "Luncheon of the Boating Party," or a midnight showing at the Biograph of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS and having my companion squirm at the maggot scene while I inched popcorn up his arm to mimic maggots, and when would I ever escape my parents and have my own life, but it sure wasn't about being a clumsy girl who needed rescuing or the living dead--unless you counted fifth period math or my biology teacher.

Probably the only thing I could connect with was that the vampires liked fast cars. And there's another song about escape for teens, Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car." I used to see her busking in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Harvard Square. Now that I can identify with. As for escapism....on the days when they had footballs games after school, I would climb through that fifth period math class window and leave the school grounds early. A ticket to football was my ticket to freedom. I didn't need the wings of the living dead to get me out of there. I did it on my own.