Laurie is going. Kari is going. Mike and Shaun are going. Basically, everyone is going — everyone except for me. And it’s too late now. The show is sold out and I’m not about to hang around outside the night of the show and try to find some scalper to sell me a single ticket for a shitty seat for a trillion dollars.
I’m sitting in the little room thinking about all the ways this is not fair. Everyone else gets to go. It’s in the summer, so it’s not like there’s school the next day and officially I’ll sort of be in high school already since junior high is over next month. There is no reason my parents can give me that makes any sense. They didn’t even give me a reason — not really. They just said no and that they weren’t “comfortable” allowing me to go to the concert.
I think they’re prejudiced against Billy Idol. If it had been anyone else they would have said yes. They just hate Billy Idol. It’s like it’s personal. Ever since I got that first cassette they’ve had a problem with him. They don’t like his hair, they don’t like his clothes, they think he’s always sneering. If they knew anything they’d know that he’s actually really cute when he smiles and it’s not about his hair or this clothes — it’s about the music. I’ve been listening to him since he was in Generation X and they know it. Parents are evil.
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Image: Billy Idol, photographed by Alan Kaplan for Seventeen magazine, May 1984.
Welcome to the Little Room is a series of 250-word re-imagined vignettes from my ’80s youth with a focus on music and style. It appears weekly on periodicult.com.
