"fucked without a kiss again..."

a call out of nowhere invites me to the screening of the new green day dvd. i jump at the chance! sure, it would be good to see tanya again-it had been a long time but mostly...I FUCKING LOVE GREEN DAY!

even before nirvana.

since i was 11 or 12 years old i have been a green day fan. that's HALF MY LIFE! for half my life i have loved this band. unabashedly and without embarassment. i'll cop to listening to matthew dear and green day without a hint of embarassment or any fucking irony!

god, it makes me so joyful! the fact that i see kids half my age discovering a band that just might do for them what they did for me. sure, they're a gigantic band now compared to who they were when i found them but it's still the same. it's still just three guys speaking up for the kids to scared to speak for themselves. it's still strength behind the headphones when you're walking down the hall avoiding everyone.

that's where it take me back to: those days when i'd go to school so afraid to be myself. so hidden behind looking and talking like everyone else. shit, i learnt to accept and embrace the parts of me that weren't like everyone else BECAUSE of punk rock. i know it's cheesy and i never wore bondage pants or had a mohawk but i still got it. i still get it.

green day led me to operation ivy, led me to rancid...a whole new world. (this isn't even scratching the surface of what nirvana did but that's a whole other story!)

so now i am 24. i saw green day live for the first time this year (i was grounded the last time they were here in '98) and it all came rushing back...i was 11, 12, 13, 14, 15...singing along to all EVERY SINGLE SONG remembering how good it felt to have that to come home to when someone at school called me fat or a freak or whatever...when my friends had boyfriends and i didn't...whatever, it felt soooooooooooo great!

tonight was no exception. the show used in the dvd was part of the same tour i'd seen and so i closed my eyes and i was back at that show, back feeling like i was 11, 12, 13, 14, 15...

i still feel fantastic right now!

last saturday i was walking down whyte ave and some fucking hick in town for the rodeo walks past me, looks me up and down, turns to his buddy and says, 'god, there ARE a lot of freaks on whyte ave.' without the world green day opened up for me i'd never have been able to be proud of the fact that some fucking hick called me a freak!