Now that Punk was becoming “trendy,” I started to lose interest.
All the people who used to put me down for being different were now kissing up to me. It was all so hypocritical. The kids who were now going to the clubs were the ones I was trying to get away from. They were following another trend. Their reasons for being a punk were not the same as my reasons.
I didn’t want to hang out with these individuals who would start a fight for no reason, yet acted like they were so cool. Besides that, my friends were changing, too. Things were getting depressing on the streets. A few committed suicide because they couldn’t see a way out of their misery. They were tired of not being understood, and they didn’t know how to deal with their alienation. These were teens, who, with the right people around them to turn to for advice, could have had a future.
Instead, they ended it all.

My Generation by The Who played endlessly in my brain. “Hope I die before I get old.” One kid, Jimmy, was so ready to rid himself of the pain that he sat in his parents’ car in the garage with the motor going, inhaling fumes until he could no longer breathe. He was dead by the time his mom found him the next morning. The thing is, Jimmy wouldn’t have hurt a fly so the fact that he was able to kill himself showed how desperate he was.

I also lost several buddies to Aids. Many people died in the eighties and nineties when they should have been spared. These were young, beautiful boys that fought a war they couldn’t win. They were just born in the wrong era. Sadly, they wasted away like filth with a label over their heads.

I knew I had to escape when I bumped into some friends that I hadn’t seen in a while on Sunset Boulevard by the Whisky a go go. Their appearance told me things were not right. Lynn, another Valley girl like me, was one of those super sweet type of girls, but here, something was amiss. She was high on drugs and could barely communicate. Lynn was dating Greg who was also a friend of mine. When I walked up to them, they were half gone.

“Hi, guys. What’s happening? Are you going into the club?”
They just peered up at me from where they were sitting on the filthy sidewalk and couldn’t look me in the eye. I didn’t walk away. I stayed and hung out with them until Greg finally answered.

“Nah, we’re broke. Do you have money for food? I could see they were desperate. They had never asked me for a dime before, so I knew they were hard up. As Lynn pulled her hair into a ponytail, I saw track marks running up and down her tattered arms. She was a sad sight. I had no idea how to react as I hadn’t known these two were shooting drugs. They must have gotten involved with the wrong people.

I mean, I played around with pills on occasion, took a drink here and there, but putting a needle into my body was never in the cards. I must have looked disappointed in them, because the two made up stories why they had to leave and moved away as quickly as they could.

Not too many weeks later, I heard Lynn had overdosed. Greg was luckier. He got out with his life whereas Lynn didn’t. The drugs killed her. Greg entered Rehab, and I haven’t seen or talked to him since.
This was all too real.
Things were not supposed to end like this. This was meant to be fun. Good times.
The scene was coming to a close and if I wanted to have a life, a better life, I had to walk away.