Brenda Perlin April 5, 2022

Being different from my peers made me seem difficult and troubled. Family members talked about me when I wasn’t around, and I overheard them talking about me when I was around. It was obvious that I was evolving in a way they feared, but they didn’t understand it any more than I did. I just knew I wasn’t like everyone else. I say “everyone” because there weren’t that many punks around in the San Fernando Valley in 1979-1980. It was a fairly conservative place to come from.

In my early teens, I was drawing attention from the trendies in school, their parents, and the teachers in class. Every day was a battle zone with no particular war to fight. I had little interest in fitting in just to make friends.

I preferred reading and escaping into an unknown world where people wouldn’t be so superficial.

I dressed in vintage clothing or army surplus duds, “men’s attire” with cheeky makeup, spiky hair, and clunky shoes.

The days of feeling like an outcast started much earlier than in my teens. I can remember feeling discouraged in Girl Scouts because I wasn’t like the other members and didn’t want to talk about dull things such as cheerleading or hanging out at the mall to meet boys on the football team.

It wasn’t until I met a girl named Faith that I realized it was okay not to fit in. She was a year older, and our moms were friends from Chicago. I had been introduced to her much earlier, but I found her to be intimidating. By the time we met again, we were both into The Beatles and later into music from the UK. And that’s when everything started to make sense. A whole new world was opening up. Punk was a beautiful escape from the mundane and the vapid teens we went to school with. Punk gave us a direction to explore our options and be whoever we pleased at any given time.

Now (go fig) punk is considered “cool,” but it’s taken years and years for us to get this recognition and for bands to get any mainstream attention. And if you ask me, it’s well overdue.

RIP to the punks that didn’t live long enough to witness this kind of acceptance. We were an inclusive bunch. Everyone was welcome.