january 1999

S c h o o l i n ' Y a

It's now cold again in Missouri and I've busted out my flight jacket. Like so many other skins, my jacket sleeve has got several pins and patches on it. Various ska pins and a Vespa scooter pin and my united skins patch. It's a patch displaying a faceless skinhead holding many flags from different countries around the world. Am I a racist? Hell no. What kind of chump do you take me for?

Sure you've seen American X probably and that notorious Geraldo show episode where all hell breaks loose in the studio, but do you really get it? I mean, what are you people thinking when you see me walking down the street and minding my own business. It always cracks me up to see a whole group diverted to the other side of the street just because of one guy with his head shaved and braces down around his ass. Not those braces, fool, I'm talking suspenders. You know, they keep your pants up. What are they doing down around my ass? Heh heh.

Skins get a bad rap. It's perpetuated by the media constantly, using the words nazi and skinhead interchangably as if they were the same thing. Even Nightcharm's very own Brock grouped skinheads with the brownshirts and the KKK. I feel like such a broken record, but there are several different types of skinheads. S.H.A.R.P.s are skinheads against racial prejudice. They've been known to help out as security at lame-ass pride events. Reds are anarchist or communist skinheads. There are straight-edge (or sXe) skins that don't drink or drug up their bodies. I'm tired of this mass generalization! I'm just going to say this once, so listen up.

I'm not a racist. I never was and never will be. Skinheads are a youth subculture that dates back to England in the 1960's. They were and still are a working class movement. It has nothing to do with race and has everything to do with pride, having a laugh, and sticking up for your friends who stick by you. Neo-Nazis and White Power jack-offs appropriated it because 'skinhead' is a hard look. It has nothing to do with being queer, neither.

What about me then? Yeah, I'm queer. So fucking what? I learned a long time ago that Celine Dion, drag, and Genre magazine wasn't for me. Give me some of that old rocksteady ska, a couple of my pals, and I'm ready for a good time. I've got plenty of time for people who respect me for who and what I am, rather than some lispy, blithering faggot who can't hold his Zima. I hold no love for a 'gay community' that I see cut off its nose despite its face time and time again. When I was a punk, going out to meet young guys like myself, I'd encounter snobbery beyond belief. I joined social clubs, read with book groups, done marches, and came out of all of it shaking my head. What a bunch of petty, low-down sissies! How's that for a mass generalization? I rather blend in with a bunch of straight skinheads.

But don't skinheads hate fags? Yeah, most do, but not the ones I like to hang out with. It's a non-issue really. They know and could care less. And those that do know and take it personally, well I know their names too. My week isn't complete without an e-mail from some skinhead asshole who thinks he's more skin than yours truly because he's seen my personal webpage. One has to question why some straight boy is cruising queer skinhead sites.

So how much is fetishy posturing and how much is real? Well, let me put it this way, gay guys fetishize everything from inanimate objects to having only partners with red hair. So, if you think I'm wearing a flight jacket and big black, shiney boots because it makes my willy hard, that's your perogative. I'd be a liar to say that skinheads don't turn me on. I've never met anyone (that I'd be willing to fuck anyway) that fantasized about being ravished by a milktoast, GAP sweater-queen. I'm just being the guy I want to fuck. One thing is for sure, when it comes down to fighting time, I've got my eye on 3 things within arms length I can crack over your head.

If you are ever in Kansas City, want to take in a good band and have a couple of beers, e-mail me. If your looking for fag fun on a Friday night, go pick yourself up a bar rag and leave me out. I'm sure you'll find somebody to talk with about the upcoming Circuit Party at the twink bar.

all illustrations © 1998 by shane