Tag Archives: gen x

You Look Good Wearing My Future

Posted on

You wouldn’t necessarily think of Some Kind of Wonderful as an inspirational movie.

Not in the way you might think of Dead Poets Society, for example, or some other movie from our dearly departed childhood that was very clearly designed to make you feel like you should seize the day.

But lately I’ve been thinking about Some Kind of Wonderful.

Mary Stuart Masterson. Eric Stoltz. Lea Thompson. Elias Koteas (who’s name I have apparently spent my entire life being unsure how to pronounce, but who played Duncan, one of the greatest supporting characters in an ’80s movie).

But the reason I’ve been thinking about the movie isn’t really nostalgia.

It’s the ending. And it’s where we are right now.

I don’t know about you, but my algorithm is showing me a shit-ton of people in their 50s and 60s basically saying: “Fuck this. I’m out.” People getting fired from jobs they’ve had forever. Other people walking away from careers.

People realizing they don’t actually want to spend the rest of whatever time they have left doing the thing they’ve been doing simply because they’ve already spent thirty years doing it.

Some of them know exactly what they’re going to do next. A lot of them don’t.

And at this particular moment in history—and at this particular age—I find that fascinating.

So why Some Kind of Wonderful?

I’m not going to spoil the ending because I recently discovered there are somehow still Gen Xers who haven’t seen Pump Up the Volume, which means I’m no longer going to assume everybody our age has seen every movie I saw forty-seven times on HBO.

But I will give you the last line. At least, the last line as I remember it:

“You look good wearing my future.”

That line hits differently now. Because part of what Some Kind of Wonderful is about is a kid being told what he is supposed to do with his life.

What he’s supposed to want. What he’s supposed to do with his money. What constitutes a smart decision. What the next step is.

And Keith finally reaches this point where literally shouts:

“When does my life belong to me?”

I wonder how many of us are asking some version of that question again at fifty (plus).

Because we spent decades being told how things were supposed to work.

Be responsible, get the job, keep the job, buy the thing, save the money, climb the ladder, follow the rules. Eventually you’ll arrive at whatever “success” is supposed to look like.

Except demonstrably, for a whole lot of people, the system we were told would work does not work that way at all. The world seems to finally be waking up to this fact.

So maybe you reach a point where you say: Yeah. I’m going to make the quote-unquote dumb choice.

With my money. Or my job. With where I live, with what I create.

And I’m going to trust that somehow I’ll figure it out.

Now, we could have a whole debate about whether that’s smart or stupid or financially responsible or reckless or whatever. I am definitely not telling anybody to blow up their life because a John Hughes movie told them to.

If you are not in a safe place to make a gigantic life decision, don’t make one.

Seriously. My own family is getting ready to make some big fucking choices, and I am scared to fucking death.

But I also know this:

One day I am going to be dead.

And on my way out, if I think about the things I am most likely to regret, they are not going to be the things I tried that went badly.

They are the things I never tried at all.

The version of my life I never got to meet because I was waiting for somebody to tell me it was okay.

And suddenly:

You look good wearing my future.

You don’t have to drain your bank account and go buy diamond earrings or quit your job tomorrow morning.

But Gary Vee said something once that has stuck with me for years:

“You did not exist for a very long time. And you are going to not exist for even longer than that.”

Sit with that sometime. Seriously. Pour yourself a cup of tea or a beer or a glass of wine or whatever you drink and just sit with it.

Not in some grim, nihilistic way. Just as a fact.

You got this weird little window.

Go watch Some Kind of Wonderful. Enjoy the hell out of it. Let it take you back. Let yourself feel whatever it makes you feel as an Xer—or whatever generation you happen to belong to.

And then think about the thing you’ve been thinking about.

Really think about it.

I’m going to keep writing books. Pulp fiction for 90s kids, quasi-literary YA, all kinds of stuff. Because I don’t think I’ll regret it.

I write about teenagers. I write about monsters. I write about the years that made us.

Sometimes those are three different things. Sometimes they’re the same thing.

But I’ll keep doing it because they are stories about who we were, what happened to us, and what we became.

Often, with a hat-tip to stories like Some Kind of Wonderful.

You look good wearing my future.

Get on Your Bike and Vanish

Posted on

On Gen X childhood, the stories that make us feel seen, and why I’m still trying to write with the reckless freedom of a ten-year-old launching himself over a Schwinn.

There is a photograph of me as a ten-year-old boy jumping over my Schwinn banana-seat bike—or motorcycle, if you prefer.

And in this picture, the bike is perfectly in focus. It’s crisp, it’s clear, you can see the backyard around it. And then I’m just this blur leaping over the bike in my camouflage cargo pants, which my mom probably made for me.

I mean, it’s like straight out of an anime action thing. I’m just, you know, ready to go.

And that photo summarizes—or captures—how I like to write, and it summarizes and captures how I hope you’ll feel when you read my books.

Now, my books run through some different tones and genres and things like that. Sometimes it’s a melodramatic high school story. Sometimes it’s a little more lighthearted high school story. Sometimes it’s a very literary middle-grade sort of voice. Sometimes there are monsters, and sometimes there aren’t monsters, but people are fighting monsters internally and things like that.

But for the most part, I do still write about young people because I have such crystal-clear memories of—and fondness for—my own childhood, despite the horrific things that were also happening at that time.

(And there were horrific things happening. Make no mistake.)

And so when people of my generation talk about the things Gen X had in common as children, we’re not exaggerating. Like, take your favorite piece of season one of Stranger Things. That’s how it was.

And when people from younger cohorts are like, “You didn’t just leave the house and not come back until nighttime.”

Like, yeah. We did.

And then when you got into high school, you just left the house and fuck only knew when you were coming back.

Did my parents ever ask where I was going?

Maybe my mom might’ve asked where I was going. But no matter what I answered, it wasn’t going to stop me from going.

Like: “I’m probably going to Matt’s.”

“What’s going to happen at Matt’s?”

“I don’t know. We’re gonna make this shit up as we go.”

We’re gonna spend half the night at 7-Eleven in the parking lot bitching about the fact that we’re not doing anything.

And that was the point.

Just being there together and bitching about how we weren’t doing anything was a night well spent.

And yeah, we drank from the fucking hose. And yeah, when I was ten, eleven, twelve, I’d get on my bike and just vanish.

I know where I went. I know what I was doing. My parents didn’t know or fucking care.

That’s just how it was.

And I’m not gonna get into an argument or debate about whether that was good or bad, or if my generation was better than yours. That’s not a fight I’m interested in having.

It was just different. And these are just facts. This is how a lot of us grew up.

And if, in something I write, I can give you that sense of jumping over a bike, or getting on your bike and just vanishing for an hour or two hours or six hours or the whole day—if that’s what my stories make you feel—then I’ve done my job.

Because that’s all we’re looking for, really: those stories, those books, short stories, films, short films, theater, you name it, that give us that sense of being seen.

And I hope that when you read my stuff, you will feel seen and you will feel heard and understood and like, Yes. This guy gets it. This character gets it. This story gets it.

That’s what I’m after.

And I’ve noticed over the years—because I have written a lot of books; some of them haven’t even seen the light of day yet—but I have written a ton of books, and the ones people seem to respond to are the ones where I am jumping over that bike.

I’m just like, “Fuck it. Here we go, guys. Hang on.”

And off we go.

Now, is it for everybody? No.

I was thinking of my friend Bernie, who has helped me with some comic book work that I’ve done. (If you’re out there, Bernie, how’s it going, buddy?)

Bernie loves my novel Sick, which is a zombie novel set in high school. And yeah, he’s a big fan of Sick. And then there are other people who are like, “Ugh, Sick. No. I like Party or Zero,” or whatever the book may be.

Cool, man. I write a bunch of different stuff.

So everybody’s welcome.

Everybody. Is. Welcome.

Come on into the couch fort. Let’s climb up into the treehouse. Let’s get on our bikes together and go on an adventure and see where the day takes us.

Regardless of the genre, that’s the experience I want you to have.

For my monster books, I want you to feel like we’re sitting on the floor in front of the couch, slurping up Cap’n Crunch and watching World Beyond, watching Godzilla movies or Trilogy of Terror or whatever.

Or sometimes maybe it’s late at night and we really should probably be asleep, but our parents don’t give a shit, so we’re watching Elvira’s Movie Macabre and all that kind of stuff, man. Or USA Up All Night.

Remember those? I love that stuff, and I love capturing that.

I love the writing and I love the sharing, and I hope you’ll come along for some of that.

So if any of that resonates with you, I think you’re in the right place.

Let’s go get on our bikes, man.

See ya!

Never Abandon the Blissful Value of Saying What Can’t Be Said

Posted on

MIXTAPE

by Tom Leveen

(c) 2022

 

A mixtape says the things you can’t. Or won’t.

Or sometimes: shouldn’t.

Mikey fretted over this daily as he sorted through song after song, classics and new hits, trying to compose his feelings with someone else’s music.

Some of it depended on his mood. Some days it was all AC/DC, which he knew Glorietta liked from back in the day. But this wasn’t the sort of situation where one could blithely record Highway to Hell onto the mix, even if it was one of her favorites. The title was just too . . . inappropriate.

He leavened today’s tape with some old R.E.M., thinking some of the lyrics of Driver 8 said a lot of what he wished to say: take a break, we’ve been on this trip too long.

He’d never say that to her. Even if he could muster up the courage and, hell, write the words down, they still wouldn’t come out right. He had way too much experience with that. Glorietta deserved his best.

Nirvana next? No, too abrasive. Poison? No, a power ballad didn’t work either, not today.

Checking the time—he did not want to be late, so as to maximize their time together—Mikey hurriedly chose some Midnight Oil, followed by U2. Classic stuff. Despite not the world’s biggest U2 fan, in his opinion, The Joshua Tree was one of the top great albums ever made.

Minutes ticked away as he painstakingly constructed the opus. He didn’t have a title for it yet; previous incarnations included A Fragile Flash of Lightning, riffing off Pink Floyd’s Delicate Sound of Thunder. Glorietta—she preferred “Glory”—had given him a brief laugh for that, which Mikey cherished. Last week he’d gone full metal-head, nothing but Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, Skid Row, Queensrÿche, Flotsam and Jetsam . . . and called it Wish You Were Hair, bemoaning that he’d lost his own long locks some time ago and still feeling pretty pouty and petty about it.

Petty! Of course.

Wildflowers became the last song on side B. Glory belonged among the wildflowers, most definitely.

Mikey hesitated as he scrawled the song title on the lined white insert. Did Wildflowers imply too much? That he, Mikey, should be her lover?

No, he decided. Most of the lyrics seemed very pointed at wishing the best for the other person. If that happened to come from a place of pure love and affection and . . . okay, fine, lust . . . Glory wouldn’t be any the wiser.

He hoped. God, the last thing she needed right now his sappy confession of love. No way, man.

Mikey snapped the cassette into its case and ran for his bike. If he pedaled hard, he’d get there just in time.

He got to the hospital one minute after Glory’s visiting hours began. A little breathless, he peeked into her room to see if she was awake.

She was. Barely. The TV was on. Family Ties.

“Hey,” Mikey whispered, still peering around the open door, not wanting to come in without Glory’s permission.

“Hey, you,” Glorietta said, and motioned with her fingers.

It was all the strength she had, and it was all the invitation Mikey needed. He slid into the room and went to the side of the wide bed, where he slipped the case into her hand.

“I, uh, I made . . . I made this . . . um . . . it’s, it’s a new—”

Even in her emaciated state, Glory’s smile lit his insides on fire.

“You know, Michael, one of these days . . .” She had to pause to take a breath. “You’re gonna have to bring a Walkman. Remember those?” Another pause. “Or you could just send me a Spotify list.”

He shook his head. “Not the same.”

“No,” Glory said. “It’s really not. You’re right.”

She lifted the tape to her face, squinting. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Christ, Michael, you’re fifty-five years old, you better get on it.”

Glory smiled again as Mikey shuffled his feet. He wanted to say, “I did. I did find what I was looking for. Forty-five years ago when you moved in next door.”

But he couldn’t, and wouldn’t.

And, probably, oughtn’t.

All these years, nothing but friends. Through her various boyfriends, her first husband, her divorce, her second husband, him leaving her. Never having kids, career like a pinball in one of the old machines they used to play back in the neighborhood growing up. Then finally, this illness. He’d been the best friend he could. So he came every day with a new tape, and he’d keep coming until the inevitable end.

It was nearer than he cared to think about.

Glory gently put the cassette on a nearby table with several others Mikey’d brought over the past couple weeks. He almost helped her do it, her gesture was so weak. But he knew her stubbornness well. She would have given him a raft of shit for helping.

After the tape clattered mildly against the table top, Glory then stretched out her hand toward him.

“Michael.”

Perplexed, he took her hand. She was so cold.

“You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“Yeah, but, I . . . I mean, I do, I want to, I like to . . . unless you want me to stop.”

Glory shook her head weakly against the pillow. “No. Don’t do that. I’m just saying.” A pause. “You have a life. You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

Mikey licked his lips, eyes darting. The words were right there, he could taste them in his mouth.

They wouldn’t come.

In a burst, Mikey snatched the new mixtape off the table and popped open the tiny radio-cassette player he’d brought on his first visit. He jammed the tape inside, slapped the tray shut, and pressed the play button.

Freddie Mercury said what he couldn’t. Mikey glanced at Glory, to see if she understood.

Glorietta pressed her lips together.

“Yeah,” she said quietly as the song played. “You’re mine, too.”

Mikey smiled, pulled a plastic molded chair to her bed, and sat down. Glory offered her hand again, and he took it.

She fell asleep an hour later in the middle of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Mikey stayed by her side until visiting hours were over.

He’d come back tomorrow. Maybe with some Beastie Boys.

 

THE END