As I bid fond
adieu to the status that came to, in some ways, define who I was for the last year and a half, it's time for some retrospection.
I liked being jailbait. It was fun. It was an easy out to shrug off
lecherous advances, and though it prevented some relationships that I would have liked to pursued, the balance comes out in its favor.
What was it? It was having
a man come up to me and ask if the 'terrible news' he'd just received was true, was I really as young as
that guy over there had just told him I was? It was always having to leave
Cafe Coco at 11:45 so as to get home by the
Metro Nashville Davidson County curfew of midnight. It was
Natalie Portman in
the Professional and
Jodie Foster in
Taxi Driver and a
Catholic Schoolgirl Uniform whenever I felt like it. It was never being able to go to
the Underground or
the Voodoo Lounge with my friends, and going to
Love Circle to watch the street lights instead. It's asking other people to buy my cigarettes for me. It was going to a
noder gathering after
senior prom. It's being dubbed "
The Official Piece of Jailbait" and having it stick. It's being pulled over and harassed by the cops for 45 minutes after
Rocky Horror Picture Show, until friends come and rescue me. It's feeling intellectually, emotionally, and in all ways superior to the people of
your generation.
It's the goods and the bads and the in betweens.
Most of the time, it had
very little to do with sex, and very much to do with trying to be an adult before I graduated from high school.