When you’re fifty fucking years old, you are officially out of fucks to give.
At least, I fucking am.
Move the fuck on.
And play this fucking song as loud as you can fucking stand it, because I’m regressing to my teenage dreams in a teenage circus… and if you stick around these parts you’re gonna get something on yourself.
TEENAGE DREAMS IN A TEENAGE CIRCUS
RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CLOWN ON PURPOSE
WHO GIVES A DAMN ABOUT THE FAMILY YOU COME FROM?
NO GIVING UP WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND YOU WANT SOME
RUNNING AROUND AGAIN… RUNNING AROUND AGAIN
RUNNING FROM RUNNING…
WAKING UP IN THE MIDDAY SUN
WHAT’S TO LIVE FOR WHEN YOU COULD SEE WHAT I’VE DONE?
STAYING OUT OF MOTION IN THE LIGHT OF DAY
I WAS HIDING FROM THE THINGS THAT YOU’D SAY
So many f-words, so much vulgarity. Reminds me of a time I was on the bus coming home from religion class of all places. (That’s what comes when you try to make kids religious.) I was in the back of the bus being bad, swearing my ass off with every dirty abominable word I could think of to say out loud and shock my religious classmates after our extra-long Tuesday afternoons when all the non-religious kids got to home early but those of us godly idiots had to go to the run-down Catholic school and pretend to pray and other shit. A lovely nun named Sister Agnes taught us (lovely in spirit, not in the dark bags beneath her eyes). We didn’t buy half of it, we didn’t believe, and behind her back we were atrocious to one another. The furthest thing from whatever goodness they were trying to instill.
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN
I remember the kids listening to me as I swore – one fuck right after another fuck, and maybe even a c-word slipped in at such a young age. It thrilled me to appall them; even the older kids seemed impressed or horrified, and I would spend the rest of my life confusing the two.
I WAS A BOY AT AN OPEN DOOR, WHY ARE YOU STARING?
DO YOU STIL THINK THAT YOU KNOW?
LOOKING FOR TREASURE IN THE THINGS THAT YOU THREW
LIKE A MAGPIE I LIVE FOR GLITTER NOT YOU
Even then, I understood that I would be the one brave enough to say the things we shouldn’t say out loud. That I would be the one to bear the brunt of childish hubris, the one to burn up from flying too close to the sun. I knew it was my destiny to fall. Lucifer whispered sweet seduction in my boyhood ears, and I listened; dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight to a song like this would become my habit.
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN
TEENAGE DREAMS IN A TEENAGE CIRCUS
RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CLOWN ON PURPOSE
WHO GIVES A DAMN ABOUT THE FAMILY YOU COME FROM?
NO GIVING UP WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG AND YOU WANT SOME
As we neared the end of the bus ride, I realized that my voice was the lone voice that was carrying to the front. All my bravado, all my evil words, all my brazen audacity – how much had reached the bus driver’s ears? As we squeaked to a stop and filed out, I suddenly panicked at the idea that the driver had heard what I was so foolishly screaming. I left a healthy length between myself and the kid ahead of me, so that I could rush past the driver in the event that they tried to scold me or say something. Even after I’d hurried by and stepped off the bus, I worried my actions would catch up with me, that a call would come in that night to my parents and I’d be belted for spewing such language from my lips. Religion class might have been working after all – the guilt was wreaking havoc with my head, fucking up any possibility of a carefree childhood.
NOW I’M SITTING ALONE AND I’M LOOKING AROUND
LEFT HERE ON MY OWN, I’M GONNA HURT MYSELF
MAYBE LOSING MY MIND, I’M STILL WONDERING WHY
I HAD TO LET THE WORLD, LET IT BLEED ME DRY
No call came into the house that night. And the next Tuesday afternoon after we finished another religion class, I heard my mouth release another torrent of bad words in the back of the bus, and watched some of the kids again thrill at what they would never have the courage to say or do. I worried a little again at whether the bus driver would finally hear or notice, but again no call came in, no comeuppance. And then all I felt was empty.
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE, WE ARE
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE, WE ARE
WE ARE NOT WHAT YOU THINK WE ARE
WE ARE GOLDEN, WE ARE GOLDEN…
