“I WANT LIFE!” The Comfort of the Black Sex Pistols Shirt

I was recently thinking about writing back here‐ in the gym one night, ear buds tuned to Tom Wilson podcasts and Pandora radio stations. 'I got to write something on my blog again', I said to myself and had little ideas drop here and there. But here is something I wrote last year that I now feel ready to share. It was mainly for myself and one of my cousins. I feel like posting it today because this morning I went for oral surgery‐ Got my #31 tooth taken out. Joe expressed his pure disdain for stuff like that, to have the human body mangled, distorted, or any body part removed in any way. I shrugged it off more and said that  I was glad to get rid of something that was unfortunately, infected and decaying in my mouth. This essay quotes and tips its (or my?) hat to John Lydon and his life‐affirming sentiments; and oddly enough, briefly mentions my annoying tooth problem in a line towards the end.

“I WANT LIFE!” The Comfort of the Black Sex Pistols Shirt

"I don’t care if both legs fall off and there’s only one eyeball left and I’m on a stomach pump and a colostomy bag, I want life!" -John Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols

I am not punk. I like its back to basic approach, its energy, the DIY of it, but it is not me in style. I’ve never been true punk, mall punk, goth punk, NY punk, skater punk, steampunk... I am none of these punks. My hair was never spiked, mohawked, nor colored in anything more outrageous than auburn highlights, though one time the auburn unintentionally turned a bright yellow. I was born the year “Never Mind the Bollocks…” album debuted and I am not a Sex Pistols fan per se.

But I saw “The Filth and the Fury” fifteen years ago at the Film Forum, by myself, as I sometimes do. Lydon struck me as highly intelligent and individualistic. And a goofball. Any of his interviews I came across online rubbed off on me in a good way. I saw what he was saying in this documentary where he really got to speak his truth and not walk out on interviews he felt were shoite or bollocks, as I've seen him do on YouTube.  

In the spring of '93, I got to go to my high school trip to London for one week. The first AbFab episode played in the airplane as well as jokes about “styewpid Americans”. I bought a Sex Pistols shirt there. It was black, long sleeved, and made of comfortable cotton. It had the words “sex” on one sleeve and “pistols” on the other. Splashes of colors throughout with a black and white photo of a shirtless Johnny Rotten in the middle, prominent, dominant, sensitive almost serene eyes. Maybe he was high, maybe not.

This shirt wasn’t a sexy, ripped Tee, there were no curse words, it didn’t glorify Sid and Nancy’s romance. Johnny Rotten's not screaming into the mic or giving anyone the finger. I'm trying to find the shirt on Google Images now, and I’ll know it when I see it. Sex Pistol onesies and bibs are up for sale, and it matches what Lydon once said about what “punk music” has become- it is not a revolution anymore, it is a label sectioned off in a music bin now. Dozens of other Sex Pistol shirt pictures come up, but not mine. If it did, I would tremble eureka inside. My early adolescence would tumble right back at the sight of it and I would be sure to click, save and file that image for posterity. I didn’t wear this shirt in a scene, or as a statement. It actually ended up as my pajamas. Just like the other shirt I bought in London, a Bob Marley one, another icon's music I didn’t really listen to until years later. It said Trenchtown Rock, and reds,  yellows, and greens were plastered throughout and a black and white picture of Marley with short dreads.

(Found this pic in 2019, years after posting this. I believe this was taken in Greenwich Village)

“Cool shirt! I haven’t seen that one before!” a guy told me one afternoon downtown as we passed each other by.

“It’s from London!” I happily called out.

My trip to London is one I will always cherish. But I possessed a kind of rescue syndrome then because of the church I became involved with for two years. I went there thinking I was going to get one of my fellow schoolmates closer to God, to teen Bible studies, to an early Sunday morning service in the Jacob Javitz Convention Center. I was encouraged by my mentors to make good. Instead, London blew me away, lathered me with loveliness and humbled me. And “tempted me”. None of my church crew around. The Piccadilly Circus, King’s Rd, Stratford-Upon-Avon, the British accents, the London Underground, the other HS group traveling with us from Pennsylvania, the boys who liked us, the boy whom I liked- my secret crush who never told me anything before, slightly buzzed, declaring, “Now those are LEGS!”

Dennis, a pretentious, young method actor, reducing himself to common lust after my pantyhose legs as they sat across from him in the lobby. My church kept me from flirting back. I would have otherwise. It might have been a clumsy flirt on my part but I would’ve tried.  I got to see everyone around me not as people needing to be saved, not in the slightest. I tapped into my agnostic self more, admitting that I really don’t know what is going on up there beyond the clouds or knowing which entity is really in charge… and that being… ok? And then in one week it was over. It was time to fly back to NYC. Back to the folks whom I allowed to shape my thinking and convictions.

Back home I came across a magazine article from “Sassy”. It was a story of a young woman who escaped “a cult”. The cult sounded an awful lot like my church. Its name wasn’t revealed but I saw connections:

“They even walked the same!”

“Anyone else outside the church was going to hell and needed us to save them”.

It all came to a head.

In the bathroom one emotionally desperate night, looking into the mirror before me, weighing it out, talking to myself. My inner conflict was killing me. My high school feelings of alienation were eating me up alive. It truly was enough to want out. A thrilling relief washed over me as I came to the decision to meet God in person myself, on my own terms, in my own time. (Praying advocates getting closer to God and I took that to the premature hilt) In that bathroom, with the living room TV blaring in the background, the conclusion to leave this world for good was being made. This was premeditated but still improvised. Instead of taking the time to pick out the perfect substances, I was anxiously winging it looking for things that were already within my reach, checking the labels for the “Poisonous if Ingested” warning. I came up with our brown hydrogen peroxide bottle and the bottle of Tylenol.

It wasn't until I downed them both and made my way to my bed did I start having second thoughts. Running to my mommy down the hall, rousing her out of bed. Full, fearful confession of what I had just done and to please help. She cried when she had to report my age to the emergency room nurses- a tearful and sobbing, "fifteen!" which pains me to this day. After ridding the poisons out of my body by drinking a kind of volcanic ash, which served as a  kind of stomach pump without the pump, I was admitted into their adolescent unit in Holliswood until they felt I was better. I was there for one month, from April to May, just before my sixteenth birthday in June. Some of the kids were in and out of there for much longer. I often wore my Sex Pistols shirt there. I behaved, made friends, did well in their academic schooling system, and longed to get back out "on the outside", as we called it.

Tall, metalhead Howard tried to make out with me even though none of us were allowed to touch the other gender in any way, shape or form. “No P.C.! (physical contact)” was the rule, served with demerits if violated.

It didn’t stop me from playing with Mike’s hair when it was in its fresh, peach fuzz state. Ok so maybe I didn’t always behave.

I sang R&B with Savitra who was from Jamaica Estates. Mary J. Blige, SWV, Xscape. She swore we should try to get signed once we got on the outside. We became tight, but one day at the gym she was upset about something, throwing her tough girl weight around to everyone, ready to fight me as we got eye to eye and toe to toe. She backed out when she saw that I didn’t flinch.

"Oh my God, I have soooo much respect for you right now!" Erica, a sweet Jewish tie dyed, feather earring, hippie teen from Long Island told me after Savitra stormed out.

We patched things up soon after that, but in her goodbye letter to me she wrote at the end, "I’m gonna miss you, girl. And don't take this the wrong way, but you’re a real bitch sometimes". The thing is, Savitra was way louder and volatile than I ever was. Did she intuitively sense something in me, an IDGAF (I don’t give a f-) kind of ice at my core? Am I really so cold inside? Or was it a twisted compliment?

I played a lot of ping pong with Kerry, a big Ramones fan who also loved acting and old Broadway shows like I did. She signed her goodbye letter to me as “the Cecily to my Gwendolyn” or the other way around. Cecily and Gwendolyn make up the “coo-coo” Pigeon sisters from Neil Simon's play, “The Odd Couple”- a scene I was later assigned to do with Zakiyyah in what was either my sophomore or junior year in high school.

Anorexic, bulimic, cutter Sherry, a devout Karen Carpenter fan, laughed at my religious experiences. I shrugged and laughed along too… sure, I guess it is funny to be so young and choose Jesus on your own, I understood. She was often self destructive so to see her laugh about something even at my expense was fine by me, it was nice to see her smile. She would joke about it in her letters; “Talk to you later Tennille and remember, Jesus loves you but he hates ME- Hahaha!”

Makeda was a severely traumatized girl, practically catatonic, from the South Bronx who bounced around foster homes. Her goodbye letter advised me to “stay strong -n- sweet”. I always try to.

When I was released from the adolescent unit, mom felt it'd be good to send me to the Dominican Republic with my grandparents for the summer like she used to do. They live in Los Jardines, Santiago de los Caballeros or simply, "Santiago".  I wore my Sex Pistols shirt for my new passport picture.

“Wow honey, you almost look black here!” Mom delighted.

I rolled my eyes at this but I saw what she meant.  Under that lighting, with my thick, dark hair pulled back, my make-up, hoop earrings and solemn expression, I did resemble a very light skinned black or biracial teen.

One night in Santiago, I was getting ready for bed wearing my Bob Marley shirt. My great-grandmother Mama Miminga came over to say good night. She noticed what I was wearing.

"Y ese tipo, Tennille. ¿De quién es?" she cheerfully asked.

"Bob Marley", I replied.

"¿Y de dónde es?"

"Jamaica."

This made her laugh.

Being a Sábana Iglesia serrana, Miminga probably looked down on los negros y prietos. I bet she also looked down on his “pelo malo” dreads, even though they were much shorter than how we all usually see him in pictures or videos. I didn’t like her laughing at a man who sang such beautiful, poignant songs throughout his short life. Maybe she was just laughing at my accent and pronunciations (Juh-MAYY-ca vs. the Spanish Ha-mEYE-ca). Either way I went to bed with a confused and resentful taste in my mouth.

When my father’s best friend Raymond Colonese came to visit me in the hospital, he gave me Alan Watts' "The Book- On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are". Reading this was like being mentally jolted by a defibrillator of some kind.

"Clear!"

I poured over it while in the Dominican Republic. I also listened to Ella Fitzgerald’s 1958 rendition of “St. Louis Blues” there, to Buddy Holly’s "Rave On”. I was being given another go at life.

I never tried to do away with myself since. I’m raising my 2 children now, have had my share of interesting jobs, romances, and travels. I’ve gotten my degree in higher education, I’m getting to see my little sister grow and kick ass. I still have my depression and anxieties. Therapy, yoga, and meditation help. So does writing. And art. And movies, And chocolate. I’m open to my children’s inevitable religious, spiritual or secular views. I respect agnosticism and atheism but I still pray. I seek out the things that my children would love to be a part of, and what I would love to be part of. I scan my phone to find this month’s poetry and reading events waiting for something to truly jump out at me. A few things do, but then I hit the jackpot because it seems as though John Lydon will be at the Strand bookstore later this month, plugging his new book.  Will he impart any wisdom or inspiration to me if I attend? Maybe, maybe not.

But like him, I am choosing life, just like he has declared, time and time again. I found another one of his quotes online recently. ”If my leg falls off, I'll get a prosthetic. There'd be no deep sadness about it. I'd just get on with it! It's called life, and I love life. You have to be positive, and you have to crack on no matter what.” Yes.  Hell yes to all of that. Crack on! And so despite my own weak hip, rotting teeth in the back, poor vision, and a kind of borderline PTSD, I’m choosing life. And wanting it. And sure, I'll still have deep sadness every now and then, as well as anger, confusion, frustration and even apathy. But there is always something going on to really love and take part in life- and even in the depths of my despair, I find that to be true.
*********
And here was the event I attended in the Strand bookstore for his book, "Anger Is An Energy". He signed my copy, we shook hands, and I said with a smile, "Thanks so much!" meaning thanks for signing the copy and thanks for being yourself and for loving life. He replied with, "Peace... peace... thanks for being so nice." And we had a moment. Or maybe I just had that moment. Whatever :)

https://youtu.be/0tIbDe612W8

Shortly after the book signing, on my way home, head in the clouds.