You Might Be An Xennial If...
you don't even
(whatever whatever what-ever)
care that you'll never recover
from the recession
Empire Records was your favorite
film & like, who needs a job
with a decent paycheck & benefits
when you can be a tattooed
gum-chewing freak forever?
you remember dial-up modems,
AOL chat rooms, web page
guestbooks
you ever made mix tapes (& later
made the transition to mix CDs
but some long nights you long
for those days spent pressing
record & play.)
you grew up playing Oregon Trail
& part of you can't help but think
your demise will arrive like death
did in that game, driving an 8bit
Conestoga, telling you: you have
died of cholera, you have died
of dysentery.
you have died of exhaustion.
no one wants to claim you
once you were a Gen-Xer
but they kicked you out & you know
you're not a Millenial cuz, like, you
still use soap & napkins & drink beer,
& go to Applebee's once or twice a year.
New Kids on the Block was your boy
band & you came of age during
the heyday of third-wave ska, learned
to skank at summer camp after a few
sweaty rounds of spin-the-bottle
& from them on got sorta turned on
every time you heard
pick it up! pick it up! pick it up!
you wonder at the ways of the younger
generations, so many of them eschew
sex & cars, but back in your day, there
was no greater insult than you're a virgin
who can't drive
you heard a lot of whispered innuendo
when Clinton was prez, adults snickering
about what happened under that table
when they thought you weren't listening
like you didn't know what a blowjob was?
like you'd never been asked
you gave your first blowjob at twelve
bestowed the back of your throat
to an older boy hoping he'd splatter
his coolness back onto you; twelve was
the age you developed a taste for several
oral fixations—cocks & tongues, joints
& cigarettes
you had a lot of firsts at twelve, like,
that was the year you wrote your first zine,
the year you first tried suicide, yeah
there were enough things making you feel
so shitty you wanted to die, even when
you were twelve
the year punk broke (your heart)
you were too young to see most
of the cool '90s bands live, but old enough
to be devastated when their lead singers
killed themselves or o.d.'d—you had your
first cigarette the day Kurt died, stood
huddled in mourning
outside your school with all the other
weirdos with their black clothes & nicotine
haloes, someone passed a cigarette to you
& you smoked it while a boy you knew
bloodied his knuckles on the brick wall
while muttering fuck you fuck you fuck you
& the world was ending
Y2K was your armageddon, you were
eighteen, so full of whitehot fury you wanted
to see the world all burning skies & shattering
glass, but nothing happened so you shot up
& passed out in your boyfriend's bed
the world has been ending ever since
you were born, & you spent so many years
trying to end your life in both direct & oblique
ways, you never thought you'd live past
twenty-one, & maybe what really defines
your generation
is that self-destructive impulse, cuz
your heroes were suicidal rockstars & you
grew up aware of chemical warfare & species
extinction & your own downward mobility
& your older siblings raised you on the gospel
of Gen X slackerdom, so, like, whenever
an adult asked what you were going to do
with your lives you responded in unison
planning for the future?
ugh, as if!
—Jessie Lynn McMains, from forget the fuck away from me (Bone & Ink Press, 2019)
jacobvanloon
dededos
dailybridgerton
baratheonpilled
