How I Was a Child of Grunge

It's funny the things that come to form your sense of understanding and openness when you're little, and what informs your fuck-you sense of resistance to mainstream society's attitude towards things... And it's intriguing how so much of it is the music you connect to back then.

With regard to "alternative" sexual lifestyles:

• Some book I read when I was in middle school where a girl gets a crush on her female best friend and they makeout a little in a graveyard.



• Misunderstood Nirvana lyrics:
  
  The finest day that I've ever had
  Was when I learned to cry on a man
  (actual lyrics "Was when I learned to cry on demand")



• Kurt Cobain and seeing him wear dresses and lipstick.



• Misunderstanding the lyrics to Nirvana's "Lounge Act" (gimme a break--he's hard to understand most of the time... plus, he sings about shit like albinos, mosquitos, and mulattos all in the same song, so are my versions of his lyrics really that far-fetched?)--I thought for the longest time that the bolded lyrics were actually "Tell this fucking God," and I thought the song was a fuck you to religious beliefs about homosexuality (and that "this friend" that he refers to was a male he was attracted to--don't ask me why):
  
  Don't tell me what I want to hear
  Afraid of never knowing fear
  Experience anything you need
  I'll keep fighting jealousy
  Until it's fucking gone
  
  And I've got this friend, you see, who makes me feel
  And I wanted more than I could steal
  I'll arrest myself, I'll wear a shield
  I'll go out of my way to make you a deal
  We've made a pact to learn from who
  Ever we want without new rules
  We'll share what's lost and what we grew
  

With regard to feminism:

• Getting into a playground fight with a boy in primary school for calling me "String Bean" and tearing up my panty-hose in the process.



• The lyrics to Sonic Youth's "Swimsuit Issue".



• Kurt Cobain.



• Sinead O'Connor.



• Anything from Hole's Pretty on the Inside album.



• Anything from Hole's Live Through This album.



• My mom's refusal to buy me an Alice in Chains t-shirt because of the name of the band--she thought it was about degradation and abuse of women. I was mad at the time, but it's strange how that stands out now as informing my thoughts about feminism.

With regard to atheism:

• Receiving a copy of Sinead O'Connor's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got for Easter (ironically) from my mom one year and spending all day listening to it while I typed on my typewriter.



• The same misheard lyrics to Nirvana's "Lounge Act" that I mentioned above--I was all like "Hell yeah, fuck God!"



• Praying to God that I'd get chicken pox so that I wouldn't have to work on a stupid PSR project with a boy I didn't like. Getting the chicken pox. And yet still not being convinced that He existed.



• The lyrics to Metallica's "The God That Failed".



• My friend Emily exposing me to Nine Inch Nail's Pretty Hate Machine and the fact that I found the lyrics shocking and disturbing.

With regard to body image:

• The lyrics to Hole's Pretty on the Inside.



• The same Sonic Youth song mentioned above.



• The lyrics to Nirvana's "Lithium":
  
  I'm so ugly, but that's okay, 'cause so are you ...
  We broke our mirrors

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