The Deciding Incisor: Lauren Johnson

I became friends with Lauren Johnson during our final semester at Bard College. Two days after our graduation she gave me a tour of her hometown of Great Barrington, MA and the campus of Bard’s baby cousin, Simon’s Rock. Great Barrington just happened to be where she had returned for the summer and where I had an appointment to contest a speeding ticket. Since then, Lauren has popped back into my life while visiting a mutual friend when I lived in Northampton, and again more recently in Philadelphia. In addition to being hilariously witty (see below), Lauren is a sweet and sincere friend. If I ever need to hide underground, I’m sure she and Dan will graciously let me live in the backyard of their Jersey farmhouse with the chickens.

---

I am sitting reclined in an aquamarine blue dental chair, waiting to be seen by a Portuguese dentist.

I have not been to the dentist for about seven years, and all the brochures of cloud-white toothy smiles placed along the countertops are doing a marvelous job of taunting me.  

For the majority of those seven years, I have led an indulgently artistic and nomadic life bereft of dental insurance throughout the Big Apple, North Carolina, and New Jersey, where, at 29 years old, I got my first flat tire on the road to perfect oral health.

I had pretty much shrugged off going to see a dentist baring anything catastrophic, until I recently showed my husband my front tooth whose gum had been receding pretty steadily after noticing it started to look irritated. The words he spoke while painfully wincing were “Holy crap, that’s like Tales From the Crypt!”

Fine.

I signed up for an in-state no-frills dental program, picked the nearest dentist within the network, and here I am—paper bib clipped to my collar and ready for the worst.

The dentist comes in and we start with the x-rays. After each one, the lead cape draped over my chest feels heavier and heavier, and I imagine thick wads of (my) money being plunged down the toilet.

Next up is the cleaning.

Everything is going fine until she gets to The Tooth. “Ooo!,” she says, completely stopping and turning off the drill. “That hurts me just to look at it.” 

She pulls off her mask, and we proceed to have a heart-to-heart. “Why is it that you have not gotten this looked at earlier?” she tells me in her Portuguese accent. I smile and try to explain to her how tough I am. She looks at me solemnly. “You’re very young,” she says. “You have many good tooth years ahead of you, but you need to take care of this to be sure that will happen.” She says she’ll write me a referral to a specialist (more sounds of dollars flushing), and proceeds with the cleaning. I seal the deal with myself to take her advice, wincing as the electricity shoots down my legs as she finishes polishing the base of said tooth.

At 29, I never thought I’d have to start dealing with something so geriatric sounding as receding gums. And though I tend to laugh this sort of stuff off (along with things like gray hairs and how delicious prunes are), this time it’s a bit more awakening. It’s made me nervous. Not only have I been thinking about it constantly and having dreams of my teeth falling out, I’ve also resumed one of my old nervous tics of biting the insides of my cheeks. 

Gross!

When I see the specialist my dentist referred me to, what a mouth-show they will get!

All kidding aside, the timing of this instance could not be more appropriate. I, like many other of my late-twenty-something friends, have been musing about the new decade we’re entering into, and comparing our lists of Top 10 Things to Do Before I’m Thirty.  I’m pretty sure “Pay Attention to your Dental Health” will trump “Lose 10 Pounds,” and “Become a Model” (Quiz: How many models have a horror show host gumline? Zero!). However, I must say, as I grow longer in the tooth (sorry, had to), it will be learned moments like these that I’ll stow away to help me make more self-informed, wise, and adult decisions as I turn 30, 40, 50…

Fork in the Road: Jared Souther

I have known Jared Souther for 17 years. We met in Mr. Bruce's 7th grade science class and quickly became good friends. We would talk on the phone for hours about music and, by our freshman year at Nauset Regional High School, we started a band together with our friend Adam Wentworth on drums that lasted into my first year of college. It would be impossible to do justice to this experience creating music with Jared, our lasting friendship, and how punk rock changed our lives, in the limitations of this space. I'll just say that all of this is completely inseparable to who I am today. Jared is one of the most talented and inspiring people I've known. He has continued to write music and play in bands all of these years, and something tells me that he won't be slowing down anytime soon.   

Check out Jared's current band Revilers online at: Revilers.net
---

Besides the wrinkles around my eyes, the several remaining hairs on the top of my head, and the pain in my knees every morning, I feel pretty much the same as when I was a teenager. I will be turning thirty on May twenty-third of this year and other than it being a nice even number that our culture has declared a milestone, it doesn't feel much different to me than any other birthday. 

I remember at the beginning of my freshman year in high school, we were asked to write a letter to ourselves that we would get back as seniors. Waiting four years seemed like a lifetime back then. After all, four years prior I was in elementary school. Oddly enough, I still have the letter today, a whopping fifteen years later. In it I wrote about looking forward to playing my first show with my first band, Generic. I wondered if I'd still be playing shows at the old age of eighteen. Back then I owned a cheap 4-track cassette recorder that I learned to make demos on. At that point I only recorded one band, but I was very concerned that I would still be involved in recording. It was also in utter importance that I had at least one tattoo. When senior year finally rolled around, I had no problem meeting such strenuous goals. Funny that nowhere in the letter did it mention college, high school, or what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was only concerned with playing in a band, recording music and getting tattooed. Oddly enough, reading this letter again at almost thirty, I am concerned with playing in a band, recording music, and giving tattoos. Oh, how I've matured so much. 

Of course there are some things that have changed. Today, I find that things like quality vacuum cleaners bring me happiness. I now embrace the quiet natural beauty of Cape Cod's off season. I even have a wife (which is still a shocker to most of my friends and family).

For me, thirty is a confusing fork in the road, representing where you're currently at in life, and where you think you're supposed to be going. Naturally, by growing up, some things change. I truly enjoy coming home to my wife and going for a walk, or having a quiet evening watching a movie, etc. But I also still like getting in a shitty, rusted van with my friends, driving to an unknown city, meeting new people and playing loud, abrasive punk rock. I see no problem living what some consider a contradictory lifestyle. In fact, it makes me extremely happy because everything feels fresh. The problem lies in the perception of others that say, "You're thirty now, it's time to get your shit together." 

Whenever one of my peers outside of the punk scene finds out that I'm in a band, the first thing they ask me is how much money I make. When I tell them that we rarely break even, they then ask why I bother doing it at all. I usually follow up by asking them how much they make golfing with their buddies and what steps they're taking towards going pro. Something happens to people in their adult years causing them to lose their passions in life. I play music because I enjoy creating, being in different places, hanging out with friends and meeting new ones that share a similar outlook. The fact that I have to explain to people that those reasons are more important to me than money, is disappointing. 

When you're young you think of thirty as the time when the fun is over and you've got all your ducks in a row. But after talking to many of my peers, I've realized a lot of us don't want the fun to end and we still don't know what the hell we're doing. Is that so awful? 

Still, the mental fork in the road does wear me down. As a teenager and through my twenties I always wanted to do so many things with music and art but there was a lot of trial and error along the way. It seems that now, as I approach turning thirty, I finally have a clear vision of where I want to go with my creative endeavors and exactly how to make it happen. But then I hear all these outside voices......."It's never too late to go to college"..."When are you buying a house?"..."When are you having a baby?"..."Just put it on a credit card"..."Oh, you haven't gotten over the punk phase yet?"....And just as I'm about to tell the world to fuck off and leave me alone, that I'll do whatever I want, I realize that rent is due in four days and my car has a flat tire. 

Overall, I don't have a clue as to what a thirty year old is supposed to be doing, nor do I care. Maybe it's time I grew a mustache? I feel that there is no master schedule. No due date on life. But for some reason we, as a culture, put these expectations on ourselves "by the time we're thirty." The only given is death. We need to live our lives our own way, in whatever order we choose, and just except the fact that humans are a bunch of screw ups and that's OK. The serious stuff will always be there whether we want it to be or not. I'm more concerned with not forgetting what makes me happy even if what makes me happy may change as I get older. Sometimes I wonder how me as a kid would view myself today about to turn thirty. I'm guessing I wouldn't suck in my own eyes. That's good enough for me.  

The Rocking 30's: David Meek

I don't remember the moment we met, but my first memory of Dave Meek is crashing on sleeping bags together in an empty office in Quebec City. That was 2001, and we were there with dozens of other Bard student activists to protest the dubious Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings that turned the city into a walled off, feudal warzone. Since then, we have shared many other memories together, at Bard and beyond, and have been close friends for a full decade now. In 2005, I introduced him to another dear friend, Jo Weaver, and two years later I was a groomsman in their wedding. I continue to cherish my friendship with both of Dave and Jo. They will always feel close by, even if they are perpetually thousands of miles away.  

---

Having turned 30 going on two years ago now, it's interesting to reflect on what at the time seemed like an ominous and exciting milestone. I very distinctly remembered all the excitement and buildup surrounding the passing of that day (and its unsurprising but still a surprise “surprise party”). And all my friends joking that I was officially over the hill.....

At the time, married, in the midst of a Ph.d. program, with a house, dog and mortgage, I wondered whether they were right....(was I over the hill?) and then I decided, and still believe, that the late 20's/early 30's sure feel like I'm dab smack on top of the hill. And damn the view is good!

For me, this time has been one about perspective. Not so much a perspective focused on the immediate moment as perhaps those heady early 20s were, but about a longer perspective in which the present is very much valued, as the best time one has available to achieve one's dreams. To begin with, each of those previously mentioned things, which some might see as artifacts of dreaded Responsibility, including our most recent decision to have a baby while living in India, I see as choices made explicitly in the present with a longer perspective in mind (check out our blog for critical ruminations on the intersections of family life and academia). While each of those responsibilities might be shied away from, they've all had incredibly positive aspects, such as having a house has given me the opportunity to tear up the front yard and set up a massive urban garden.

From my perspective, those late 20's/early 30's have felt like a prolonged music jam session. Whether it is being semi-permanently nomadic, living in Brazil and now India as Jo and I conduct our Ph.d. research, or explore building community through urban gardening, it's been one exciting ride. Partially, these last few years have felt like an ongoing jam, because I made the decision that I was tired of wanting to learn to play music, and there was no time like the present to make good on that interest. Since going down the musical road, playing music has become an integral part of my daily life, and there is always three or four instruments within easy reach. All of those musings are to say, the top of the hill is great, but make sure you bring an instrument to provide your own theme song.

Taking the Long Way Around: Colette Hall Vander Plas (formerly Ryder-Hall)

Colette Ryder-Hall was the first person I met in high school that did a zine. I'm pretty sure I didn't know what a zine was until I met her actually. One early issue of Looks Yellow, Taste Red featured a positive review of my sloppy 9th grade punk band PME, generously comparing us to my favorite band Dead Kennedys. Colette was also the first person I knew who dropped out of school on political/ethical grounds and, through her zine, taught me about Grace Llewellyn's classic The Teenage Liberation Handbook. This made Colette a mentor of sorts and definitely an inspiration, whether she knew it or not.

--- 

First, I dropped out of high school. A year later, bored and frightened of enduring another Cape Cod winter, I went to college. After 5 years of enlightening but rather aimless higher education, at the ripe old age of 23, I graduated with a BA. I felt like a prisoner being let out of prison. I was terrified and I wanted back in. So I opted for a MA in creative writing. This involved moving to the middle of the country, discovering I hated teaching freshman comp and taking a job at a natural foods coop to cover the unexpected expenses of being a grad student (steep bar tabs and pricey plane tickets back home for major holidays, mainly). At the age of 25, I graduated again. I stayed at the coop job until I went insane at the age of 28 and realized I had to find a meaningful path in life (which did not involve the retail and merchandising of organic produce), or die trying. I quit my job and drove around the country in a blue Toyota Tercel for awhile, then returned to Iowa, where I went back to school (again) and got married. This is why now, at the age of 31, I find myself in the position of many 22-year-olds: about to graduate, broke and waiting on a Peace Corps application that has been in medical review for several months already.

I do feel old sometimes now. First, while most people assume I'm still in my early 20's when they meet me, I'm pretty sure they're not looking closely. I have collected a lot of white hairs in the past ten years. And I have officially moved past the time when wearing mini-skirts is a good idea. Second, it seems that in the Midwest people tend to get married and have families younger than was the norm on the East Coast. I got married at the age of 29 and while we plan on having a family, it's going to be a while. Being surrounded by people in their twenties who are far more "settled down" than me is weird and it fills me with irrational fear that I've wasted my most fertile years already.

Mostly, I am grateful to have entered my thirties. While the intense emotion and creative energy of my teenage years and early twenties made for a lot of excitement and productivity, it was hard. Everything was louder, brighter and potentially emotionally devastating. At the age of 31, I don't care as much and that's okay. I may not be producing a zine every five minutes or hand-crafting bizarre objects in my bedroom while listening to loud, angry music. I may not be routinely having intense heart-to-heart conversations with random people late into the night. I may not be full of righteous anger and a burning desire to assert myself at all times. Instead, I have an inner stability. I don't constantly wonder if I'm crazy. I don't blame everything on myself. I can rest assured that things generally work out, regardless of how much or how little I worry about them. I am becoming more comfortable with myself all the time.

So maybe my situation is a blessing - a chance to experience my early years of adulthood all over again, with the added bonuses of experience, confidence and inner balance. 

My Thirty: Leah Harrington

Some people in my graduating high school class may always associate Leah Harrington with the superlative section of the "Nauset Tides" yearbook from our senior year. With her huge smile, recently shaved head, and hip-before-their-time thick-framed glasses, the 1999 photo of Leah, and her male counterpart, was accompanied by the title: Most Dramatic. Or perhaps it was Drama King and Queen? Regardless, I will always think of Leah as one of the most interesting and fun people I have known, and had the pleasure of being friends with, in high school and beyond.

---

This is not what I thought it was going to be. It never is. I thought my thirty was going to be all urbanistic, unruly and controversial. Instead I am a preschool teacher, I’m married, I have a baby, and a dog.  All I need is the white picket fence. I thought my thirty was going to be old. My thirty looks better than any other year in my life. I am so much stronger--physically and otherwise--than I ever thought I could be. And I’m on Cape Cod. Where I grew up. The LAST place I thought I’d spend my thirty. This fact is not to be confused with Disappointment. I did jump the canal long enough to understand I did like the Cape, I just needed to contribute to my community rather than expect it to meet all of my adolescent needs. I am surrounded by these incredible people that were hiding for years, and this includes my family. Where WERE you guys? The average age of my circle is actually more around 35 or 40, and I’ve got to say, 40 doesn’t look so bad. You can still be artistic and irreverent and silly and sexy and young, the only difference is you give that much less of a fuck what other people think about you. My thirty is just that. Finally approaching the place where other people’s opinions don’t affect your sense of self. 

Don’t be complacent. Don’t be judgmental. Love with abandon and let go of the people who hold themselves--and you--back. I have so much more to learn, and so much more to grow. I think I’m going to like forty.

So I have a baby, and I thought I’d write more. This is what I have to offer…

My Thirtieth Year to Heaven

by Emily McNair

“It was my thirtieth year to heaven...” I’ve, for as long as I can remember, loved the words of Dylan Thomas. From my dad’s annual Christmas Eve reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, to high school poetry recitations, to today, when I thought about what I would write for this blog, when the first thing that came to mind was this line from “Poem in October.” I’m shamed to say that my (purloined from my father so many years ago) copy of his collected poems was more than a little dusty but the words came back to my mind as I read. I once knew this poem by heart, learned it for a competition, but I can admit in my thirtieth year that it was a show-offy endeavor -- long, complicated rhythms, tongue-tangling word combinations -- and it never honestly occurred to me that I would arrive at this year in my life. That I’d rise one day “in the rainy [spring]/ And walk abroad in a shower of all my days,” reflecting on, reliving the milestones, the landmarks, times when I “... whispered the truth of [my] joy.”

My life is so far from where I imagined it would be. Granted, my first childhood aspiration was to be a hot air balloon. Not possible? A whale then. What? No? Alright, a pig farmer. I’m happy to say that last one didn’t pan out -- I thought the pigs would be raised more for companionship (a la Charlotte’s Web) than consumption. But nevermind that. Then for the second half of my life so far, I imagined I’d be living abroad, most likely in Nepal, studying, working, doing something. But somehow I’m here in Philadelphia. More rooted everyday, some days happy about this, some days horrified, many days just ambivalent. Is rooted trapped? Is this thirtieth year the last I have to break free? Do I want to?

For me, the only real hang-up, the only loss I feel about turning 30 this coming April is the expiration of my first adult (10 year) passport. The first two I was glad to shed -- a portrait of a child, a cringingly awful and awkward moment of 16. But this passport is the story of my young adult life, my proudest moments, my most fearful, my most adventurous, my most selfless, my most selfish, my loneliest and my most gorgeously solitary. For most of my late teens and early twenties, my life was my travels, mostly alone and spanning 6 continents by my 23rd birthday. My passport -- beat up, stained, sticky here and there with immigration control sticker residue -- reflects those years in so many ways; it’s the old style, with an indentation from the photo. Laminated! The extra pages stapled in oh-so-officially, out of sequence and slightly smaller. The unassuming quarter-page stamps. The full page sticker visas. The extensions. The re-entry permits. The exit stamps. Perpetual motion, never more than stopping by, passing through.

Ten years ago I never would have imagined this life I’ve created now, its chilling and deeply comforting feeling of permanence. I’ve always enjoyed making decisions, big decisions, life-changing decisions. But I realize now that -- while clearly many of these decisions have shaped my life and who I am -- none of them were as final, as permanent as they seemed at the time, and this decision-making proclivity of mine has set me on a definite, increasingly ineluctable course. Good or bad -- it just is.

I bought the house that is sometimes my joyful home and sometimes the stone around my neck. I adopted the dog I can’t remember now not having. I accepted the job that challenges, satisfies and sometimes frustrates the shit out of me. I said yes to the proposal and will soon be marrying the only person I’ve ever actually enjoyed the feeling of depending on. The person who has -- by loving me truly and wholly -- redefined my whole conception of self. Of what I want my life to be, of the genuine okay-ness of the fact that my life will, in fact, keep going forward and never be the same as it was, moment to moment, day to day, year to year.

“It was my thirtieth/ Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon/ Though the town below lay leaved with October blood./ O may my heart’s truth/Still be sung/ On this high hill in a year’s turning.”

---
Emily McNair is a fellow graduate of Bard College. She works for a nonprofit that provides community-based services to people with psychiatric and/or addictive disorders, developmental disabilities, and those who are homeless, in the greater Philadelphia area.

James Generic: Life at 29

I first met James Generic on the Internet. I was setting up a book tour for an author that wanted to speak at the Wooden Shoe, Philadelphia venerable anarchist bookstore, and James had recently become an events-committee-of-one. We corresponded about the logistics of the event for a couple weeks and everything ended up going smoothly. Less than a year later, I moved to Philly from Northampton, MA and found myself being trained by James one Saturday night at the Shoe. Eventually I joined the events committee and have continued to enjoy working with him to bring great radical speakers to the South Street infoshop.

James is currently writing a book about the Wooden Shoe and blogs about Philly sports at Stadium Vagabonds. Without further adieu, here is the first submission to 360 Months...
---

I feel kinda funny writing this, because it feels somewhat like writing an obituary. 30 is not old, just a milestone. You don't really have any more excuses. You're supposed to have your shit together at this point, be ready to move forward. I still have a year and a half before I turn 30, and it doesn't really concern me... Okay, maybe it does. Just a bit. I used to have my shit together. I certainly did. But the last year was a tough year. I thought that I had it together. A long term, decent paying job. I was married to the love of my life. I owned my rowhome. I had it made by most standards. I am well-known and generally well-liked, with just a few enemies made over the years (fuck 'em, anyway).

But things started to tumble, as I put more and more of my energy into organizing and volunteering. As the pressure constantly mounted, my marriage was the first to crack--to the tune of many tears and wrenching of the heart. They say that losing the love of your life to a breakup is almost worse than losing someone to death. I was a damn wreck for a long time, drowning in a great downward spiral like toilet water sucking down the hole of death. Then, in July, my boss hit me across the face, and I quit my job, walking away with unemployment benefits assured (since I quit with good cause). Those two combined to make my continued home ownership impossible, so my home is up for sale. I know, I know, boohoo. A lot of people my age never ever had those things in the first place. Like I said, the last year was my fall from grace. I had a nice writing project to do, but damn, writing has a lot more highs and lows than a 9-5er. It was a whole lot of adjustments.

So here I stand, at the crossroads. My 20's are nearly done. Somedays I hit the bottle to stay sane, trying to figure out how to get my shit together. One of my core values is that I am pretty reliable and dependable. I think I have maintained that basic core. That's really the last thing I have left. I have never given that up, even if I am notoriously flakey when showing to parties or big social events. I'll never leave you hanging if we have 1 on 1 hangouts planned, and I have very rarely failed in my political work with the Wooden Shoe collective or Solidarity.

A lot of people just get their start at 30. Like a lot of coaches or actors or writers or whatever. Then again, life is almost done at 30 if you're a football player, as a career. Its all perspective. My parents had me when they were in the early 30's. Oh shit... that's coming up, if I wanna reproduce. Something that my 20's taught me very well is that as much as you want to plan out your life, it doesn't quite work like that. You can't plan shit. Everything falls apart eventually. Flesh rots, as do everything that humans build, eventually. You can keep it going, but its a race against time. Eventually it fails. Eventually we die. This isn't a surrender, but just a recognition. You have to keep trying to swim upstream, because otherwise you'll drown, and just become another floater.

But you know what? What about 40? I kind of look forward to being the dirty old man at the bar who makes terrible jokes. Maybe to some of my friends in their early 20's or late teens, I already am that guy. Who knows though? As long as I can keep drinking beer, watching baseball, and staying involved in social movements for a better world, I think I'll generally be happy and content. Contentish, anyway. So I don't have a career right now. I was getting bored with libraries anyway. So I don't have marriage anymore, and god I miss her somedays, but maybe I'm better as a single guy. So I don't have a house anymore. Maybe it's better not to be tied down like that (says the guy who hates leaving Philadelphia.) Sure, I feel lost a lot, feeling out the days, but you gotta wander the desert before finding the land of milk and honey, donchya? Or drown in the Red Sea.

I can grow a full beard now. That's different than when I turned 20.