OUTSIDE IS HOSTILE

   I kept seeing the drawing of this man everywhere. We would go to the mall and loiter until we saw other freaky looking kids and would sniff each other out and make friends and/or enemies and smoke cloves. We eventually met these two older guys who had a more seasoned punk look. I no longer remember their names, but one of them had a large painting of the Neubauten “man” on the back of his jacket, and he had ran away from home because he was going through his moms stuff and found s&m pictures of her. He was living illegally in a boarded up building in downtown Orlando and invited us (me and my friend Travis, we were about 15) over that night. We were freaked out but went. These guys somehow had girlfriends and they were all huffing lighter fluid. I pretended to do it. They had stolen electricity with an extension cord and were listening to all kinds of music I had never heard, mostly goth/industrial stuff, and that was the first time I heard a lot of underground bands. I asked about the figure on his jacket and he said “you’re not ready”. He also punched me in the chest for not inhaling my cigarettes. I could tell a thousand stories about these guys. The would go to 7-11, and while the crazy-looking runaway guy would occupy the clerk, his straight-looking girlfriend would carefully remove all the sodas from a case, replace it with beer, and somehow get it closed.

   The Neubauten logo was everywhere but nobody talked about them, no one ever actually played their records, and they definitely weren’t on the radio. I eventually convinced a girlfriend to split the cost of an expensive import CD, which we both listened to in her car, and she was like “this is what I just spent my allowance on? What IS THIS? It’s not even music!!” I became obsessed with this album partly because I couldn’t understand it, and I distinctly remember playing it at 7am getting ready for school and my mom coming in my room aghast, saying “Do we have to do this? Jackhammers? Why are you listening to this?!”