Where have all the bad boys gone?

I didn’t know who i was when i was a teenager -

a long gangle, awkward loping sack of bones -

but i knew what i wasn’t allowed to be

i was not allowed to be a bad boy or a naughty girl

in the 90s we wore tiny pointless belts like a ribbon on a grenade

we all had yo-yos and we had just invented the internet

and there were two types of people who everyone wanted to be 

naughty girls and bad boys.

Britney spears was a naughty girl. Christina Aguilera was a naughty girl.

they wore tiny skirts down low, turning their hips into clavicles

and they sang songs about being drrrrrrrty and being hit (sexily) one more time

they made household dads go awoooooo while watching their music videos

they made newspapers write articles about how they are bad role models

they weren’t really naughty

they were just told to dance sexy in music videos and be super young

they made pop music so good

they had to wear red leather and do flips on stage

and look like the world’s horniest virgins but also be good church people

but everyone liked to talk about what bad influences they were on babies and the like

because they were so damn naughty

boys wore huge shorts and had hair spiky enough to blind the giant eye of god

as it peeps on pop punk shows from heaven

bad boys were gross and yuck

blink 182 and sum 41 and various other boys with numbers in their names

who sang about blowjobs and had a song called Dysentery Gary

and broke things on stage

and endorsed energy drinks

they sang like they had nostrils full of pollen

and that was cool

that’s how you knew they were cool

because their voices weren’t beautiful

look at these boys, so angry about having parents and school

you could even buy Bad Boys hats and shorts from Best and Less, but my mum said I wasn’t allowed

all i knew, in that fresh young age, emerging from childhood like a boil on a foot

like a caterpillar weaving a cocoon and emerging as a real piece of shit

was that I couldn’t be naughty or rude

like these boys or girls

i was ok with that, I just wanted to be left alone

the naughty girls are gone, now popstars have to be a different kind of perfect

exemplary

saying and doing the right things

flying their private jets the perfect amount

the bad boys are also gone

they’re dads now 

forced to sing songs about being horny teenagers

spiking up their grey hair 

covering heart monitors with dog collar bracelets

i realise now the naughty girls and bad boys were actually influences

but not about being naughty or bad

but to look back on their songs about farts or about being sexy

and realise they were all about being scared of growing up

and now that I am grown up

old

heartbroken 

not naughty or rude but tired

and exhausted and sad by the never-ending momentum of being an adult

they were right to be scared