Filled with the music and popular culture of the late-eighties and early-nineties, thisrefreshingly honest and hilarious coming-of-age memoir from comedian, storyteller, and The Moth host David Crabb tells a universally resonant story about growing up gay and Goth in San Antonio, Texas.
In the summer of 1989, three Goth kids crossed a street in San Antonio. They had no idea that a deeply confused fourteen-year-old boy was watching. Their dyed hair, fishnets, and eyeliner were his first evidence of another worlda place he desperately wanted to go. He just had no idea how to get there.
Somehow David Crabb had convinced himself that every guy preferred French-braiding his girlfriends hair to making out, and that the funny feelings he got watchingSilver SpoonsandGrowing Painshad nothing to do with Ricky Schroeder or Kirk Cameron. But discovering George MichaelsFaithconfirmed for David what every bully already knew: he was gay. Surviving high school, with its gym classes, locker rooms, and naked, glistening senior guys, would require impossible feats of denial.
What saved him was finding a group of outlandish friends who reveled in being outsiders. David found himself enmeshed with misfits: wearing black, cutting class, staying out all night, drinking, tripping, chain-smoking, idolizing The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, and Joy Divisionand learning lessons about life and love along the way.
Richly detailed with 80s pop-culture, and including black and white photos throughout, BAD KID is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is poignant. Crabbs journey through adolescence captures the essence of every persons struggle to understand his or her true self.
