Constantly In-Between
I became a skinhead in 1987 because, unlike the rest of me, it felt like a simple identity to manage. It would have been more hardcore to embrace the chaos.
I.
Hardcore became a major concern of mine between 1987 and 1988. I had gone to a couple of shows before then—my first was an all-ages Crumbsuckers show on Long Island at the end of 1986—but it took some time before I began to see hardcore as my identity, and not simply as a weekend activity. The clues were in the language: We never asked someone if they “listened to hardcore,” we asked them if they “were a hardcore kid.” That’s not the same thing.
I was only in junior high school in 1987, which is to say that whatever identity I was wearing at that age was an identity of circumstance. I was a New York City native, a second-generation immigrant, a childhood Pentecostal. None of these were chosen; none of them inborn. What should have been my most obvious source of identity and belonging—a connection to family culture and ancestry—was somewhat mysteriously taken away from me by my father, who refused to speak about…