I made a first acquaintance with the punk scene as it had developed in Detroit in the late Seventies. A bored adolescent, I hoped that regular visits to Detroit’s most dangerous neighborhoods would put in the past all my suburban, middle-class antecedents and bring to the surface the feeling that I was destined to be a misfit. The most extreme solution the punk scene offered was to take the idea of “dress” and gather it close, so as to include the very body; the cutting of the skin was supposed to give the impression of a fashion somehow more profound. In Detroit the ground for this punk mind-set had been broken as early as 1968, when Iggy Stooge—considered the founder of the transatlantic movement eventually called Punk Rock—rolled on glass, vomiting and singing “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog.” In the end, though, I was disillusioned with the otherworldliness of suicide chic and unwilling to make such a commitment to style. Despite my best efforts, I never felt like a real punk, and so chose “conformity” over physical deformation and the drug-induced depletion of one’s youth, those signs of a true calling.

Before the effects of this antidote to adolescence wore off, I took part in a “scheme” to spread punk deep into the suburbs. My friend Melissia called the Detroit Newsto offer an interview with “real” punks. This was a rebellion in itself, since few real punks had the attention span required for speech. One could only hazard