AMERICAN IDIOT BY GREEN DAY

this is a post about the album american idiot by green day, an album which has a lot of personal significance for me. i forget what year it came out. i want to say 2004 but i usually just assume that everything came out in 2004 so dont quote me on that. anyway the year this stupid album came out is not significant because the true significance lies in the (for lack of a better term) internal awakening it instilled in me.

the year was 2006. i had just started high school and things were pretty bland for me. i had a big crush on a junior who played metal guitar and had hair that he dyed bright red a lot. two years later he would be married and his wife would be pregnant but that isnt really important. what is important is that i wanted desperately for this guy to like me but i didnt listen to the same music he did. i listened to kelly clarkson and avril lavigne and a cd of indie music like iron & wine and tegan & sara that came with one of my seventeen magazines. i knew enough about music to know that if the boy with red hair ever found out i owned avril lavignes “under my skin” he would never look at me again and i couldnt let that happen. so i tried to listen to music that i thought was more metal, specifically green days american idiot album. i had heard holiday on the radio and i figured it was pretty metal because some of the words were bleeped out and billie joe armstrong sounded kind of angry. so i downloaded all the songs from american idiot one by one on limewire and tried to get them to show up on my mp3 player in the right order. it sounded pretty cool to me. it was really political and stuff and after i listened to it and read some forum threads about it i decided that i was now a politically aware metalhead whom green day had made infinitely more intelligent.

however my interest in the boy with red hair waned after a couple of weeks and my attentions turned to another male. this one was much older though and the whole thing was much less appropriate. i realized that my history teacher was very attractive. he was clean cut, tall, and looked a bit like a chubbier, slightly balding version of brad pitt, which meant that he didn’t really look like anyone. but i was inexplicably drawn to him, and i was soon to find out that thanks to my new green day-influenced political attitudes, i would be able to manipulate my way closer to him.

by expressing an interest in politics, attempting to strike up conversation with the teacher, and trying a bit harder in history class, i made friends with mr studfuck (name changed to protect identity) more quickly than i had ever made friends with anyone before. he didnt seem to mind me very much, for one thing, which really solidified in my mind the belief that we were made for each other. soon i was spending every recess and lunch break in his classroom talking about matters both political and personal. one day he asked me what kind of music i liked and i said green day. he said the only green day song he liked was american idiot because it was pretty funny. i told him that american idiot was my LEAST favorite green day song in the WHOLE entire WORLD and he laughed and told me that i was a true green day fan. and on that day he gave me a ride home after school since we lived in the same neighborhood, and on that day i told myself that i really really truly from the bottom of my heart loved mr studfuck.

things continued in this way for the next year and a half. over that time i deduced that mr studfuck was a republican after asking him whether he was going to the democratic caucus and he laughed really deeply and said no. i tried a brief stint with republicanism before giving up and going back to anarchy like billie joe armstrong, but my interest in mr studfuck did not wane. towards the end of my sophomore year he announced he was quitting teaching and moving away and my heart broke into a million little pieces like that james frey book. several nights later he was giving me yet another ride home in his car after mock trial practice when he sped right past my driveway and continued on the road. he told me that i was his favorite student and that he was going to miss me most of all when he was gone and that i was one of the most beautiful and intelligent people he ever met. he parked his car down the road and told me to get out. then he walked me back up the road to my house and held my hand the entire time. i knew that this was probably the last real “moment” mr studfuck and i would have, so when he left me at my door and turned back up the driveway, i hid in the trees next to my house and watched him all the way back to his car.

this story has a peculiar ending because mr studfuck turned out to be very, very gay. he returned to town a year after leaving, married to another man and with an adopted daughter. it was all very confusing to me and around that time i decided to become a lesbian so i wouldnt have to deal with gay men anymore. but the point is that without this experience i probably would still have a crush on the boy with red hair who played metal guitar and got married right after he left school, so theres that. and without american idiot, i wouldnt have had the experience with mr studfuck. even though he probably wouldve found the album completely ridiculous and disagreed with almost all of its messages and themes, american idiot was the foundation upon which our entire messed up relationship was built upon. (an interesting fact is that i had a boyfriend for the majority of the time i was interested in mr studfuck and ive still never figured out whether what i did counted as cheating since mr studfuck turned out to be using me as a tool to help him figure out how to raise a daughter.)

im listening to american idiot right now and i still really like it. its catchy and its flow as an album is almost perfect. the lyrics however are the stupidest things ive ever heard and ive cringed for the majority of the past 40 minutes. but i still enjoy the album even if it is completely overblown and ridiculous and stupid and contrived and from 2004 (dont quote me on that). if for some reason you dont already have the album you can download it from this link. who knows maybe youll have an extremely confusing political and sexual awakening of your very own.

http://www.mediafire.com/?emjndty2nwx