Edge and Interesting

I want to talk about straight-edge and its place in a culture built so heavily on drinking. Yeah, it's not that funny, but it's my blog, so who's gonna stop me? It’s going to run to two editions of Woe, so this is part 1.

I recently read a tweet from a man who said ‘No, he wasn’t straight-edge. He was just boring.’ This man shall be known as A Damn Lasagne. Should my gun become intimate with his head, my friends will be informed.

Now, for those of you who are unaware (of which there are doubtless many), straight-edge is a movement started in the 80s by such punk legends as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye. Originally, it was a reaction to the punk scene at the time, which was more than happy to ingest anything that looked like it might produce some sort of buzz. A straight-edge individual refrains from taking drugs, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. Some also do not have unmarried sex, although that phenomenon is exclusive to America, as in Britain couples stop having sex as soon as they get married.

Today, the straight-edge (hereafter shortened to sXe, which is apparently the official shorthand. The more you know.) movement has a fairly strong following in the USA, to the extent that it’s nearly a subculture in its own right. However, it’s still relatively unknown in Britain. Thus endeth your potted history.

So, in the one context of which I’m aware—university—how would being sXe make a person boring?

Obviously, there’s the issue of fitting in. At university, people have escaped the crushing conformity of their teenage years. They’re their own person. An individual. Unfortunately, this means that without hobbies they’re fucked. And what student can afford hobbies?

So, how do they get around being a faceless stranger in a mass of strangers? Drink incessantly, of course. Students—can you remember Fresher’s Week? No? That’s not surprising, because it’s pretty much built on you getting completely wankered and meeting the people you’ll be friends with for the next three years.

See, sXe freshers are slightly buggered by this, because they don’t get to be drunk. Being drunk is a great insulation against humanity, not to mention the way it raises your threshold for shitty ambience. I could be hanging with Robert Mugabe in a slurry pit, and I wouldn’t care if I was drunk enough.

You don’t get that kind of barrier between yourself and reality as a straight-edger, and as such a lot of the sXe among us avoid nightclubs. Can you blame them? I’m probably the least cunty drunk there is (these days. I’ve had some hairy moments in the screaming void where my past would be if I wasn’t suppressing it all) and I still wouldn’t put up with my wasted self if I was sober.

I believe that no-one’s in any real position to talk about something unless they’ve tried it (with the exception of reviewing. Imagine if every film critic was also a filmmaker or actor or something. Jesus). So, much like genocide, rape and dolphin lobotomy, I’m going to experiment with sXe. I plan to have one regular night out as a control, one straightedge night out and one night where I get absolutely shitfaced. The results will be found in my very next article, One sXe Motherfucker.

Incidentally, the best way to lobotomise a dolphin is by sticking an ice-pick in its blowhole and wiggling it around until you hear something crack.

Not judging anyone for not taking drugs,
Nick