This bedspread from the Iris Kirby thrift store on Prescott Street seems a lot more punk as a jacket. It started in October of '92 and ended several sporadic attachments of second hand beads, buttons and chains later. I just remember wearing it for the first time the following year.

It lived my music. I hoped punk and smiled at everybody. I believed punk and everybody smiled at me - including two boyish-lookin' curly-haired Russian sailors. They staggered out of a club on Water Street pink-eyed and blank-faced. Strange towns stir a weird hollow purring of spirit. It inspires a warm (or cold) curiosity to see a shy punk in a bangly, jangly jacket… especialy when you're sloshed. It was all in the way they looked at me. They wanted to take me home… to babushka. I was only nineteen.

I still remember the first day I wore it. Every human interaction revolved around that jacket. Just ask the kid in the park. Fifteen is much too young for nineteen but he dropped his bike at the bench and joined me anyway. Was he attracted to the jacket or me? No matter. I always found myself alone, a shy high school dropout in a punk jacket. School failed me but I never failed school. I returned like a woman of the punk should, confidence armed with my bright orange bangly, jangly jacket. Wouldn't Iris Kirby be proud?