I Was A Teenage Boiled Angel

-fs

Holly Day

I think the best advice I ever got from my father was this: if you’re going to break the rules, don’t get caught. This is just about the only thing I took away from hours and hours of rambling lectures on drugs, staying out past curfew, sex – you name it. Rule Number One. So it really didn’t surprise me too much (or actually, it did, because it was such a stupid move on his part) when, along with my contributor copies of Boiled Angel #6, Michael Diana prefaced the ‘zine complaining that he had been fired from his public school job (I think he was a janitor or something) because he got caught using the school’s photocopier to print up #6 – “The Satanic Sex Issue.” Using the office photocopier to make copies of Jesus’ uncircumcised penis is just a bad idea to begin with, hands down.

What did surprise me, however, was the big fuss that came afterwards. I have to admit, I ignored most of it, because I really thought it’d just blow over. Especially when all the big free-speech advocates got involved – I thought for sure that Pinellas County would go broke compensating Diana for all the trouble they’d put him through. I believed this so strongly that I ignored advice from many intelligent friends in California and accepted a college scholarship to the University of Tampa – about 20 miles from where Michael actually lived. Hell, I was a high school drop-out with nothin’ but a bunch of ‘zine credits under my belt, who else was going to offer me $40,000 to play college student?

In Florida, I quickly learned to not mention Boiled Angel , especially after discovering that the wife of the professor that had lured me to UT had actually served as a witness in the Diana case – on the side of the state. I also learned to pick my poetry out carefully when asked to read at school and off-campus functions – look, I never said I was brave. I just write the crap, I don’t actually live it.

But anyway, this whole thing has really gotten out of hand. It ain’t murder, it ain’t stealing, it’s Art, and just comic-book art at that. It’s entirely subjective, and bound to offend someone out there, no matter what you’re drawing or painting or doodling. And yeah, Michael made some pretty silly mistakes with Boiled Angel that Got Him Caught (see: Rule Number One). But Christ, if every kid out there got in that much trouble for being just plain dumb, we’d all be in jail. At least I sure the hell would.

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Holly Day’s published pieces in Boiled Angel :

5: “Brotherly Love,” “Old Loves”

6: “Journey,” “Icepick,” “Babykiller”

7: “Pickup Truck”

(All poems about being in love with some guy that was 10 years older than me and played accordion in a really cool band, all written when I was sixteen). ◼