these groups have signified young people’s refusal to cooperate. In the social order of the American high school, teens are expected to do what they are told—make the grade, win the prize, play the game. Kids who refuse have always found something else to do. Sometimes it kills them; sometimes it sets them free.
In the 1980s, as before, high school kids at the top were the “preps,” “jocks,” or “brains,” depending on the region. In white suburban high schools in towns like Bergenfield, the “burnouts” are often the kids near the bottom—academically, economically, and socially.
To outsiders, they look tough, scruffy, poor, wild. Uninvolved in and unimpressed by convention, they create an alternative world, a retreat, a refuge. Some burnouts are proud; they “wave their freak flags high.” They call themselves burnouts to flaunt their break with the existing order, as a form of resistance, a statement of refusal.
But the meaning changes when “burnout” is hurled by an outsider. Then it hurts. It’s an insult. Everyone knows you don’t call somebody a burnout to their face unless you are looking for a fight. At that point, the word becomes synonymous with “troubled loser,” “druggie”—all the things the press and some residents of the town called the four kids who died together in Tommy Olton’s Camaro.
How did kids in Bergenfield become “burnouts,” I wondered. At what point were they identified as outcasts? Was this a labeling process or one of self-selection? What kinds of lives did they have? What resources were available for them? What choices did they have? What ties did these kids have to the world outside Bergenfield? Where did their particular subculture come from? Why in the 1980s, the Reagan years, in white, suburban America?
What were their hopes and fears? What did heavy metal, Satan, suicide and long hair mean to them? Who were their heroes, their gods? What saved them and what betrayed them in the long, cold night?
And what was this “something evil in the air” that people spoke about? Were the kids in Bergenfield “possessed”? Was the suicide pact an act of cowardice by four “losers,” or the final refuge of kids helplessly and hopelessly trapped? How different was Bergenfield from other towns?
Could kids be labeled to death? How much power did these labels have? I wanted to meet other kids in Bergenfield who were identified as “burnouts” to find out what it felt like to carry these labels. I wanted to understand the existential situation they operated in—not simply as hapless losers, helpless victims, or tragic martyrs, but also as historical actors determined in their choices, resistant, defiant.
Because the suicide pact in Bergenfield seemed to be a symptom of something larger, a metaphor for something more universal, I moved on from there to other towns. For almost two years I spent my time reading thrash magazines, seeing shows, and hanging out with “burnouts” and “dirtbags” as well as kids who slip through such labels….
From the beginning, I decided I didn’t want to dwell too much on the negatives. I wanted to understand how alienated kids survived, as well as how they were defeated. How did they maintain their humanity against what I now felt were impossible odds? I wondered. What keeps young people together when the world they are told to trust no longer seems to work?
What motivates them to be decent human beings when nobody seems to respect them or take them seriously? …
Joe’s1 been up for more than a day already. He’s fried, his clothes are getting crusty, and he points to his armpits and says he smells (he doesn’t). He’s broke, he misses his girlfriend. He says he can’t make it without someone. His girlfriend dumped him last year. He’s gone out with other girls, but it’s not the same. And he knows he can’t win in this town. He’s got a bad name. What’s the use. He’s tried it at least six times. Once he gashed at his vein with an Army knife he picked up in Times Square. He strokes the scars.
Tonight, he says, he’s going to a Bible study class. Some girl he met invited him. Shows me a God pamphlet, inspirational literature. He doesn’t want anyone to know about this, though. He thought the Jesus girl was nice. He’s meeting her at seven. Bobby comes back in the room with Nicky, looking for cigarettes.
Later in the living room Joe teases Doreen. Poking at her, he gets rough. Bobby monitors him: Calm down, Joe. We are just sitting around playing music, smoking cigarettes. Fooling around. Did you see those Jesus freaks down at Cooper’s Pond the other day? Randy laughs. Nicky tells Joe to forget it. Jesus chicks won’t just go with you; you have to date them for a long time, pretend you’re serious about them. They don’t fuck you right away: It’s not worth the bother.
Suicide comes up again. Joan and Susie have razor scars. The guys make Susie show me her freshly bandaged wrists. I look at her. She’s such a beautiful girl. She’s sitting there with her boyfriend, Randy, just fooling around. I ask her quietly: Why are you doing this? She smiles at me seductively. She doesn’t say anything. What the fuck is this, erotic? Kicks? Romantic? I feel cold panic.
Nicky slashed his wrists when his old girlfriend moved out of state. His scars are much older. I motion to him about Susie. Discreetly he says: It’s best just to ignore it, don’t pay too much attention. Throughout the afternoon I try every trick I know to get Susie to talk to me. She won’t. She’s shy, quiet; she’s all inside herself.
And I really don’t want to push too hard. The kids say they’re already going nuts from all the suicide-prevention stuff. You can’t panic. But I have to figure out if this is a cult, a fad, a hobby, or something I’m supposed to report to the police. I’m afraid to leave.
I wonder, do they know the difference between vertical and horizontal cuts? Don’t their parents, their teachers, the cops, and neighbors see this shit going on? Maybe they feel as confused as I do. Maybe this is why they didn’t see it coming here, and in the other towns. You can’t exactly go around strip-searching teenagers to see if they have slash wounds….
After the suicide pact, parents complained that the kids really did need somewhere to go when school let out. The after-school activities were limited to academics, sports, or organized school clubs. Even with part-time after-school jobs, a number of the town’s young people did not find the conventional activities offered by the town particularly intriguing.
But according to established adult reasoning, if you didn’t get absorbed into the legitimate, established routine of social activity, you’d be left to burn out on street corners, killing time, getting wasted. It was impossible for anyone to imagine any autonomous activity that nonconforming youth en masse might enjoy that would not be self-destructive, potentially criminal, or meaningless.
Parents understood that the lack of “anything to do” often led to drug and alcohol abuse. Such concerns were aired at the volatile meeting in the auditorium of Bergenfield High School. It was agreed that the kids’ complaint of “no place to go” had to be taken seriously. Ten years ago, in any suburban town, teenagers’ complaints of “nothing to do” would have been met with adult annoyance. But not anymore.
In Bergenfield, teenage boredom could no longer be dismissed as the whining of spoiled suburban kids. Experts now claimed that national rates of teenage suicide were higher in suburbs and rural areas because of teen isolation and boredom. In Bergenfield, adults articulated the fact that many local kids did hang out on street corners and in parks looking for drugs because things at home weren’t too good.
Youngsters have always been cautioned by adults that the devil would make good use of their idle hands. But now they understood something else: boredom led to drugs, and boredom could kill. Yet it was taken for granted that if you refused to be colonized, if you ventured
