Skins pisses me off. Truly. The moment I saw Cassie shagging her way through her angst-ridden teen life I was instantly jealous. There I was, sat on the cold hard floor of my flea-ridden student house and all I had to look forward to were a few £1.50 trebles at the local dive bar while these teens were getting high at abandoned warehouses to avoid their A-Level Biology write-ups.
WORDS: LISA BOWMAN
I felt pretty fucking un-cool but thought I’d gotten over it until I took a little trip to Benicassim last week, and struggled to find anyone my own age outside my own circle of friends. To add to my insecurities I came back from the beach one day to find someone had shoved a tent in a little plot we’d claimed as our own. Hoping for a silver lining, I crossed my fingers for a hottie but alas, the tent’s occupants weren’t startlingly beautiful males as hoped, but two cocky seventeen year old girls. One of whom proceeded to flaunt her massive, perky assets around the place whilst I sat there with my sweaty hair piled on my head trying to conceal my distinctly average (read: tiny) offerings. Bi-atch. They seemed pretty young, so when we questioned if it was a good idea them buying the amount of drugs they did off the least stealth dealer ever (I really didn’t want them dying on my doorstep, what a mess), they simply looked me up and down and retorted, “We’re not that innocent you know.” Sadly, they didn’t die.
Trying to escape these young beasts, I popped to the bathroom to find a curiously dressed boy perched on the wall with a ghetto blaster (have I just aged three years by using that word?), while a crowd of kooky little things were living it up below him, eating each other’s faces, writhing on the floor, and generally acting like they were having ‘just like omgz the best time ever (LOL)’. In a fucking toilet. I felt pretty damn pathetic just wanting to brush my teeth and have a quick wee.
When I was 17, my life consisted of sneaking into the local Yates with my friend’s ID or getting wasted on cheap vodka and dancing to Busted at 18th birthday parties. I hadn’t even touched weed, let only Class A’s. Plus I’d been led to believe if you so much as sniffed drugs YOU WOULD DIE (Leah Betts anyone?). So seeing these kids on their own at a festival in a foreign country, dropping pills like Parma Violets, made me feel like I wasted my teen years. I should have been out there, chasing death and playing STD roulette. Instead, my only risk of dying was from getting in a car with my friend who couldn’t drive for shit.
Now, wherever I am, however much fun I’m having, I never feel like I’m drinking enough/doing enough drugs/sleeping with enough randoms. At 23, when these kids are what, 17? I know I’m not old but I feel like I wasted my prime. I suppose at least all these wild young things will be in rehab/riddled with disease/dead by the time they’re my age. And I’ll feel pretty smug. If a little dull.
