Joey Does the Straw Thing

Joey had never thought about leaving home before. He guessed that it had always been inevitable, but somehow it seemed only a distant possibility before today. He gave his brother Bowie a handshake and a clap on the shoulder and kissed his sister goodbye, then wandered down the road toward a nearby stream where he knew his mates hung out at a muddy embankment.

They were all drinking espresso or Cointreau and they were all wearing black. A few were declaiming about Post-Modernism and the writings of Fu-cow. Most were wallowing in a sense of weltschmerz. One friend who was known to be a particularly intense young artist was drawling drunkenly, "Jeez man, we've got no future. Our parents are wrecking the place and there's nothing we can do about it."

Joey wasn't certain that he agreed with his friend's sentiment but, hey, he couldn't imagine a future either, it was just too much work. When another friend offered him some straw and space on his dad's land to squat, it seemed as good as anything else he could do for himself. So, he built himself a house of straw. He then used his pennies to buy himself a second hand computer, modem, a connection to the Internet so he could play on ChibaWOO, and a bunch of Nirvana posters.

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Copyright May 1996 Katherine Phelps
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