Punk Rock--When I Lived On The Darkside

His name was Spike, not his name of birth, but his name on the hardened streets of Dallas, Texas.  I met him while a teenager living in Richardson and I myself not fitting in with my old blue Ford pickup among a sea of foreign cars that'd park the High School I attended that year. 

Downtown Dallas' buildings where punk rock bands played loudly and wildly inside, my rag-tag friends and I would hang just outside. Combat boots,  Army jackets, hair-defying gravity of gel and moose, bizarre make-up, artsy folk-types, and skateboarders would've found me right smack in the middle of them.

It was outside one of these punk clubs with these friends, I met Spike. It was brief, but it left an impression after all these years.

This was a kid, not much older than me, who lived on the streets and some nights on a friend's couch. He had run away from a home of pain. His mohawk hair was spiked, it seemed, 12 inches or so.

He told us his secret hair product that allowed it to go skyward like a freakshow in a circus.  We were amazed and I for one was a little awed.  But his hair wasn't the inspiration for Spike, I know because I asked him. 

It was what he wore around his neck. A huge railroad spike on a heavy silver chain. The spike like a symbol of the pain that pierced his very soul and bound him like the chain on his neck.

That circle of friends and time in my life comes in hindsight. In all our wild clothes, prickly hair, 'rebellious'-in-your-face-shock-value, we were wearing our pain, anger and rejection like a badge of 'honor'.

In a way to express all the things we couldn't say, our appearance said it for us and we'd dare the world to look.  Right into the eye of mainstream, we even ventured a trip to some fancy shops at the Galleria mall. There they either tried to avoid us, rejecting us off-handedly. Or they'd stare with various kinds of expressions even followed us like the criminals they suspected us to be.

We weren't surprised by it all because we expected those things.

I remember under all that camouflage, I didn't want others to meet my expectation. I secretly yearned for the unexpectation of a 'normal' someone's boldness to embrace this wild me.

As strange as I looked, I dared even stranger for the opposite of rejection and have someone accept. A miracle waiting to touch any precious one of these in my circle back then.

So it is, I think of Spike and wonder if he was ever able to lay down the chain. Haunted by the home he left for the unmerciful streets, did he ever finding a resting place for that railroad piercing on his neck? A resting place for the soul that wandered for a home?

I'm hoping Spike had an encounter with some daring folk who looked in the face of pain, turmoil, and anger and accepted. For the miracle of Jesus is not only His piercing and death raised alive, but also His life that vibrates under earthly skin, today.

Not only one Man, Jesus, but now many men and women, Jesus' manifolded by His Spirit lays under skin of ones called His own. May we see with spiritual eyes beyond things on the surface. Like Christ who looked straight into the heart and accepted us badges and all, may we Him to others.


"And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man." 1 Corinthian 15:49

"Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, 'If You are willing, You can make me clean.' Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, 'I am willing; be cleansed.'" Mark 1:40, 41

"..And for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.." Ephesians 6:19

Ps. We hightailed it out of Dallas because of my punk-rocky ways and landed in Georgia. There my family was restored from the drama I put them through on those Dallas streets. My parents did what they could to remove me from that slippery slope. Deep down I was very thankful. However I was still a teenager and didn't always 'fess up to that thankfulness.