all i ever wanted was to be a hipster 😭

A look at one of the most informative books of my young, dumb life.

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The book was Robert Lanham’s The Hipster Handbook. It was on one of the front tables at the Borders in Augusta, Georgia, in the shopping center that neither had the Target nor had the Party City: it was the other one, the one next to Logan’s Roadhouse before you got on Bobby Jones Expressway.

I was there with my brother, who was probably going to look at either World War II books or Star Trek DVDs. I was likely going to look at books about abstract painting or to see if any new Kylie Minogue CDs had come in. It was the summer between junior and senior year. He and I were working for a landscaper and were making more money than we had before. He was in charge of the more heavy duty equipment (the edger, the hedge trimmer) while I was in charge of the lawnmower, with the responsibility of never “burning” the grass. We did what we always did after work: ride in his Geo Metro to this Borders to look at things, before going to the MovieStop to see what used movies were on sale. If I was lucky, there would be a new Criterion movie (Somehow!) on sale. It was rare but it happened.

The book was bright blue and of a very short stack, only two or three thin books high. The cover had a woman holding a martini and a man holding a guitar, both depicted in detailed, darker blue silhouette. They looked cool, by design. I flipped through the various lists, taxonomies, and illustrations and realized that I had found a crucial detail in my life’s plan: this was a guide for escaping a small town, for leaving the south, and for moving on from the trappings of a military family — to become cool in a place like New York or Los Angeles. That’s all I ever wanted to be: cool. I knew I was called to the greatness of a walkable city instead of the trappings of a place where Tony Roma’s was the best you could do on a Friday night. It was 2003. What else was there to life at 16?

I bought the book — and studied and studied it. I spent the summer reading and rereading the book, highlighter in hand. I started to make a map out of this place, while also creating a scaffolding to ensure that I was able to be an artist (preferably a painter, maybe a fashion designer or actor) and to not-be-gay, which was what many people jokingly (and not-so-jokingly) referred to me as, both at home and at school, at church and literally anywhere else that I was. It was so obvious for me to be gay given the name calling, not to mention it being antithetical to my being Catholic. I did all I could to not-be-gay, from praying that I would find a girlfriend (like Kylie Minogue) to trying to think about naked women (like Kylie Minogue) whenever I got an erection. My love of dressing as flamboyantly as possible didn’t help, not to mention that some people in my life still called me “Princess,” a nickname from middle school that never quite went away.

But this book. This book was going to save me! There were people like me in this book, people that I wanted to be in this book. I would become a hipster, if I wasn’t one already. Was I one? I wasn’t sure. Thankfully, The Hipster Handbook offered very clear definitions and directions so that I could mold myself in its image.