I guffawed at the thought, seeing myself through the eyes of others (and if I’m being honest, myself) as being even more slumped and ridiculous-looking, the opposite of the jacket’s promise of timeless, defiant cool. She insisted she wasn’t joking and that us punks didn’t care what other people thought we looked like and that was kind of the point. I asked her why she didn’t have one and she said she wouldn’t wear dead animal hide. I pointed at her leather Doc Martens, and she curled her lip at me. What I really wanted was a jacket like Mercy’s. I could maybe pull that off (probably not), but I couldn’t be that pitiable. Or I could, but I chose not to. I told her what I needed was a punk starter kit, and start slow, maybe cut a hole or two into my jeans, see how it went from there. Figuring a jean jacket was a workable compromise between leather and her army jacket, I did the unpunk thing of asking Mom to get me one for Xmas. Excited that I was showing even the slightest interest in fashion, she obliged and sent me to the mall with fifty bucks to pick it out myself. I won’t detail the amount of angst and indecision that went into the choice. Suffice to say I purchased a severely acid-washed jean jacket with no hint of its original hue. It was too big for me, but I didn’t mind being loose within the bleached denim. I handed the jacket over to Mom when I got home, and she promptly wrapped it and put it under the Christmas tree. On Xmas morning (upon seeing the jacket again, with new holiday eyes, I wondered if it was somehow a mistake, because I couldn’t enjoy a fleeting moment of happiness without an undercurrent of self-inflicted dread), I ritualistically arranged my pins on the lapels. I wore the jacket around the house before we left for my grandparents’ house, breaking it and the look in. I did not dare go to school with the jacket on, but I wore it on weekends, an inapposite outer shell covering my funeral-home finery. When Mercy saw me in the jacket for the first time, she didn’t hesitate to give her approval. Well, she said “Rad” in a mocking way, but she was not mocking me. Her “rad” was self- and culture-mocking.

Umm … sure.

We relegated our hangouts to after funeral services. We did not see each other on weekdays. The Sundays after the Pallbearers Club outings were hangover-like crashes (not that I’d experienced a hangover yet). I slept well past noon and could barely muster the energy later in the day to go to work or to do homework or my back-strengthening and stretching exercises.