Why Millennials Resent Boomers
A Covid Parable
I have come to the conclusion that young people hate us baby boomers, and who can blame them.
Most of us have had good jobs (and maybe still do), good health insurance, and are doing quite well. If you have any doubts about this, the next time you go to an expensive restaurant look around and you’ll think you’re in a senior center. What must it be like for Millennials to wait on us overfed, well-funded boomers while they’re forced to work a variety of shitty jobs, with lousy or no health care, as they try to pay off college loans they readily took on after being promised dream jobs after graduation in the early 2000s.
My guess is that some of them were probably not disappointed when Covid only took out about 800,000 of us–and counting. I remember how expendable they thought we were, not caring to wear masks or to do anything to protect us. How does such insensitivity make one feel? Well, a guy named Roy, the main character of the following short story, is about to let you know.
The Expendable
Roy had been to his share of concerts: Led Zeppelin’s first tour, performed in a symphony music hall with acoustics so fine-tuned that the opening notes from “Dazed and Confused” penetrated one’s soul like the choral wails of a Greek tragedy; that hot, tightly packed Eagles’ concert in the community college’s sweaty gymnasium where people poured beers over their heads to cool off; and Fleetwood Mac playing in an anonymous little bar in Woonsocket, Rhode Island before anyone had the common sense to fall in love with Stevie Nicks. He’d even seen Big Brother and the Holding Company, when, in the middle of moaning “Get It While You Can,” Janis Joplin took a swig of Southern Comfort, leaned over, and kissed him on his sixteen-year-old cheek, whispering “Honey Boy” into his ear. Was that story true? Probably, but so many details had been added over the years that even he couldn’t remember what had actually happened.
Each concert was memorable for some girl he had met or baggie of outrageous grass he had copped, or for the pleasure of battling a crowd to get so close to the band that he could watch the drummer go through progressions, sweat spraying everything in a four-foot radius. That’s what his instrument was in his teenage band called “Sisyphus”—a name whose existential resonances rarely registered with the band’s stoned high school audiences. Maybe one reason Roy was so patient with his grandson Jacob’s current adventure was because he himself had come precariously close to falling into the abyss.
But Roy wasn’t going to completely throw in the towel, which explains why he found himself at a local park among an unmasked crowd of teenagers who had decided to defy quarantine orders to listen to a rap artist appropriately called “The Black Plague.” The point of this gathering was to stick it to the governor for shutting down the city, instead of letting the virus run its course—a strategy the kids, who proudly called themselves “The Survivors,” were arguing for, conusings the notion of herd immunity with cold-blooded social Darwinism. In a way, Roy sympathized with their frustration. In spite of his three preexisting conditions, he didn’t expect people to lose their jobs and live on the street to save his ass.
But that wasn’t what these kids were up to. The most radical of them had labeled Roy and his peers “The Expendables.” They were sick of being marginalized while, as one of their leaders with a penchant for alliteration put it, “fat cat old farts feed their faces every night at fancy restaurants and brag about their pensions.” Their solution? Let the oldsters and the poor and the sick die. Surely that would open up a hell of a lot of jobs, or at least that’s how Roy interpreted their motives.
Roy knew Jacob was too smart to swallow such bullshit. He sensed that the only reason Jacob was wandering among these lost souls was to satisfy his new girlfriend’s curiosity—the girl Jacob’s father was fond of calling, “Miss NG,” short, for “Miss No Good.” True, Jacob had morphed from being an “A” student, a martial arts expert, and an all-state soccer goalie to throwing himself into his music and studying something called Zoroastrianism, but as far Roy knew, he hadn’t caused any mischief. No problems with drugs, booze, or violence.
The girl’s name was Astra, a skinny little waif with a fascination for all things black: pitch black dyed hair cut severely into bangs, heavy black mascara, flimsy black above-the-knee skirts with shredded black lace stockings, and black leather boots suitable for stomping out a nation of rats. Roy had slept with his share of Astras in the '60s, so he didn’t find her threatening. He even liked Astra’s provocative nature, as when she insisted on calling him “Jacob’s Grandpa.” “I would prefer to be called Roy,” he had said, to which Astra had replied, “Let’s stick to Jacob’s Grandpa. A certain nobility to that, don’t you think?” Then she smiled and rubbed the top of his balding head as lovingly as if she were fondling a crystal ball, ax her metal bracelets jangled like Christmas bells.
Roy liked that kind of spunk, so he thought it a bit histrionic when Jacob’s father insisted Astra had “coerced” Jacob into participating in a “flash mob,” a phrase that drove Roy to the Internet. Jacob’s father had gotten it into his head to drive to the impromptu concert and “drag Jacob home by his earlobe.” Understanding the irrevocable Oedipal damage such an intervention would cause, Roy set off on his own. He understood the risk of infection, but he was sick of sitting around the house, everyone treating him as if he were fragile. He was sick of being stranded on the fearful landscape of Covid-19, listening to one talking head after another gleefully proclaim that the virus was the “Angel of Death” for those over seventy. Fuck you, Roy thought, as he grabbed a few sky-blue surgical masks and hopped into his Ford Focus, feeling alive for the first time in three months.
He reached a place called Independence Park around 10 p.m. He’d been there many times before. It was a quaint little park next to a river fed by the tidal waters of Narragansett Bay, almost entirely grass-covered except for a statue of an anonymous general straddling a horse while waving a saber over his head. It was a venue for symphony concerts and poorly acted Shakespearean plays, though people came mostly because it was an idyllic place to lay down a blanket or unfold a beach chair and enjoy sandwiches and soda from one’s cooler or favorite street vendor. No drinking was allowed, which kept troublemakers out.
But now the park looked like something out of a medieval painter’s idea of hell. Young people roamed about like lost dogs, howling unintelligibly at an invisible enemy. Some were hopping around as if the ground were on fire. Others had somehow gotten their hands on torches and were running through the crowd, so that, at twenty yards from the rim of the park, the protest looked like a fire pit ready to jettison its embers into the humid night.
Roy could smell cigarettes, incense, and weed. He hung around the periphery for a few minutes, wondering how he might work his way into the crowd and find Jacob. The stage was about thirty yards away, and it appeared that the “The Black Plague” was taking a break. In his place, rap was blaring from two enormous speakers. It wasn’t the kind of rap Roy liked. Not Tupac or Biggie or Eminem, but rap composed overnight by some one-week wonder, who would repeat a catchy phrase so many times Roy felt as if someone was hammering a sixteen-penny nail into his forehead. Roy imagined Jacob, who himself was into punk and classic rock, wincing at such a cacophony of crap.
“You a cop?” he heard from behind.
Roy turned to see a short, muscled blond kid in a black wifebeater standing in front of him, holding a sign that proclaimed, in what looked like red lipstick, SURVIVORS KICK ASS. He was with a friend, a nervous-looking creature, whose face was frozen into a Joker-like grin that revealed a metallic grill, itself flickering from the glow of the torches. His sign, appearing to be scratched in charcoal, read, FUCK THE MOTHERFUCKER EXPENDABLES.
On his way to the flash mob, Roy had been searching for an emotion—anger, fear, worry—to get him through the night, and this little jerk had come through. “Must have worked a lot of hours at McDonald’s to get that grill,” he said.
The blond kid laughed, while the kid with the grill said, “What?”
“Let it go Paco,” the blond kid said. “He’s just funnin’ you.”
“No one talks to Paco like that, Heat. Fucking Expendable. Trying to commit suicide or some shit by coming here. Take off the fucking mask, you baby.”
Which made Roy remember the reason for his trip. “I’m trying to find my grandson.”
“Why?” the blond kid named Heat said.
“It’s not safe here.”
“Nothing’s safe, Gramps. Nothing Nowhere.”
“Why you talking to this Expendable?” Paco said. “We oughta to kick his ass just for the fun of it.”
Heat grabbed a fistful of Paco’s black T-shirt. “Just disappear, dude,” he said, then let go of the shirt and pushed the kid into the crowd, which happily swallowed him. Heat tossed his poster to the ground as if it disgusted him. “You better go home, Gramps. The cops will be here soon and heads will surely get busted.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Roy said.
Heat smirked, then grimaced. “Why you want to ruin my night, Gramps?”
“How can I do that?”
“Because now I have to help you find your punk-ass grandson, and with that mask on you’re going to stand out like a fucking lighthouse.”
“Why bother?” Roy asked.
“Wish the fuck I knew. Just follow me and stay tight. I don’t wanna know what the dude looks like. That’s your business. I’ll walk point, you know, make a path, and then you’re on your own.”
Roy nodded, shadowing Heat as they weaved through the crowd.
At first Roy had trouble keeping up, but once he took a few hard bumps, the adrenaline kicked in, and he learned to brace himself before careening into a protester, even knocking a few on their asses. “What the fuck?” he heard as one kid went down, followed by another who said, “Wasn’t that Heat?” So Heat was someone of importance, Roy thought, though he didn’t have time to dwell on that. Heat was heading for the stage, which is where Roy spotted Jacob and Astra standing near a large amplifier. He tugged on Heat’s T-shirt as a signal to stop, then pointed to Jacob.
“That’s it for me, Gramps,” Heat said, until he noticed what Roy was also staring at: Astra was yelling at three guys, while two other kids held Jacob by his arms. One of the punks was the kid with the grill.
“This isn’t going to end well,” Heat said.
“You can leave if you want to,” Roy said.
“You don’t know what that little shit’s capable of, Gramps.”
Roy took off his mask.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m going to talk to them.”
Heat shook his head. “Look, just follow me and do what you can, then scat. What’s your name, Gramps?”
“Roy.”
“Well, Roy, you’re about to have a memorable night.”
Before Roy could protest, Heat moved quickly toward the three kids who had circled Astra and were poking index fingers into her side. When they saw Heat, one of them said, “Whoa, Heat, dude.” In response, Heat punched Paco in the face, then yelled, “Shit,” shaking his hand, which had been ripped open by the hardware from Paco’s grill. Another guy was about to jump Heat from behind, but when Jacob saw Roy, his martial arts training kicked in. After that, everything happened fast, Astra and Roy even getting in a few kicks before all four of them pushed their way back through the crowd, eventually ending up on the periphery, panting. Roy had his hands on his knees and was laughing. Astra tore off a piece of her skirt and handed it to Heat, who wrapped it around his injured hand, shaking his head at Roy. “You’re really something, Gramps,” he said, then walked off as if nothing had happened.
“Jesus, Grandpa,” Jacob said. “What’s so funny? Look at your face.”
Still bent over, Roy rubbed a little bump rising from his cheek, then Astra helped him to straighten up. “I think Jacob’s Grandpa liked stomping on that kid with the grill,” she said.
“You okay, Jacob?” Roy asked.
“Am I okay? All these kids were breathing on you, Grandpa.”
“I’ll explain it to your dad,” Roy said.
“I don’t care about him. I care about you getting sick.”
“It was a dumb night, anyway,” Astra said. “None of these kids care about anything. They just want trouble.” She put her head on Jacob’s chest, and he held her close to him. “I fucked up,” she said, and then to Roy, “We’re going to keep our eye on you, Jacob’s Grandpa, and if you get sick, we’re going to take care of you.”
“I wasn’t here long enough to get sick,” Roy said.
“Jesus, Grandpa,” Jacob said. “What we’re you thinking of?”
Roy was thinking about a hot night in 1970 when he discovered himself at an outdoor stadium in Toronto. The band Ten Years After was playing. Roy was stoned from smoking little balls of hash he’d hidden in the studs of his metal jeans when he and his friends had crossed the Peace Bridge in his yellow-and-black 1959 Rambler American. At the concert, on his way to the bathroom, a girl had grabbed him by the arm and started dancing with him, eventually easing up close and rubbing her crotch against his thigh. She had long blond hair and jean cut-offs. She wore white cowboy boots and had a quarter-size tattoo of a red ladybug on her forehead. As they danced, her boyfriend came out of nowhere and shoved Roy, starting a fight that ended with Roy punching the kid flush on the nose.
Later, he and the girl ended up in the backseat of his Rambler as Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” provided background music for their lovemaking. When they were done, she gave him her phone number and said she wanted to take him to the “submarine races” next week. “Submarine races?” he had asked. “You’ll see,” she had replied. But he never had the chance. The number she had given him was fake. Sometimes he wondered if she had even existed, or if the hash had been laced with acid, or if his muddled old memory had transformed a one-night stand into another old-guy 1960s fantasy.
“Grandpa?” Jacob repeated, snapping Roy out of his reverie. “What were you thinking?’
Roy felt his heart racing. “I was thinking about a girl. Or maybe she was a ghost.”
“You stroking out on me, Grandpa?” Jacob said, grabbing one of Roy’s hands, as Astra grabbed the other. “Come on, let’s get you home,” Jacob added.
“Yeah,” Astra said, “Jacob’s Grandpa’s got a lot of explainin’ to do.”
Before Roy could respond, two patrol cars, with lights flashing, squealed into the parking lot, unloading cops dressed in riot gear. Jacob and Astra picked up their pace, which caused Roy’s mask to fall from his pocket and flutter to the ground like a dead leaf. Astra reached down to retrieve it, but Roy said, “Just keep moving or the bastards will get you.”
“You mean the cops?” Astra said, a question that for some reason made Roy laugh, before breaking free of them and jogging ahead, not sure where he wanted to go. A salty onshore breeze filled his lungs as he picked up his pace, and he thought of the ghost-girl again, wondering what she had meant by “submarine races.”
Heat was right, he thought. It had turned out to be memorable night, and resting peacefully in bed an hour later, he was grateful for the swirl and sparkle of it.
You can find Peter Johnson’s books, along with interviews with him, appearances, and other information at peterjohnsonauthor.com
His most recent book of prose poems is While the Undertaker Sleeps: Collected and New Prose Poems
His most recent book of fiction is Shot: A Novel in Stories
Find out why he is giving away his new book of prose poem/fragments, even though he has a publisher for it, by downloading the PDF from the below link or going to OLD MAN’S homepage. His “Note to the Reader” and “Introduction” at the beginning of the PDF explains it all: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss