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them?”
    “Unconvincing. Now, you take hippies. They had a talk, a literature, central figures, splinter groups—a vision. They were political and they were even anti-fashion. Punks are kind of a negation of growth, at best a fad.”
    “That’s not true. Punks have a music, and a style.” But he had a point. I did feel that this was an inopportune time to be young.
    “The only ones who have any kind of legacy are those who have. There’s no distinguishable counter-culture…”
    “What’s in a counter-culture? It isn’t that important,” I responded, sick of hearing him bad mouth “my age.”
    “The counter-culture eventually becomes the culture. Max Eastman, a commie as a youth, was a power-broker when he got older. Angry young men eventually get the reins, still have enough steam in them…”
    “Change the subject.”
    “See, you’re so apathetic, you’re an old man. You should have more of a youthful identity.”
    “Youthful identity?”
    “Sure, did you ever see the film
Woodstock?
You should go to some Woodstock. Where do the young folks gather? You should go there.”
    “Where do young folks gather?” It sounded like a Peter, Paul and Mary tune. With all the free time on my hands, I decided to hunt down someyoung. I got off the R train at Broadway and Eighth and slowly walked down the east side of Broadway. The street was a bustling youth industry. Chic teen stores, stocked with the latest fashions-for-juniors crowded the block. I flowed in and out of each one, pulled like a cork on the consuming post-adolescent sea. Tower Records, appropriately located at the end of this succession, on Fourth Street, was the apex of teen exploitation, the drain at this ditch.
    With MTV-tuned televisions posted every ten feet or so, hung up high but aimed downward precisely at eye level, allied with Dolby-blasted music, this was too much for a youngster to resist. By and large, I found the whole rock ‘n’ roll racket sordid. Motivated by a shameless ocean of dollars, basic adolescent compulsions—principally sex and violence—were serviced. Catchy tunes and sappy lyrics were wound together, moronic DJ’s repetitiously played them out, and by the time they were on Casey Kasem’s “American Top Forty,” most kids felt like pariahs if they didn’t own the selected album.
    Flipping through twenty years of rock albums—the hippie albums of the sixties, the disco motif of the seventies, and on to the punk appeal of the eighties—you could see the development of fashions. The contemporary hype was colorful androgyny, which allowed a kind of guilt-free flirtation with homosexuality. One could feel strange attractions to these semi-boy, semi-girl entertainers that looked like sexy Dr. Seuss creatures.
    It was after five, and the rush hour was in effect. While wedged between angles of sweaty anatomy in the Brooklyn-bound R train, I was subjected to bland disconnected lines of conversation.
    “The man’s not for you Dana, he’s a sex pig.” Another lady as tall as she was wide, squeezed next to me jerkily and pulled off her yak-like coat revealing a sleeveless, tasteless print dress. Like a fish in a filthy aquarium, I kept gasping upward for air. When the train screeched into Rector Street, she fellon me just as I was inhaling open-mouthed. Her bearded armpit sunk into my mouth; it tasted like a Big Mac.
    She unloaded with a herd of people at Whitehall Street, the next stop. Carefully I maneuvered myself into a more guarded position by the door. A girl with an accent and a bunch of luggage was talking to a spindly, oily fellow who looked like a future presidential assassin. “Listen to me, all you have to do is go to Twelfth Street and ask for Miguel. Tell him Tanya sent you. He’s promised me it’s yours.”
    “But I have no idea how to manage a movie theater.”
    “There’s nothing to it. It pays well and it’s the easiest thing in the world.”
    “But I don’t even have a work visa.”
    “Listen,