With an ingratiating style very similar to David Sedaris, performance artist David Crabb's Bad Kid has the ability to describe horrifying events and make them both hilarious and touching. Growing up gay in the early 1990s in San Antonio, Tex., was tough, but Crabb honed his navigation skills and found acceptance among a high school subset of drug-fueled goth kids.
Crabb begins his first day of high school believing he can keep his gayness undercover, but, "By the time fifth-period gym class rolled around, I had never been more sure I was gay," writes Crabb after surreptitiously observing the hyper-masculine junior and senior boys. Gym class is perilous ("Don't look down, don't look down...," he warns himself in the locker room) but it's also where he meets his first friend, Greg.
With Greg by his side, Crabb's circle of friends expands to goth kids who experiment with all forms of getting high. They start with marijuana, ecstasy and tabs of acid, and progress to huffing VCR head cleaner fluid and drinking freon engine coolant from cars. While Crabb tries to figure out if Greg is interested in him romantically, he meets a towering skinhead named Max who professes to be straight but is very tactile. These new friends are "brash, flighty, messy kids" but even when they're reckless and destructive, they're building a support system for each other. The group's drunken misadventures and search for love, thrills and acceptance is not a cautionary tale but an ode to friendships and finding your place in the world. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant