Teenage Love

~ Purpleanais

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Others fell in love with lead singers of bands, or with actors. I, on the other hand, went in for dead authors.

For Jack Kerouac was the one who made my heart beat faster. To this unhappy, confused and hormonal teenager, Jack was nothing less than a saviour.

I read his words with a religious fervour. My dog-eared and stained copy of “On the Road” was my pride, my treasure. It’s going to sound cheesy and tacky, but can I say Jack was my knight in shining armour? Such a cliché, right? But I can think of nothing better.

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Jack showed me that: not only was there nothing wrong with being a dreamer, but that a life without dreaming was a disaster – a monumental error.

Jack taught me that the necessity to write is all that really matters: fuck the rules, blow them out of the water… with a stick of dynamite and a barrel of gunpowder – write in any way you like, treat it first and foremost as an adventure.

Yeah, you could be a misfit, a loner, it didn’t necessarily make you a loser. Your emotions feed your soul – a light that should burn bright and strong and never ever flicker because, if nothing else, it’s all material for the writer.

Out of the pages of his books, all these things Jack would whisper…
I had it bad: I wanted him, I wanted to be him – what a heartbreaker!
That he was long dead didn’t matter: Jack Kerouac was my first crush, mentor and unlikely lover.

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Image Credit: Galleryhip.com

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30 thoughts on “Teenage Love”

  1. I love this and I can see how it would be easy to connect with a deceased poet, writer, etc. Especially if we feel a kindred spirit with them. That’s neat how that can happen, even across the gap of life and death.

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  3. You inspire me. In love with the honesty with which you write! As soon as it gets over, I wish to read more 😀
    Jack was undoubtedly incredible.
    And I am sure you are leaving a similar image of yourself on your readers’ minds 🙂
    I think I didn’t have a crush but thought of ‘being’ a dead bollywood movie-director Raj Kapoor 😀
    The protagonist in his movies was always a very simple and naive person, bullied by the cunning world and I found it relatable 😀

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  4. Ah, such lovely words! I too had the oddest crushes growing up,Robert Heinlein was one of my favorites. I wanted to be on of his redheaded girls. Then for some reason I fell in love with Robert Shaw in Jaws. He was a novelist and a playwright too. Then there was Nietzsche, his lyrical words and philosophy that always came so close but missed the boat at the last minute.

    So you see, we’re all a bit nutty…. 😉

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    1. Of course there are others who had a profound effect on me as a teenager: right off the top of my head…Somerset Maugham, Marguerite Duras, Marcel Pagnol, Charles Beaudelaire, Henry James, Henry Miller, Poe of course… Kerouac always was and still is my favourite though…If I was to give the name of a woman writer that hugely affected me in my teenage years, then there’s only one choice and that’s Anaïs Nin.

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  8. Discovering Kerouac is a literature reader’s rite of passage–when I discovered him my senior year in high school it was one of those “oh, brave new world” moments. So energetic, and yet so tender–jazz, cars, babe, adventure–old manic Jack set the table for an 18 year old’s voyage into “the canon,” much more than any of the crap teachers threw at us, especially those horrible S. E. Hinton books. I’m not sure that I had ever related to a book like I did to On The Road and Dharma Bums–and while i plunged into the deep, dark pool of dead white men in college I never experienced that electrical charge of recollection again. Close, but not quite.

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    1. Yes! It is like a rite of passage, isn’t it?
      I identify with this, reading On the Road was the defining moment of my teenage years – nothing I had read before had ever had such a profound effect on me.
      Thank you for reading, and for your comment too – I love hearing about other people’s experiences with cherished writers or books.

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  9. Kerouac has been on my to read pile for ages, I need to read him with your glowing recommendation. I think I have had him down as something I wasn’t too fussed about but after this, he’s being elevated up the pile.

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  10. Wonderful post. Jack was certainly a master of words. My two favorites are Elizabeth Barrett Browning ( have a copy of her works from 1904) & Charles Bukowski

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