Anyway, ladies and gentlemen I present Tess and Ocky. Tess is 15 years old and a neighbour of mine. She is kind of like an indie but her friend Ocky - 14 years old and by Tess’s analysis not as mature - thinks that maybe they’re just wannabe indies, which is to say windies.
When they are not doing anything they are not chillin’ anymore, they are illchin’, which is like chillin’ but different and doesn’t rhyme with “like Bob Dylan”. Tess and Ocky are quite preoccupied with emos, which are kind of like goths. Some of them are stoners. Some of them make little cuts on themselves. They are called emos because they are rather emotional, which explains the little cuts.
Not everyone can be an emo. There are wemos, which are wannabe emos, and memos, which are mistaken emos. The latter is someone who is not an emo but is confused for one. I can’t personally explain how this happens but apparently it does.
There are also lads, who are, to quote Tess, “like mainstream guys and wear, like, the polo shirts”. There are also wiggers (white guys who think they are black) and chiggers (Chinese guys who think they are black). But Tess and Ocky are in no way racist. “We sit with the cool Asians,” they tell me. These are called hasians, which is short for hot Asians.
There are skinny guys, who suffer from manorexia, and browned up girls who suffer from tanorexia. These are known as tandooris. The feral pretties at Tess and Ocky’s school, for example, are tandooris. It is reassuring that the 14-to-15-year-old demographic does not approve of drugs – apart from the occasional emo stoner. Cocaine, although never sighted, is referred to as the devil’s dandruff. How this comes up in conversation I do not know.
If they care a lot about something - “I care about the music,” Tess assures me - they might say “this is my jam”. Something particularly good is a breeze of brill, something bad is flag. I do not believe this is an anti-patriotic statement but with kids today you can never be sure.
They also employ a large amount of French, which I naturally find disturbing, but this is largely used to describe bad things, as in the phrase tres tragique. An unattractive person might be referred to as fugly but I am assured they are never unkind enough to say this to someone’s face. When they are experiencing high self-esteem the girls consider themselves to be indie-credible. I asked them to put this in a sentence and they said: “Tess and Ocky are indie-credible, fo’shizzle.” I am yet to clarify this further.
On less positive days they wonder if perhaps they are just windies but on reflection Tess is more certain of her status. “We’re on the indie train, platform one coz I’m number one, sucka,” she explains. I had been under the impression that the term juicy was also used to describe something good, however it turns out this is a brand of clothing - albeit, I am informed, a good brand.
The girls are also philosophical. Holding forth on the interplay between inner beauty and the aesthetic demands of an image-driven society, Tess observes: “You can’t polish a turd.” Asked to expound further, she says: “You can’t make somebody ugly look pretty. I never say that but. I’m not that mean, I’m a pretty cool chick.”
Should you find Tess and Ocky at a soiree, you might see them crumping. This is a form of dance, as Tess explains: “It’s like in, um, like rap videos.” If you see them you might want to say “What’s the hap?” When you depart, you simply inform them “I’m outie”. I asked Tess and Ocky how normal people were ever supposed to understand them and both agreed they never would. This is, according to Ocky, because “we are the rulez” although Tess thought it was also perhaps due to the fact that “I am a free spirit”.
But it was Tess’s final words that will stay with me forever, dancing around my mind full of promise and hidden meaning.
“Merc” she said, “make sure you publish my thoughts bee-yatch”.
