The Modern Punk awakens, body luxuriating in the feel of handmade 8,000 threadcount sheets, bespokely fashioned from a backstage curtain Sid Vicious once pissed on after performing at CBGB in New York. The Modern Punk stretches—noting, in passing, that it’s probably time to book a new appointment with the $400-an-hour punk rock manicurist he keeps on permanent retainer—and smells brewing coffee, as black as the fire of youthful rebellion that still burns in his toned, well-waxed chest, just beneath the 84-karat nipple ring that hangs tastefully from his carefully plucked left nub. The Modern Punk arises, and contemplates what to wear.
As his eyes drift over his closet—filled with enough black Italian leather to re-skin an entire herd of Gothic Tuscan cows—the Modern Punk thinks back on yesterday’s trip to Barneys luxury department store in New York. Oh, how the absinthe mimosas had flowed, as his personal shopper Triffany—outfitted in a blue jean jacket personally damaged by Manhattan’s trendiest denim worrier—brought him T-shirt after T-shirt. But none had worked for the Modern Punk’s expensively crafted aesthetic of disregard for material or modern things—until, in a fit of inspiration, she’d brought out R13’s $265 “‘Black Flag’” T-Shirt” for his careful eye to peruse.
It was lust at first sight, with the shirt’s “black brushed Japanese cotton-cashmere” perfectly off-setting the dirty white of the Flag’s logo, redolant with the savory, punkish tensions that had led the band to so much drama over the years. The decorative zippers along the side of the T-shirt whispered to him, of battles between Greg Ginn and Henry Rollins, of years of acrimony and pain, and, distantly, of the music. (Back in his $150,000-a-year West End apartment, the Modern Punk casually glances at the redwood conversation shelf hanging over his vinyl player, where a signed copy of Loose Nut sits, pristine and untouched, ready to start a thousand awesome punk chats with guests.)
The Modern Punk sighs gently as the cotton-cashmere slides over his skin. He looks at himself in the mirror, happy to be the last person truly keeping the spirit of punk alive. “Hey, ho, let’s go,” he whispers to himself, smiling, before grabbing his $595 R13 “Grunge Sweater”—in case it gets chilly later—and heads out the door toward his six-figure corporate lawyer job, keeping his freak flag flying for yet another day.