Bad Kid

“David Crabb has a smart mouth. His memoir Bad Kid is a delightfully funny, and devastatingly touching, portrait of the artist as a queer Goth kid growing up in San Antonio in the eighties among skinheads and preps, gays and geeks. Very School of John Waters in his infatuation with (and genius for evoking) trashy Americana, Crabb winds up taking us to the sweet spot of literature: the truth. I rarely laugh or cry when reading. Bad Kid moved me to both.” — Brad Gooch, author of Smash Cut

From comedian, storyteller, and The Moth host David Crabb, comes a music-filled, refreshingly honest coming-of-age memoir about growing up gay and Goth in San Antonio, Texas. 

In the summer of 1989, three Goth kids crossed a street in San Antonio. They had no idea that a deeply confused fourteen-year-old boy was watching. Their dyed hair, fishnets, and eyeliner were his first evidence of another world—a place he desperately wanted to go. He just had no idea how to get there.

Somehow, David Crabb had convinced himself that every guy preferred French-braiding his girlfriend’s hair to making out, and that the funny feelings he got watching Silver Spoons and Growing Pains had nothing to do with Ricky Schroeder or Kirk Cameron. But discovering George Michael’s Faith confirmed what he was already being bullied for: he was gay. Surviving high school would require impossible feats of denial. 

What saved him was finding a group of outlandish friends who reveled in being outsiders. David found himself enmeshed with misfits: wearing black, cutting class, staying out all night, drinking, tripping, chain-smoking, idolizing The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, and Joy Division—and learning lessons about life and love along the way. 

Richly detailed with 80s pop-culture, and including black and white photos throughout, BAD KID is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is poignant. Crabb’s journey through adolescence captures the essence of every person’s struggle to understand his or her true self.