ABSTRACT
Sitting at Carefree Cafe, the only twenty-four-hour coffee shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I stare idly at my economics homework, wishing I hadn't already finished my sociology reading for the week. A freshman in college, I still have the teenage drive to try to look older than I am—I am chain-smoking cigarettes and don the unusual combination of a shaved head and a long polyester dress printed with large bright flowers. Neither makes me stand out in this place where everything and everyone are (or maybe are just trying to be) alternative, different, unusual, against the mainstream—everything I wanted to explore after my suburban upbringing.
