iPods

Jamie wouldn't be nicknamed Punkzilla if it weren't for the iPod, and he wouldn't have an iPod if it weren't for Fat Larkin, for whom he stole "about fifty" of them. Fat Larkin paid him twenty bucks for every iPod he stole, which is how Jamie survived in Portland. He tells us:

My iPod victims never even saw me because I would sneak up behind them and hit them in the back of the head with this heavy alarm clock that I took when I ran away from Buckner. […] It's metal with the Buckner Military Academy seal on it and mad sharp edges so a good thump would put down even the most obese person pretty easy. (1.20)

The fact that Jamie's both a thief and an assailant is one of the first things we learn about him, since iPods are the currency with which he pays the rent on his crappy room at Washington House. He explains:

Once I knocked out this tall woman with huge veiny hands and when I was disconnecting her iPod I saw she was wearing a medical chain around her neck that said she was a diabetic. I felt bad but I don't think she died or anything because they would have put it in the paper. (1.21)

To Jamie, even the weak and infirm are disposable if they're attached to Apple products. We might be tempted to think of him as hopelessly hardened if we didn't get to see his excitement when Fat Larkin actually lets him keep some of the spoils:

The iPod he gave me has eighty gigs and a color video screen and here's the good part. There was a ton of mad slamming punk rock loaded on that iPod like Dropkick Murphys and the Dead Kennedys and the Clash and Minor Threat. P I know a lot of that scene happened way before I was born but I still relate to it thanks to your rock-n-roll teachings. (1.25)

That's when we remember: Oh yeah, our narrator is fourteen. Suddenly we stop thinking he's just a jerk and start wanting to know what happened to him to make him turn out this way, to land him in this position of having to fend for himself. Sure, Jamie's a felon, but he's also a kid trying to figure out how to survive and who he is. He says:

Somehow Fat Larkin knew about my musical taste probably because I was always talking about punk rock. He even started calling me Punkzilla which everyone in Portland called me too. (1.25)

An iPod full of someone else's music—in this case, someone whose taste matched P's—is a lifeline for Jamie. It's a key to a sense of self. He doesn't choose punk; it chooses him. It doesn't matter if someone else suffered a traumatic brain injury so he could have access to the Clash; what matters is that he has access to the Clash. And as anyone who's ever been on a long bus trip knows, your tunes get you through.

Except that by the time Jamie hits the road to Memphis, he has no tunes. Check it:

Man I wish I had that iPod Fat Larkin gave me. I wound up giving it to Branson. He's the guy I did meth with last night. He was my best friend in Portland and the one I will miss the most. (1.12)

Uh, oops.

See, here's the deal: Jamie's a criminal, yes, but he's also just a kid looking for a friend. When someone shows him some compassion—as Branson does when he offers Jamie a place to stay—Jamie gives his whole entire self in gratitude. That's what was on that iPod: the closest thing he had to a true self. By putting the iPod in Branson's hands (after taking it out of someone else's and putting it in Fat Larkin's and getting it back, of course), Jamie's practically giving away his soul.

Is it misguided? Absolutely—but all fourteen-year-olds are misguided from time to time. Part of what the iPod reminds us of, then, is both how young and how well intentioned Jamie is. After all, just because you beat people over the head with alarm clocks doesn't mean you can't feel hope or show love.