Dan Gonyea
	Student, Northeastern University

"It’s not about changing the world or protesting other people’s actions. Straight edge is about living my life in a clean, respectable way that I can be happy." - Dan Gonyea

A Friday night on a college campus in Boston is quite the experience, filled with plenty of young adults getting drunk and doing things that only their point-and-shoot cameras will remember. Every Saturday morning I wake up to the sweet silence of empty streets and solace of no lines at the supermarket; everyone is too hung over to roll out of bed and roam the campus. My choice is to have a more enjoyable and modest lifestyle for myself. I have a girlfriend, a full-time job, a curriculum I'm pursuing for a bachelor's degree, and an apartment of my own. Nights are spent either working on my webzine Future Breed, photographing concerts, playing games with my friends, or going out into the city.

When I discovered what straight edge was, it came across as quite militant and pointless. I remember having specific disdain for the kids who posted on message boards online saying, "I'm bored. Anyone want to go find some hippies on the street and beat the hell out of them?" Those posts had a lot of replies from kids who were interested. It disgusted me and seemed like a very immature scene. It was a matter of me just looking in all the wrong places.

I didn’t drink or do drugs because I had a lot of health issues and personal experiences that would make me extremely hesitant of experimenting like that. At a point in high school, the term "straight edge" seemed like a convenient way to explain to everyone my lifestyle without having to go into the personal details of "this happened" and "that happened" and all that. After my friends started getting arrested from parties, I was glad that I lived a clean lifestyle.

Boston matured my views on straight edge. There were student groups (like Hammered) at my school that focused on alternative activities for kids who didn’t want to drink and party all the time. I ran into a lot of kids at parties that I noticed weren’t drinking beer, and after a little conversation, it turned out they had a lot of similar views that I did. I went to a bunch of hardcore punk shows and began understanding what Boston’s straight edge scene was like. Older guys to middle school kids who were straight edge got along fine with those who weren’t. I did photos for these bands and became welcomed as a regular to all their shows.

Since day one in Boston, I’ve felt a lot more like a member of a community than a loner with his own beliefs. I will always be prideful that I could live differently than a lot of people yet still come out of this with the same happiness and experience. It’s not about changing the world or protesting other people’s actions. Straight edge is about living my life in a clean, respectable way that I can be happy. It’s not about being a zealot; it’s about being proud in who I am and how I live my life.