Occult High School Revolution

The short version: Occult High School Revolution is a speculative memoir-in-verse about being queer, strange, horny, skeptical, spiritual, pissed off, and seventeen at the end of the twentieth century. Set largely inside the warped ecosystem of a Catholic high school, Michael McKeown Bondhus reconstructs adolescence through poems, spells, school assignments, theatrical monologues, conversations, diagrams, urban legends, notes, visions, and memories that may or may not have happened exactly as remembered. The longer version: Combining poetry and prose, magick spells and monologues, Catholic mysticism and sacrilegious art, Occult High School Revolution, is a speculative memoir-in-verse, a queer magical realist journey through Catholic high school in the late ’90s. Earnest and needy goth boy Michael Chaos falls hard for a straight jock/artiste provocateur named Pterodactyl (who is in fact a pterodactyl) whose escalating sacrilegious pranks earn him praise from the underground school newspaper and ire from teachers and administrators. As senior year hurtles by, Michael Chaos struggles not only with his crush but also with his best friend Crow’s (who is a crow) deepening investment in libertarian politics and his own conflicted feelings about his Wiccan ex-girlfriend Tonya. Meanwhile, Tonya finds herself, with Crow’s help, confronting a being from another plane of existence who has been tailing her her entire life, while Pterodactyl doubles down on swagger and bravado to cover up past trauma and personal anomie. Throughout their journey, the four encounter a range of quirky characters, including a teacher who hoards stock photos of teenagers kissing, an anarchist student who mysteriously vanishes from detention (leaving no trace but Rage Against the Machine lyrics covering the entire blackboard), and a performance artist who systematically dismembers himself on stage. Part 'Mallrats,' part 'The Craft,' part Dennis Cooper novel, "Occult High School Revolution" is a love letter to young queer people and to the generation who came after Gen X and before Millennials.