TEX...rhymes with sex...

But not in a creepy way. Of course.

When TEX came out I was 13 - the same age as Jamie Collins! And I did have it bad for Tex. He was a bad boy, well, not bad but misunderstood. Okay, strike that too. I think we all understood him. He was a screw-up. I can't remember who I heard describe a kid once as "addicted to consequences" but it works here. Tex makes bad decision upon bad decision - and yet he is still appealing.

But first - blond Emilio Estavez?? What the heck??? Nope - book before movie. Except this picture - S.E. Hinton cuddling blond-Emilio. They both look cute as buttons here. But trust me when I say that I could barely watch the Johnny Collins parts of the movie because E.E.'s hair was so distracting. And I had other issues.

As a high school librarian, I hear stories. Kids, particularly kids who don't have dependable adults in their lives, will just drop shit into conversations that curl my graying hair.

• I got in a fist-fight with my aunt's boyfriend this weekend.
• Sorry I was late, I had to get up early to clean my mom's shunt.
• I had to drive to New Hampshire because there was no food at my dad's house so I had to visit my grandparents.

And these are regular events in these kids' lives!

As the mildly-helicoptored daughter of suburban professionals, when I read TEX as a kid - it seemed so unrealistic to me. What kind of father leaves his high school kids to live on their own with no money? For some reason THE OUTSIDERS was okay, there were a bunch of them and Darry seemed to have let his dreams die in order to take care of his brothers in a way that Mason just can't. But TEX was a little too depressing. I still loved him, but I knew I didn't stand a chance against Jamie. She was mean as a ruptured spleen and she was adorable and a feminist. A thirteen-year-old role model to be sure. I thought if I transferred my affection to Johnny, Tex's best friend and Johnny's little sister, I might have a better chance. (A better chance of what, you may ask, with a fictional character. What can I say, even in fiction, I tried to set my sights realistically.)

So there are a lot of things going wrong in Tex's life. Here is a spoiler-y list of his issues:

• He lives in Oklahoma. (Kidding! I love Oklahoma! But Hinton paints it beautifully bleak.)
• His mom is dead. (Don't go outside after a fight with your husband or you will DIE! Just sulk in the bedroom like a normal person.)
• His dad is off chasing rodeo dreams.
• His brother sells his horse so that they can eat.
• He keeps getting in trouble for doing stupid shit like gluing caps on the typewriter keys at school.
• His best friend's (and potential girlfriend's) dad thinks he is poor white trash and is a bad influence on his children.
• Part of him believes this.
• He picks up a psycho hitchhiker.
• He goes on a drug-run with an old school-mate.
• He gets shot. 
• He has a hard time navigating a pay phone. 
• He learns his dad was in prison when his mom got pregnant so who and where his biological dad actually is is a mystery.
• He has this continuing worry that his high-flyer big brother is going to go away to college and what will become of him?

In the movie version you can add:

• His house clearly smells of mildew 24/7.
• His best friend has very distracting blond hair. 

To sum up the book - dang! It is a heartbreaker with a tiny glimmer of hope at the end. He realizes that Mason is the sort of person who needs to go and he is the kind that needs to stay. But what is going to happen to him when Mason goes? Seriously, there is no safety net for this kid. Bleaky-ety-bleak-bleak.

The movie, for being pretty crappy, makes it seem more hopeful. There is a non-cannon sub-plot where Tex hides Mason's college application so he can't go and then fills it in himself and gets Mase into school. I have to say that Indiana State must be hard-up for basketball players if Tex's app can get him in. Or Mason is the greatest white-boy basketball player since Larry Bird. Whatever, suspend your disbelief, Barb. You've done it before.

For one thing, the kids in the movie look older. Matt Dillon was 18 when he made the movie - only three years older than his character. But blond-Emilio was 20, Mex Tilley was a cougar-y 22 and Jim Metzler, who played Mason, was 31. No wonder I felt like he would never let Tex slip through the cracks. He probably had a wife, a toddler and a 401K hidden in the barn.

The dad in the movie was also a bit more stable. The book dad was a complete screwup - if he knocked up Tex's mom (with Mason) right out of high school (which he surely must have) he would have been 37 or 38 in the book - and still with plenty of wild oats to sow. In the movie he was played by Bill McKinney (who played "Mountain Man" in Deliverance - cue banjo music) and he was 51. I guess it felt to me more like he was willing to settle down. 

Tim Hunter directed this and he was the guy that directed RIVER'S EDGE - a 1987 movie that left me very unsettled. Don't want to discuss it here - let's just say that it makes TEX look like FERRIS BUELLER. He went on to direct a lot of TV including episodes of three of my all time favorite series - MAD MEN, BREAKING BAD and HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS. 

Speaking of HOMICIDE:LotS - Zeljko Ivanek, who played stalwart DA Ed Danvers has a small part as the psycho hitchhiker in TEX! He doesn't look particularly dreamy in this picture, but he has a charming baby-face. I really like that actor, but if you google-image him, you are going to find a lot of not-very-attractive pictures, so maybe it is just seeing him young and long-haired that made me think "Helloooooo handsome psycho hitchhiker!" I would totally have a chance with the fictional psycho hitchhiker. You know, before he left me in a shallow grave on the side of the Oklahoma dirt road...

At any rate, as ever - what was appealing to me as a teenage reader of S.E. Hinton is rather terrifying to me as an adult reader. And I am going to have to give a bit of credit to the film version of TEX because seeing the setting made it feel a bit richer. I have written a little bit about THE OUTSIDERS but it is so familiar to me that I didn't get that "new eyes" feeling that I did with TEX. 

I have THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW on my to-be-read pile and I didn't even know there was a movie version. Hot dog! And I may even revisit RUMBLE FISH, although I have only read it once because I HATED it when I read it as a teen. No idea why... maybe because it wasn't THE OUTSIDERS. I could be unforgiving...