My name is Nick. I'm Sixteen years old. Perhaps if I was in the mob, they'd call me Nick the prick. The first thing you ought to know about me, is my life is horribly inadequate (though who the hell am I to complain). My whole life has not been not living up to my standards. Everyday I'd hang out with Lefty, (a boy so-named due to his crooked phallic member). Everyday I'd use my outdated AT clone computer and hang out with my neurotic mom and her uncivil, sailor servant boyfriend. And maybe I'd creep in a visit with my leech of a dad. Things were gloom and doom but my life changed when I met Sheeni Saunders, it became a harlequin romance.. (and by that I don't mean the Joker's girlfriend. Though don't expect any mentions of anything comic in this book). I felt suicidal at the thought of anyone taking her away from me. This view was perhaps a tad extreme, admittedly but not unjustified. She was taken by Trent, a pretentious poet and quite the sordid dreamboat. I committed many crimes in Sheeni's name, as she had beauty, intellect and we had a lot in common. I had to get drastic to keep her. I forged a new identity. As she is a francophile, I became the great Francois and occasionally I'd moonlight as Carlotta in womens' garb (though I'm not proud of the latter).I'd hide Lefty from his parents while he pines for Millie Filbert, and get chased by the cops. But it's all in a day's work, right?
Youth in Revolt provides examples of:
- The Alleged Car: Nick's Dad's BMW 318i is noted to be a rather cheap car.
- Antiquated Linguistics: Computer nerd Nick Twisp is quite wordy and verbose.
- Brainless Beauty: Nick's dad preferred suitors are this and/or The Ditz after the divorce, especially.
- Embarrassing Last Name: "Twisp" for Nick. It would be effeminate even for John Wayne, Nick thinks.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Nick says if he were in The Mafia, he bets they'd call him Nick the prick, which might cause his family some embarrassment.
- Financial Abuse: Nick's dad says his child support payments are crippling and Nick wishes his dad would stop receiving these payments at 35.
- Hormone-Addled Teenager: And how! Nick can give lush descriptions of sex and thinks up sexual variants of Dicken's works. His friend Lefty is (possibly) worse, as he pines for Millie Filbert and favors Playboy playmates who resemble her.
- Hot Teacher: In the first couple pages, Miss Satron is teased, though not shown as a lush description of a beautiful young woman with great bone structure.
- Intimate Lotion Application: When Sheeni and Nick are hanging out on the beach early on, she asks him to tanning lotion on her "exposed areas", which Nick describes as an "arduous task" for his Hormone-Addled Teenager self. But not only does he spend far too long rubbing her legs, but he ends up getting an unwanted erection, which he fails to hide, prompting her to tease him for it. After he's done he hopes she offers to apply it on him, but she doesn't and he's too awkward to ask it and ends up getting a sunburn.
- Parallel Porn Titles: Nick thinks of erotic titles for Charles Dickens' works.
- Pink Means Feminine: Nick compares his newly painted room to Dolly Parton's boudoir, Nick's mom says the color calms mental patients but Nick still finds the color girly. Nick also says that he's not a mental patient but a teenager.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Besides being a Sardanapalian, he speaks fluent Sesquipedalian, i.e. he speaks eloquently for his age.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Nick is rather inarticulate with girls, only. He even finds himself hitting on his dad's girlfriends before meeting Sheeni.
- Unusual Euphemism: Nick wonders how a guy can look at girl in the eye once they put their "winkie up her Wendell".
- Visit by Divorced Dad: Nick has a stepdad in Jerry, a slovenly trucker and his birth father, both of whom he despises.
