Jan 02 - sweet 16
I turned 16 at Tramps, a club in Chelsea, NYC. I’d managed a backstage pass to interview and photograph L.E.S. Stitches, a favorite band of mine at the time, at a show they played with the Bouncing Souls and Youth Brigade. My mentor came with me, the platonic and motherly first love of my life, and stood in the back by the bar while I plowed ahead as I was used to at punk shows, and eventually made it to the side of the stage, showed my pass to a rather slight man for a bouncer, and skooted past him and nodded knowingly to the other people there taking photos of the band. When the Stitches got off stage, I followed them. I had no interest in the other bands, who didn’t have spikey hair, who I’ve never seen hung over on stage, sweating beer and spitting sloppily on the crowd like my dumb idols.
I found the band’s manager, Dana, a statistically beautiful blonde babe in a Stitches “girl shirt” and tight shiny pants and heels. She was nice and smiled a lot. She wore make-up, not like Sue Catwoman or Beki Bondage, more like an office worker out for an afterwork happyhour. I was a bit confused and disappointed, finding even my modern Riot Grrl friends too fashionable and therefore part of the patriarchal hell. I felt a little self-conscious about the running shoes and jeans I had worn to be inconspicuous in New York City, to not stand out and to be ready for all weather. I was who I was, inconsolably. As she walked me over to an area where I could wait for the band to all gather together around me, I heard static moments of other interviews: What is your favorite pizza? If you could be any animal what would you be? My interview was going to be groundbreaking, I thought, let them at me.
They were a nice band. Easy on the eyes, too. I asked about the politics of their music. About the concept of Id and how a band could write a song about the release and control of deepest human desires for chaos and also about trivial crap like a monkey pissing in a tree and a friend getting naked at a party. I asked about fashion in New York’s scene, about the apparent importance set on Looking Good and staying in shape and dressing in sexual clothes. I wanted to know everything about the L.E.S. Stitches, about New York, about punk. The tape clicked off and I had more questions, but the band said they needed to get Chinese food, and left me there. They offered me a beer but I didn’t drink, not wanting to be subdued by The Man.
I met Amy, my mentor, back in the crowd, talking to a man her age about being older and standing in the back by the bar, about no longer wanting to be pushed around. I was too young to get it. We left the show and walked all the way back to the Upper West Side to our hostel, because I had lost my wallet the day before. On the way home I kept my head down, already a drowning New Yorker, and peered into the dreamlike basement apartments we passed. All those people living in the greatest city in the world, below the streets, watching television, their faces blued by the screen and the flicker. People feel desolate everywhere. My running shoes were still comfortable, still unfashionable. Amy patted my back. A street light died momentarily across the street, then beamed back into life, a pale yellow beam in the misty spring night.
I found the band’s manager, Dana, a statistically beautiful blonde babe in a Stitches “girl shirt” and tight shiny pants and heels. She was nice and smiled a lot. She wore make-up, not like Sue Catwoman or Beki Bondage, more like an office worker out for an afterwork happyhour. I was a bit confused and disappointed, finding even my modern Riot Grrl friends too fashionable and therefore part of the patriarchal hell. I felt a little self-conscious about the running shoes and jeans I had worn to be inconspicuous in New York City, to not stand out and to be ready for all weather. I was who I was, inconsolably. As she walked me over to an area where I could wait for the band to all gather together around me, I heard static moments of other interviews: What is your favorite pizza? If you could be any animal what would you be? My interview was going to be groundbreaking, I thought, let them at me.
They were a nice band. Easy on the eyes, too. I asked about the politics of their music. About the concept of Id and how a band could write a song about the release and control of deepest human desires for chaos and also about trivial crap like a monkey pissing in a tree and a friend getting naked at a party. I asked about fashion in New York’s scene, about the apparent importance set on Looking Good and staying in shape and dressing in sexual clothes. I wanted to know everything about the L.E.S. Stitches, about New York, about punk. The tape clicked off and I had more questions, but the band said they needed to get Chinese food, and left me there. They offered me a beer but I didn’t drink, not wanting to be subdued by The Man.
I met Amy, my mentor, back in the crowd, talking to a man her age about being older and standing in the back by the bar, about no longer wanting to be pushed around. I was too young to get it. We left the show and walked all the way back to the Upper West Side to our hostel, because I had lost my wallet the day before. On the way home I kept my head down, already a drowning New Yorker, and peered into the dreamlike basement apartments we passed. All those people living in the greatest city in the world, below the streets, watching television, their faces blued by the screen and the flicker. People feel desolate everywhere. My running shoes were still comfortable, still unfashionable. Amy patted my back. A street light died momentarily across the street, then beamed back into life, a pale yellow beam in the misty spring night.