3. Name Tag
Outside Marla’s house in the van with the engine running, I honked the horn a few times. Her mum found that pretty annoying, which is why I did it. She’s always been a bit snobby towards me. Actually, she thought it was my influence that made Marla a dyke and a feminist! Well she didn’t learn it from her mother and she certainly didn’t learn it from me. Just because I’m a butch girl doesn’t make me a lesbian. The way I feel about sex is my business.
Her mum stood in the hallway as Marla flung the front door open and ran towards the van. I waved at her mum whose make-up was always perfect. Free samples. She’s the director of an international company that sells cosmetics.
‘Hi, Mrs S,’ I called out the window. That was pretty big on my part as she usually pretends I don’t exist.
Mrs S opted not to hear or see me and closed the door. I frowned as Marla climbed up to the front seat beside me. That kind of ignoring makes me angry.
‘Here, put this on.’ Marla shoved a Bikini Kill tape in the dusty stereo. ‘Still haven’t got your cruddy tape deck fixed?’
‘Try it.’
I soon forgot about parents as the music started and Marla chatted about the band we were going to see. Femitron was something of a rarity in the punk scene, which is pretty well male-dominated. It was rare to find more than ten girls at a packed-out show, unless there was a band girls would come to see, in which case there’d still only be about twenty in a crowd of two hundred.
Driving was a lot more fun with a licence. No scanning the traffic for cops, actually being able to concentrate on driving, and there was no need to take any back streets. We were still about fifteen minutes’ drive away from the venue when I saw a group of street punks striding through a park. I recognised them as Chronic Cramps fans. Revelling in the awesome power of being the Driver, I pulled into the curb and honked. The punks gave a shout and lumbered towards us, shoving each other.
‘Ohhh bugger, do we have to give them a ride? You just cleaned the van ...’ Marla twisted around and peered into the back. It wasn’t exactly luxurious, with a bit of stained carpet and half a back seat sawn down the middle, but free of litter for a change. She didn’t have a chance to finish; the space was already full of spiky-haired, studded, smelly teenage boys wearing mostly black and cheering drunkenly. One of them, Kieran, I personally knew from our shows. He always comes up afterwards and tells me very earnestly how great we are. He’s about fifteen and the smallest of the group.
‘Skye! Cheers, man! I mean, chick. Whatever.’ He grinned at me as Marla glared at him. She was still facing me as she bellowed in a matronly way, ‘All right, everyone find a seat or get down on the floor! We don’t want to get pulled over.’ I steered the van back out into the traffic. In the rear-view mirror I saw them jostling each other for the good seat until Kieran’s face appeared, blocking everything behind him.
‘So what’s new? You guys playing soon?’ he asked eagerly. ‘I recorded it last time, sounds great,’ Kieran went on without pausing. People sometimes thought this guy was a speed freak the way he talked, but it’s just him. He prattled on about anything and everything; how it was going to be a good show, how the Railway Hotel was great for hanging around outside, what impressed him about every band he liked at that moment.
I pulled into the carpark behind the pub and they just about fell out. It’s hard to tell whether street punks are drunk or not – they tend to move slowly, like their legs are part jelly. I think it’s the boots.
Marla and I hopped out of the van and realised it was a bit chilly. Time to go inside. Being an all-ages show there were naturally more people behind the pub than actually in it, since any booze had to be consumed outside rather than in. We walked around to the main road and rocked up to the front door. A familiar bouncer was on, a big Samoan guy in black with an earpiece. Where did he think he was, Hollywood? This was bunch of underage kids getting sweaty to loud music, not the Viper Room.
‘Evening ladies. Or is it gents?’ the bouncer joked, raising his eyebrows at me. ‘Come on in, I’ve seen your mugshots enough times.’
The tip of my tongue was crying out ‘It’s gents’. I glared and Marla poked her tongue out at him.
In the foyer I paid my five dollar cover charge to the cute butch girl with a nose ring and painter’s cap with the top flipped up, who I figured was part of Femitron’s entourage. She said, ‘Hey’ in a familiar way, recognising a fellow butch girl. Her eyes lit up as she spied Marla behind me and I was ancient history.
In the foyer, muffled music thumped through the sound system from inside. I stood and appreciated the familiar pub smell – old booze and thousands of gigs past. Robert’s tall frame loomed over the zine table as he peered into a leaflet. I went up and bumped him on the arm. ‘Hey, what’s up? What’s new? What’s?’ I felt a bit silly all of a sudden.
He smiled, trying to look cool and relaxed. His dark hair was getting long over his eyes and I had to resist the temptation to give him some grief about his emo look. He was way too scruffy to be emo though, and too happy. Those kids were always well turned-out in the latest designer black, and it did seem to match their mood.
‘Hey, what’s up?’ He was possibly in one of his moods, too, but smiled. ‘Heard you got the licence. Congrats. Now you can give me a lift to –’
‘POWWW!’ We were drowned out by the sound of the first band tuning up. It was a kind of grinding, crashing noise interspersed with feedback and burping into the microphone, with random hits on a tinny drum kit. We looked at each other and said at the same time, ‘Ratbag’. Ditching the zines, we went around the black screen to the gig proper.
‘Squeeze in here.’ Robert grabbed my arm.
‘I’m not that small.’ Glad Robert had forgotten about his penalty-space zone for friends like me who weren’t girlfriends, we were back to easy insults. ‘Move it!’
The crowd was larger than I expected. My age and older, with haircuts in the latest style with a shaved or dyed punk ‘edge’. A handful had been part of the scene for years and had reached university age. This lot were mostly music scenesters slumming it for the evening because Femitron had been plugged on the radio this week. Feminism in music was cool again. The scenesters probably considered themselves the hippest cats around; we just wanted to see if the band was as good as we’d heard through our own grapevines.
Ratbag got started into their set with a gradual move from tuning noises to something resembling a song. Took a while for the crowd to notice. Robert and I pushed up the front into the beginnings of a mosh. This band had a pretty fast drummer when he got going. I love the first few moments of a new gig when the guitarist really starts going for it and cranking out some grunty chords. Actually, I love it the whole time, too. We jumped around for a few songs, joined by most of the street punks and younger kids with spiked-up hair.
The vocalist had some trouble with the height of the stage.
‘I can’t mosh from up here!’ he shouted into the microphone. He unhooked the mic from its stand, gave himself a few steps run-up and launched into the crowd. ‘Waaaaagumphanaaa,’ he cried as he flew across the room and landed in a tangle of mic cable and flailing limbs. A lesser man might have stood up and shaken himself together; this guy carried on with the song. I backed away for a breather and looked around.
Several punk girls of the feminist activism group, including Marla, were yelling to Femitron who had ventured out from behind the velvet curtain protecting them from the crowd. I knew I supported the feminist movement. I knew there should be more women in music, on stage, showing that we can do what the boys can do. I knew I should be more involved in the Femitron fan group, but I didn’t care to be. It was Marla who was into it. I agreed with the politics, but my heart just wasn’t in it. The band did look cool though, in matching outfits with silver cut-out vinyl stars on their black jackets, and a loud girl with long, bottle-blonde hair who was probably the singer, in a matching silver skirt.
Over-sprayed perfume wafted from them. Musky. Dancers smelled of sweat not masked under the latest deodorants.
Standing back and not being part of any group was all I wanted, just at that moment. Everything seemed to come down to that lately – a choice. One way or the other. I wasn’t kicking back having a break from the mosh; I was avoiding the female group. Things had gotten intense. Over-analysed. I headed for the back door and went outside to the safety of the van.
Lying down in the back, I wished I’d put the blanket back in. The Railway Hotel was nearly soundproof. I heard trains and conversation over the now dulled roar from inside. My mind was racing. I wasn’t part of any group. Didn’t fit in anywhere. Needed to tell someone. Couldn’t tell anyone. Couldn’t relax. Can’t even enjoy a gig. Nothing even smelled right.
A face appeared at the sliding passenger door causing me to jolt out of my mind-wars. Robert pulled the door open and poked his head inside.
‘Want to come and meet Ratbag? They’re really funny,’ he almost whispered. Maybe he thought whispering was more friendly, but his voice got lost in the revving of a passing car.
‘What?’
‘Like, come back with us.’
I jumped at the distraction and climbed out, following him over to their circle. That’s what I love about punks sometimes: no need for extra conversation. Most of the kids from my high school would have made a big deal about lying in the van being ‘weird’. Not us.
Standing in a circle around a park bench littered with their fans from the recent mosh were the members of Ratbag. The drummer took swigs from a Coke bottle that I suspected had something stronger in it. The singer, who wore a stick-on name tag that said ‘Ugly’ was telling a story in the same style that he used on stage, screaming some words and flinging his arms around. His leather jacket was well-loved. It had so many studs he’d probably drown if he fell in a puddle.
‘Here.’
Someone handed me a name tag sticker and a marker. I froze. Who did I want to be? My mind started racing again. What could I write? If I put Skye I’d always be Skye to these guys. Being introduced to new people as Skye was not how things were going to be. Surrounded by a group of loud, laughing people, I suddenly found myself in a bubble of silence. Finn. That’s a male name I’d always liked. Short. Simple. It could be mine now, with no one’s approval necessary. I wrote it on the sticker, peeled the back off and stuck it to my shirt.
No one saw, but I still felt like all eyes were on me. I had just done something huge. The sky didn’t fall, the heavens didn’t open and I didn’t spontaneously combust. My heart was beating very fast. The guy known only to us as Ugly reached the finale of his story.
Robert turned to me and said, ‘You should meet this guy. He wrote a comic for my zine, it was hilarious. He cracks me up.’ Robert hadn’t noticed my name tag. This was so stupid; all I’d done was write a name on a tag. He waved Ugly over to us. The guy stomped right through the middle of the circle of people and came on over.
‘Dude, this is Skye; she’s got a zine, too. You’ve got some more comics up your sleeve, haven’t you? I can tell you’re a serious writer.’
‘Oh yeah, well you get your people to talk to my people. We’ll set up a meeting.’ We all chuckled. He stared at my name tag.
‘Dude, you said her name’s Skye, that says Finn,’ he said accusingly at Robert.
‘Well, yours says Ugly,’ I said, hoping at once that we could all talk about this and yet avoid it completely.
‘That’s ’cause I’m Ugly!’ He thrust his head forward in a mock-threatening way and glared at me with an exaggerated frown. He wasn’t ugly at all; he was cute and charming and he knew it. I couldn’t help but smile.
Robert gave me an understanding look. He was in on the joke – I was playing a character. We sometimes played this game with people we’d never met: change our names and take on a persona, then the others fill in your history. I guess that would do for now.
‘All right Finn, my second cousin twice removed, that looks like your non-identical post-Siamese twin coming to talk to you,’ he said coyly, looking over my shoulder.
Feeling a presence at my side, I turned in time to catch Marla nudging me in the arm. ‘Yo, what’s with you, hanging out with the boys as usual, when you could be meeting some awesome chicks. Oh, what’s going on?’
Robert was pointing at my name tag. ‘You remember Finn, unicycle champion and all-round good guy?’ he said to her. It was just a silly game now, but I was still glad he’d got my gender right.
Marla looked quizzically at me then rolled her eyes. ‘Band’s starting. They’re a five-piece. Five piece! And the guitarist is cute as.’
‘They always are,’ I quipped. Ugly made a hissing noise at this and waved his hand like he was smoothing something out. ‘Yeah, we rule,’ he said.
I went back inside with Marla. It was pretty dim, but there was enough light to see that there were girls everywhere. I’d obviously underestimated the popularity of this band.
We pushed our way up to the front of the crowd. There was some shuffling onstage and a few hits of the drum kit and the show lights went on.
‘All right. We are FEMITRON!’ A guitar screeched and the bass plonked. Silver outfits sparkled. ‘This song is called Girls in Drag! One, two, three, four!’ The song kicked in, fast and loud and the crowd surged behind us. Marla and I screamed and danced in the mosh. This was it, this is what I loved about our scene, just letting it all go and shaking everything out on the dance floor, forgetting everything except the beat and the music, surrounded by my friends.
Would this change?