Then there's me

I don't know what it was that drew me to the punk scene. I went to my first show in 1985 and saw Black Flag play. This was right before they broke up, so they were not in their heyday by any means. However, it was the crowd that peaked my interest. I saw around me the biggest collection of strange looking people I had ever seen in one place. When you see a social misfit in the standard setting of the public high school or the local mall, you're seeing them in the environment that helped to create their misfit status. When you see them at a show, they're in the environment they created for themselves, where they are comfortable among their peers. This is what intrigued me. To see people that I had seen here and there acting as normal as the so-called "regular" people I encountered every day was fascinating. I think that is what first drew me back to the shows. I wasn't looking to be an outcast or a misfit. I was actually looking to fit in. However, this is where I found a place to fit in that accepted me. It didn't depend on how much money your parents made or what brand of jeans you wore. It was about showing up and taking part in the scene. The more I went to shows, the more people I met. It didn't matter if the shows one week were in Hollywood and the next in Orange County. I would still see some of the same people at both shows. As people, we're tribal by nature, so it was natural to see groups of people at the shows, but these groups weren't trying to make others feel like outcasts, they were just engaging in a ritual of friendship built around a common culture, music. Some of these people were very talented artists who felt as though the mainstream world wouldn't allow them to create what they truly wanted to. Some of them were musicians who wanted to play something simple, from the heart. A lot of us were just bored kids looking for something to do with our time that allowed us to escape from the suburban hells we spent the rest of our days in.

Violence was a fact of life in this scene. When you bring together a large group of teens, some of whom come from very fucked up families, you're going to run the risk of someone or something setting one of them off. However, the difference between scene violence and mainstream America violence was that scene violence rarely, if ever, spilled over into the mainstream and it never got continued outside of the show. I was intensely afraid of the pit the first few shows I went to. It was the place where all the action took place. The place where your expertise in dancing and fighting was put on display. Back then, unlike now, if you fell, people would kick you until you made it back to your feet. There was an incentive to get up quickly, if you even fell at all. I know this sounds bad, but it was the way of our world. Again, it goes back to misfit kids from fucked up lives who got to snap and release their anger toward the bullshit system we live in for a couple of hours. Few people in the scene back then came from nice, well-adjusted families. With everyone coming from the same types of situations, no one there was averse to mixing it up. Being the inquisitive person that I am, I slowly made my way up closer to the pit so that I could observe how things went, what to look out for, and who to stay away from. I observed that a lot of the guys in there moved in a way that looked as though they were skipping along with their heads down and their arms flailing. I then noticed that their arms moved in unison with their bodies so that they kept their balance even when being hit from multiple angles. I wanted to learn how to do this. I figured that the best way to do so would be to jump into the pit and just go for it. This wasn't something I could do at home and explain away to my parents. They didn't even know that I was going to shows. They thought I was just spending a lot of time with my friends at their houses. So, I took a deep breath and jumped in. I began to "skip" in the direction the pit seemed to be moving and flailed my arms like the others around me seemed to be doing. Almost immediately, I was hit by a much larger guy and knocked into the crowd at the side of the pit. The guys I ran into immediately shoved me as hard as they could back into the melee. I was then body checked back into the crowd, who shoved me back into the pit. This went on for a little while until I was able to learn the technique of staying in the mix. I was then able to have a lot of fun just running around and feeling tough. That is, until I flailed my arms around and hit the wrong guy in the face. I don't remember hitting him that hard, but it was hard enough to enrage him and cause him to grab me, spin me around, and punch me in the face pretty damn hard. I would have dropped, except he was holding me up by my shirt and went to hit me again. Now, I was 12 when this happened and he was probably in his late teens or early twenties. Thankfully, my friend's brother, who brought us here, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away from me. I stood there, wiping blood from my face with my hands and then wiping my hands on my pants while he tried to talk the guy down from beating the shit out of me. I didn't make things any better when I lost my temper, ran up to the guy, and hit him as hard as I could (which wasn't very hard). He looked surprised, then amused at my anger. Something must have gotten through to him, though, because he left me alone after that and wandered back into the crowd. My friend's brother laughed at me and then took me to the bathroom to wash off my face. Luckily, nothing was busted open on the outside. The inside of me cheek got pretty cut up, but I was able to explain that away to my parents when the time came. I was proud of myself. I had taken a shot from a grown-ass man and walked away from it intact. I would proceed to take this new-found pride into the pit with me many, many times over the next few years.

To be continued...

Who I Am, Who I've Been

My past is something I've had to come to some kind of terms with. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not into forgetting about it and moving on. Without my past, I wouldn't be who I am today. I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. I've never thought or myself as evil or anything like that, but I have to acknowledge that there was something wrong with me. I liked violence too much. I cared too little about the feelings of others. I was raised the same way my siblings were, yet none of them flirted with the darkness like I did. The closest was my brother, Eddie, who came even closer than I did to being arrested. He was actually put on probation for the beating he gave to some kid at a Pennywise show a number of years ago. Maybe it was because my parents let me have more freedom than the others. I've always felt as though I was the experiment child, since I was the oldest. After me, my parents held the others closer to home and kept them from getting out of hand. I'm the only one who was able to run around all night and get into trouble. Boy, did I get into trouble. Thankfully, I was never arrested. The closest I came to it was one night in Santa Monica, when I helped out a gay man who was jumped by two scumbags I had just met through another friend of mine. When I went to help, the other two guys turned on me and beat the shit out of me along with the gay guy. I fought back as best as I could, then the owner of the cafe we were in front of came out with a baseball bat and broke things up. The cops showed up and we were all lined up along the wall. My hands were cuffed behind my back and I had blood running down my face and onto my white t-shirt. The gay guy was confused about who was doing what and I thought for sure that I was going to jail for doing something right for a change. I kept trying to remind the homosexual that I was the one helping him and the cop told me to shut up or he was putting me into the car. His exact words were, "If you say one more thing, just one, I'm putting you in the back of the car." At that point, I couldn't have stopped myself if I tried. I said, "Fine, whatever." He grabbed me and threw me into the squad car. While I sat there, I got more and more angry. I finally decided to show the cop a little something. So, I blew blood out of my nose onto his window. The finally got the whole thing figured out and the officer came to let me out. He took one look at the blood and he made me clean it off with my shirt. Oh well, I was going to throw the shirt away anyway.
The point is, I'm a new person these days. I accepted Christ and became someone new about 17 years ago. I know there are those who would laugh at someone saying that, but it's true. How else can one explain that I went from loving the violence of a good fight to feeling remorse for everyone I'd ever hurt? I never felt remorse or guilt about the people I beat up. I always reasoned that they had it coming. Suddenly, I pray to this God I'd heard about and turn my life over to Him. I figured that He had to do better with it than I was. He definitely did. I still wanted to do the things I used to, the drinking and the drugs, but I'd found a reason to say no. I'd found a reason to think that I could get past it all. Most of all, I'd found a reason. A reason for life. A reason for living and making a difference. This is what was missing from the punk scene I had become a part of. It was the missing piece to the life I was living. Punk was supposed to be about making a change and standing up for what you believe in. I was using the scene as a place to hear good music and get into fights that didn't usually turn into gang violence. I became a part of a scene that cared for the individuals in it. Christian punk and hardcore bands cared about those of us that came to see them play. They wanted us to live lives that would guarantee our place in heaven with them. I could no longer play them off as kooks and losers. I came to understand that most of the members of these bands thought of themselves as just as bad, if not worse, than any of us in the audience. Most of us were not PK's (pastors' kids) or private school kids who grew up hearing the Word and knowing who Christ is. We were the rejected members of society who tried other avenues to escape from families that didn't care. Most of us had tried any combination of sex, drugs, alcohol, and violence to escape from our pasts. Now we had a place where we could come together and worship the Creator who put us here for a higher purpose, and we could be with others who shared our common pasts.
(to be continued...)