Illustration Credit: Aaron Cooper
Note from the informational ether: “Nosedive” is a collection of essays and narrative prose written by Ben Lee over the course of a year prior to his death. Per his will, I am posting these on his behalf with no changes made to his original text. He’s not that Ben Lee. He’s also fictional.
Part 1: Is Suicide Punk?
Chapter 5
I wouldn’t say Allison and I dated because that implies a series of circumstances impossible to us. Dating requires time and/or money. She didn’t have the time and neither of us had money.
But more to the point, the window during which we could date was relatively short. Once a couple lives together, one cannot claim they are still merely “dating”. We went on three dates total before I moved into her place.
The first date was to Amanda’s show. They preformed as Ugly Duckling and The Stupid Goddamn Cuntbitch (one word, apparently), their mech table again consisting of white t-shirts scrawled upon with sharpies and CDs and tapes made at home.
Amanda (Ugly Duckling) was the lead singer and guitarist this time, and their set was twenty minutes of completely new songs. She played guitar like a drummer slamming down aggressive minor chords to rolling beats of never-ending abuse. The Stupid Goddamn Cuntbitch played his kit like he was learning drums on the fly and rather than setting the tempo for Amanda, he followed the tempo of her smashing notes and filled in the empty spaces between her verses like the drums were harmonizing.
I couldn’t make out the lyrics. Her vocals were too low in the mix. When I’d later listen to these songs as recorded on those burnt CDs, the vocals were on top of the mix, which tells me they hadn’t buried them on purpose during that live performance. Like everything they did, forethought wasn’t a huge factor in their decision making. They showed up and plugged in and played.
The funny thing about that particular set of songs is that being able to understand the lyrics from an audio clarity standpoint didn’t help me understand them one bit. Something far different from cryptic, she sang as if reading from a random word generator, and by that I mean she didn’t even pick specific words that would sound good within the melody. The only thing that makes me think she did write these lyrics herself (rather than letting some fucking computer do it for her) is how often her word choices went against the grain of the melody. The songs were so abrasive that it had to be on purpose. These were, strangely, the best twenty minutes of punk music I’ve ever heard.
Our second date was watching The Cure play in Allison’s living room with three other onlookers. Amanda (The) was back on drums while Cure played guitar with his usual withholding finesse. Every song was a duet where both of them sang their parts exactly the same instead of trading barbs back and forth. Per usual, they sold shirts and music, this time laid out on their dining room table with a jar that had “Free Stuff – Tip if You Feel Like It” but everyone took the merch without tipping.
And while this has nothing to do with anything, I’ve thought a lot about that tip jar over the years. Capitalism is extremely unpunk, so it stands to reason that selling merch is also unpunk. Clearly, this makes giving away merch for free a very punk thing to do, but that’s undercut by the fact that The Cure specifically asked for tips, which feels like coming at capitalism from the side entrance. It’s not capitalistic enough to make it unpunk, but it’s definitely not as punk as it could be.
Punk will always exist as far as its scene will let it exist. Unfortunately, a huge part of that is money regardless of how much it fucking sucks to admit that. People can’t play shows if they can’t afford to eat or can’t afford their instruments. Because capitalism has created a hell where money is required to exist, we must all live in that hell or die. That goes for punk just as much as it goes for people.
So everyone who had the nerve to go to The Cure show in Amanda’s own house and take all that merch without leaving any money behind are about as unpunk as it gets. Just like how one should buy the music instead of downloading it for free off some website, one shouldn’t take merch without leaving something behind. I feel nothing but contempt for those people.
The perfect situation would be if everyone could take everything without having to pay but nobody took too much, but people in general aren’t very punk so people in general just want what’s theirs and don’t ever feel like helping out anyone else. The next best situation would be a table of merch and a sign that says “Free” and nothing else, and everyone would leave money on the table so the band they just saw could continue existing and so the scene could continue existing and so the world would be just a little bit better on that particular day.
Too many people are selfish, and this is why I got evicted from my apartment between the second and third date. I’m not even that mad at my landlord. She let me stay in the apartment for months without paying rent because, as she put it, “Having your homeless ass out in the neighborhood is going to make it harder for me to rent out this shithole anyway.”
I don’t know about that, but I gave her a hug and don’t blame her at all even though making money as a slumlord is pretty fucking terrible and she’s what’s wrong with society as a whole. But this time, she was as nice as a blood sucking capitalist asshole could be. Instead of draining me of all my blood, she left a little behind so I could survive. While I’d like the world to be better than that, I’ll take what I can get.
“I’ll give you a call if an apartment opens up,” she said when I handed over my keys that last day.
“You already know I can’t afford it,” I said. “And I don’t have a phone anyway. I only had a landline.”
“You don’t have a cell phone?”
“Fuck no.”
She sighed and drove me to a gas station where she bought me a clunky burner phone that looked like the kind corporate types would clip to their belts like how Western outlaws would carry guns in their holsters when getting ready to do some really fucked up shit.
“Let me enter your number, one sec” she said. “I’m going to call you if I have any vacant apartments. You can housesit them until I get new tenants.”
“Why?” I asked, immediately regretting it because this is the kind of offer I shouldn’t question.
“You’re quiet and neat. It makes the space look like less of a pile of shit.”
The upside of having the burner was Allison could call me if she wanted to hang out. In the meantime, I mostly watched pigeons in the park, and I looked so ragged that people would give me money even though I never begged – just like how I imagined in my punk utopia.
As a huge surprise, our third date was watching The Thermals play for their tenth anniversary of The Body, The Blood, The Machine tour. They played that album in full and some songs from a new album that wasn’t as good but wasn’t bad. I can’t even remember the name of the new album and I won’t look it up because I don’t really care that much – it’s beside the point.
Allison leaned in and whispered, “Are The Thermals actually punk or no?”
After the show, we sat on my favorite park bench and debated it. This is something, specifically, I’ll cover later, so I won’t spoil it right now, but it set off a popular conversation between us – whether or not something is punk. It’s obviously something I write a lot about in whatever this is, but it was Allison who started our shared obsession.
“Amanda is practicing tonight,” she said. “Can I stay at your place tonight?”
Being homeless was a pretty embarrassing thing to admit. I’d been sleeping in my car on a suspended license and expired registration. At any moment, I could show up in the parking lot where I kept the car on that particular day, and the car could be towed away. That shit is stupid and I felt weird coming out and saying it, so I nodded and led her to the car.
“We’re here,” I said.
“Uh,” she said. “What?”
“This is where I live now.”
“Fuck,” she shook her head.
We moved in together that night. It was easy to pack because all my stuff was already in the car. She helped me carry all of it to her room in the noise disaster that was Cats versus Frogs’ practice crescendo. We found a place for my books among her books. We found a drawer for my scant collection of clothes. My music became absorbed in her collection. All of my life folded neatly into hers.
“We’re about to record, so shut the fuck up, okay?” Amanda (Frog) called up the stairs.
“Gun Show Guy is moving in!” Allison yelled back.
“Cool! Shut up!”
Everything is one thing after another forever. That’s why it’s called that. It’s a thing and then the next thing and eventually everything. It’s an infinite snowball effect. It’s a slippery slope that never ends.
“You’re going to have to get a job,” Amanda told me, holding me in what was now our bed.
“I thought you said I only had to get a job if I really wanted.”
“That was if you knocked me up. I don’t see a baby here.”
And then the next thing and then the next.