“Just go with it, just feel it out,” Joey insisted. I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t keep up with the furied chords. The sound of my snare grew faint, the thud of my kick drum dulled. I looked up desperately for a saving gaze, but it was too late – my stiff arms and gnarled fingers said no more. I stopped playing, now all eyes were on me. Flush-faced, I whispered, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” My drum sticks clacked onto the concrete garage floor.
Nowhere to hide, I cried silently in my friend Kaitlin’s musty Taurus. She was the keyboard player for this band, as well as the instigator of this whole ordeal. On the car ride home she looked over and gave me a pity pat, “It’s okay, you’ll get it next time.” But she was wrong, I didn’t get it next time or even the time after that. I actually didn’t get it for a really long time.
If I could ask my 17-year-old self why she continued to return despite the humiliation, especially considering how insecure I was at the time, I really don’t know what she would say. My guess is she’d go on some rant about her love of music and disdain for mainstream culture and omit her not-so-secret crush on the guitar player Derek (who soon after became my boyfriend).
Or maybe I’ve just spent so many years of my adult life as an over-thinker that I’ve forgotten that I wasn’t always this way. Perhaps the whole situation was more organic. Maybe I just wanted to fit in with my newfound crew of misfits.
From a young age, being a part of a subculture had intrigued me. I remember watching The Outsiders and rewinding it over and over again to that opening scene. It’s when Ponyboy asks Dally what they should do, to which he replies, “Nothing legal.” In the background the distorted twang of Van Morrison’s “Gloria” called to me as if her name were mine.
Here I was, this 12-year-old brown girl obsessed with these white boy greasers. I didn’t fantasize about being with them, I wanted to be them, be in their world of law-breaking coolness.
The first bad boy I ever idolized, though, was my brother, who was 7 years my senior. A gang member, a drug addict, a music buff, and a verbose conversationalist; he was frightening and captivating all at once.
When he was on a good high I’d sit by his side, waiting for one of his impromptu lectures to begin. Last week it was prison politics, today it was the underground house music scene. He told me subculture tales of the “rebels” who dressed like James Dean, the “groovers” who wore colorful beads, and the illegal parties where they all gathered. Was this techno, jungle or trance, he would ask me. I listened carefully to the synthesized bass, warbling and reverberating in the speakers. Trick question, it was acid house.
When he was on a bad one, my brother was possessed with paranoia. In the dead of the day, windows and blinds were shut. He feared neighbors peering in, “figuring out his schedule.” I stayed in my room, tucked away with my CD player.
My mom at this time was at the peak of her religious fervor and “worldly” music was not acceptable. What she didn’t know was the devil’s music was my only means of escaping the chaos of our family. Music was my refuge, my savior.
For many years I kept my music consumption a secret, stealing my brother’s cassettes, binge-watching MTV at my grandma’s house, listening to the radio in my makeshift forts. I couldn’t get enough of the melancholy rock of The Smashing Pumpkins, the sleek R&B of Aaliyah, the funky grooves of Zapp and Roger, and the bittersweet soul of Mary Wells.
This lust for sound only grew stronger in high school, but was now satiated by my internet wormhole findings on early blogs and illegal music downloading ventures. Bands like The Strokes funneled me into the likes of The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, and The Ramones. I had gone from tight tank tops and hangs with popular jocks to holey Vans slip-ons and lonely strolls in the halls. I was becoming “weird,” according to my peers who had known me since elementary school.
These changes were a choice. There was no big dramatic moment when I was ostracized from hanging out in the grassy corner with the cool kids. I just knew deep down inside I wasn’t one of them. I was athletically challenged and socially awkward. I was their antithesis and I am amazed they let me tag along for so long.
Around this time, I found inspiration in the mediocre pop-punk of Jimmy Eat World’s music video “Sweetness” (a fact the music snob in me has never admitted before). The drummer’s style, like the band’s, was not particularly innovative, yet I found myself mesmerized by the fluidity and force of his movements. The mechanics of it all spoke to my curious nature—how each limb simultaneously engaged in a repetitive motion, interlocking to create this master rhythm.
And with that I decided I wanted to be a drummer. Yes, it was that simple. I was (and still am) prone to an excitable impulsiveness. My mother was neither surprised nor enthusiastic. As a single parent on a budget, her response was practical: I had to choose between dance class and drum lessons.
I was good at dancing. I had done it for 8 years – modern, jazz, hip-hop, and ballet folklórico, but it was never my passion. I put away my shoes and picked-up sticks. This was a new era.
To my dismay, my eclectic taste in music, not to mention my dancing experience, did not give me any sort of aptitude for coordination and tempo when it came to playing the drums. I clopped along clumsily, one slow limb at a time.
Frustrated by my lack of progress, I quit a year later. I swore to never play again. But a few months later, there I was with Kaitlin, picking up my sticks all over again…
You might guess how the rest of this story goes: how I stuck it out this time, how I learned that patience and practice pay off, blah, blah blah. While all that’s true, the story of one young girl’s determination is not why I’m coming back to this moment some 14 years later. Joining a punk band forever changed my life. It gave me the identity and community I had longed for.
As a lifestyle punk can be hedonistic and even destructive. Aspects I admittedly conformed to, although I was a late bloomer in the rebel department, mind you. But as a philosophy, punk is also about challenging what is accepted, be it politically, socially, or aesthetically. The way you dress, the music you listen to, where you shop, what you eat, all become your chosen positions in the culture wars.
I stopped eating meat. I supported independent music. I refused to shop at malls. I hacked my hair off till it was short, boy-short. This was my stance and I felt power in these changes.
This confidence and intentionality opened my creative consciousness. I devoured art of all forms, from the surrealist paintings of René Magritte to the Dada collages of Hannah Höch. Punk gave me the permission to be the whimsical dabbler I had always been. I began to see my life as a performance, as an all-encompassing creative act. Whatever I wanted to do, I did. Whatever I wanted to try, I tried. Wherever I wanted to go, I went.
Countless road trips, tours up the West Coast, backpacking in Europe, partying in Tijuana, joining new bands, quitting old bands, mosh pit bruises, feeble attempts at guitar playing and songwriting, making collages of out trash, loving vulnerably, loving recklessly, smoking weed with strangers, psychedelic vision quests, Ritalin binges, wheat pasting adventures, shoplifting, misdemeanors, bad tattoos, moving to San Francisco, living on couches (a lot of couches).
Most people can’t believe I was ever this way. I am far more reserved now. I eat meat now. I rarely go to shows. I don’t play drums. My hair is long—well, long-ish. Basically, I’m a sellout by my 17-year-old self’s standards.
In my adulthood, I catch myself almost regressing. Not to recklessness, but to that awkward, insecure girl from before. Wondering if I should be more concerned about getting married, having kids, and finding a stable career. Those things never used to be important to me, but the baby-making alarm in me finally went off. I keep pressing snooze, but I hear it everyday.
When that happens, I have to stop and remind myself: I’ve never taken a traditional path. That path has never been for me. Instead I’m doing what I’ve been doing since I was a teen; making my own way, creatively and intentionally. Still living my best story – and still punk.