How to Piss in Public

by McInnes, Gavin

  I was eighteen at the time and had recently got my first tattoo, a skull, on my right shoulder. I knew the shit was going to hit the fan if my parents ever saw it. They are both very dramatic and it’s almost solely because they drink—a lot. I get why they drink. I have to be drunk to be around them sometimes, and they are them. Besides, my dad’s roots are Irish, and as Richard Nixon once said, “Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”

  Anyway, it was a brutally hot day in July and my parents were at the pub, so Kyle (who was five at the time) and I were playing soccer with no shirts on. I knew my brother was going to see my new tattoo, but I had a plan. I sat him down and very carefully explained what a secret was. “So, you can’t tell anyone that I have a drawing on me. It’s going to be there forever,” I said, holding his shoulders and staring into his little-kid eyes. “Got it? It’s very important that you understand this.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” he said, and we went back to kicking the ball around. When my parents got back, Kyle and I were in the kitchen making chocolate milk and I had my shirt back on. My dad had just procured a six-pack and was heading toward the fridge when my brother sang out, “I-I-I-I have a se-e-e-ecret!”

  My ears got red-hot and I rushed over to grab his arm. “No you don’t,” I said through my teeth while squeezing a bit too hard.

  “Ow!” he said, pulling away and holding his sore arm. “That really hurt!”

  At this point I knew I was fucked, so I just sat back and prepared for Parental Armageddon. “What secret?” my dad yelled angrily. My brother looked at me. “What secret?” my dad said louder. After sticking to his guns for all of ten seconds, my brother obediently whispered the secret into our dad’s ear.

  My dad then did one of the scariest and funniest things I’ve ever seen an adult do. He fell backward onto the floor flailing his arms like he was making a snow angel before bursting into fish-in-the-boat convulsions that looked like a robot dance mixed with a self-induced seizure.

  As he jerked around on the floor, his beers left their plastic holder and shot around the kitchen in different directions like tear gas canisters. My mother then began jogging on the spot and pleading, “What is it? What is it? What is it?” Eventually my dad was able to control his spasms enough to eke out the words, “HE’S GONE AND GOT A BLOODY TATTOO!” He kept flapping around on the floor after he said it. He couldn’t stop.

  When my mom got the news she immediately started bawling and taking off her clothes. Apparently panic induces hot flashes. As I stood there in awe of their reactions, my mother plunged to her knees and stood at my feet like I was the messiah. “Please, son,” she said, holding her hands in Scottish prayer and looking up at me, “tell me you regret it, son. Tell me you regret it.” She was now wearing nothing but sweatpants and a bra. Women shouldn’t pray in sweatpants and a bra.

  After a good two minutes of doing the Alligator Death Dance, my father stood up and stared at me red-faced with his veins bulging and his eyes about to pop. I should have been scared, but I had been dealing with their insanity my whole life. “Go ahead,” I said, putting up my dukes for the first time in my life, “hit me.”

  My dad would never hit his kids because that’s what his dad did, so instead he screamed, “Aaaaaah!” at the top of his lungs and started running around the house. It was one long continuous scream as he ran out of the kitchen, through the living room, into his room, around his bed, back through the living room, back into the kitchen, then out again, step and repeat. He ran this hollering obstacle course at least three times. As this went on, my mother continued to sit at my feet in the prayer position, crying and repeating, “Tell me you regret it, son, TELL ME YOU REGRET IT.” I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. This was outrageous.

  My dad’s “Aaaah!” ended with his running back into the kitchen and strangling me—only he’d never do that, so he strangled the air around my neck like I had on an invisible neck brace. He was air-strangling me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as his hands floated around my throat.

  “Get out,” he hissed like a Scottish snake, “before I do something I regret.”

  I walked out the back door and the screen door slammed shut on my brother, who was trying to follow me. I turned back and he was standing behind the screen looking very sad and confused. “What did I do?” he asked.

  I wanted to say, “Well, I hope you just learned what a secret is, dipshit,” but I said, “Don’t worry about it, buddy. They’re just being crazy.”

  Since then the only tattoos I got were “What?” on the inside of my lip, “Approach with caution” logos on my legs, a Scottish battle anthem on my left arm with “Ain’t No Nice Guy” and “Arm Your Desires” above that, and a sun with a dancing tree frog inside it above that. And on the other arm all I got was a poem about vices, “Aren’t Thou Bored,” and a gun, and an anarchy sign with the Crass logo, and then just “Destruction Creates” across the top of my back with a skull-head jellyfish eating Chiang Kai-shek and Fidel Castro that goes from my neck to my ass and around the sides of my ribs. I also have the word “Blobs” over my right tit. And my kids’ names on my wrists. My brother doesn’t have any tattoos.

  Anal Chinook: Revenge of the Punk Nerds (1988)

  By the time I was eighteen, punk had gone from a silly uniform for our gang to a religion I was ready to die for. On the weekends we’d take the bus into the city and I’d see the downtown punks walking with their friends and carrying beer to some awesome party I wasn’t invited to. They had fluorescent-cone spiked hair, knee-high army boots, and studded leather jackets with leopard-print lapels. When I saw them walking in a pack like that, I was so awestruck, they appeared to be walking in slow motion. Fuck being chased around by security guards. I wanted to be chased by cops in riot gear. There were punk riots in Britain and entire squatted neighborhoods in Europe. My favorite band, Crass, was causing international incidents with their political pranks and even our own downtown scene was putting on Rock Against Racism gigs that British bands like Oi Polloi were flying down to play.

  I started singing for a band called Anal Chinook (the latter word meaning “warm wind” in Inuit) run by a charming little hippie named Blake who still collected WWF toys and dressed like a roadie from Fraggle Rock. His parents were very laid-back and they let us play in the basement so loud, it once gave his dog a heart attack. We had to change the chorus of “Fuck You” to “God Bless You” but they gave us the freedom to practice whenever we wanted to so when we finally got a show in the city, we were more than ready.

  First time onstage, ever. (1988)

  On the night of our first show, the other bands we played with were nervous and stared at their frets, petrified of fucking up. The scene was really judgmental and violent back then and I was nervous too but as soon as I got on that stage, all my fear turned into adrenaline. I felt like a pit bull going into a dogfight. Our opening song was about acid rain so I grabbed the mic off its stand, stood on the monitor, and chanted, “It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is … DYING!” The song started with a bang and all one hundred punks in the audience exploded into a swirling circle of sweaty moshers. We sustained this level of energy throughout the show as kids jumped off the speakers into the pit and leapt around the stage like Super Mario. The show ended with me covered in my own blood and leaping into the crowd as Blake and the lead guitarist, Orca, played classic rock solos. From that night on, we vowed to make each show crazier than the last. Music historians call this evolution of the genre “Punk Pathetique.” Seriously, they do.

  We started gigging a lot downtown and were soon able to open up for every big punk band that came to town. We dressed in drag while opening for Millions of Dead Cops and fought the skinheads who tried to wreck the show. We dressed as Kiss and ate cow brains while opening for Dayglo Abortions and they loved it so much, they named a song after us. As far as Kanata punk was concerned, we were bigger than Jesus!

 
After we graduated high school, Steve and I left the rural suburbs behind and moved into a “punk house” downtown. He was now playing guitar for a Clash soundalike band called the Trapt. The tradition for houses back then was for one guy to dress real neat, get a two-bedroom, and then let another five punks move in when the landlord wasn’t looking. We’d usually get evicted within the year and the punk house would just move to the next spot. The third time this happened we got an actual home on Percy Street and called it “Percy Street.” It had several floors and a big living room that became party central for every teenage misfit within a hundred miles.

  I was finally in the in crowd. Those punks I saw from the bus who were walking in slow motion? They were in my living room now. The guy carrying the beer was James Deziel, the drummer for the Trapt. The chick with the leopard print was a one-eyed beauty we all called Bumba Clut. The drummer for Honest Injun was drinking beer in the kitchen and Aidan Girt, a six-foot-tall, skinny, bald guy with huge glasses who had been in almost every punk band in the city, was living next to Steve’s room. He was Anal Chinook’s drummer now. I slept on a cot in the boiler room downstairs, which felt like the punkest place on earth. We drank together, stole groceries together, ran from skinheads together, and played music together. I was no longer a suburban kid reading about punk and hardcore in fanzines. I was living it. It was everything I had ever hoped for and it was kind of whatever.

  You heard me. Being cool sucks. As Cormac McCarthy said, “There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.” I missed the road. Back in high school, my friendships were based on who was funny or who was just plain fun. At Percy Street, they were based on hair. You could be the biggest idiot in the world but if your jacket had the same bands painted on it that mine did, well then, I guess we’re pals. I appreciated the camaraderie but let’s be honest. It’s not exactly a formula for a genuine existence.

  The skinheads thing also got to be pretty tedious after a while. Everyone talked about them so much, I had to put up a sign that said no more talking about skinheads. We all pretended it was about fighting fascism but at the end of the day it was middle-class white kids (us) fighting working-class white kids (them) and they were way better fighters. The visible minorities and Jews we were supposedly defending didn’t give a shit about our war, nor should they have. It wasn’t about them. It was a bunch of class. It was just another version of political correctness and all that bullshit we were copying from our parents is about is the upper classes telling the lower classes how to think. “Hey, uneducated plebes,” we were saying with our noses in the air, “it’s not ‘black’ anymore. It’s ‘African-American.’ Didn’t you get the dictum? Let’s fight.” Somewhere along the road to the tavern, the hijinks had become pedantic. Besides, fighting hurts.

  Aidan the drummer and I usually took the bus back to the suburbs to practice because the rest of the band was still there, but once in a blue moon they’d come visit us at Percy Street. When I’d open the door and see their uncool, suburban faces I’d almost smother them with kisses. Orca, our guitarist, dressed like a gym teacher, and Paul, the bassist, looked like a male feminist in his flowery vest and baggy cords. On this particular night, Blake was wearing a tea cozy on his head and bell-bottoms that said “Blake” on them in Magic Marker.

  They had borrowed a car and made it down for a big summer party we were having because a bunch of punks were visiting from Montreal. After greeting Orca and Blake at the door, I dragged these hometown heroes past the cool kids into the kitchen, where we all started shotgunning beers. Within a mere four shotguns, Orca said, “I think I’m going to puke,” and ran to the front of the house, where projectile vomit shot out of his face like a psychedelic dragon. Blake yelled, “Nice word balloon. What’s it say?” at Orca’s barfing, and that hilarious concept prompted me to stand on a chair and declare a Punk-Off. Without any notice, I ran up the wall and backflipped into the center of the living room, which shattered my kneecap with a large snap. Blake, Orca, and Aidan went outside to go streaking but my knee was filling up with blood and was beginning to look like a colossal bruised tumor. I spent the rest of the party incapacitated and slept in a chair that night.

  The next day I tried to stand and felt a firecracker of pain shoot up my leg. This is the part of an injury where you start to panic and think about permanent damage. “Did I give myself knee AIDS?” I thought. I made a girl named Elise pick me up and drive me to the hospital, where an X-ray revealed I had shattered my kneecap. This was terrible news as we were booked to open for the Dead Milkmen in a couple of weeks. The doctor fixed me up with a removable cast made of Velcro straps and steel rods encased in canvas and told me there was no way it would be healed in two weeks. I hobbled back home determined to prove her wrong (yes “her,” you sexist asshole).

  I spent the next fourteen days limping around like a teenage war vet. I was trying not to lose my busboy job and practice for the biggest gig of our lives but I was walking like a hundred-year-old. Our stage shows had gone from wearing funny hats to epic sagas with gigantic props that belonged on Broadway. We did a song about my foreskin tragedy, for example, that included a huge foam penis Blake circumcised with his teeth while chanting, “He sold his cock to punk rock!” The Dead Milkmen show was going to incorporate my broken knee in a groundbreakingly brilliant way and the music had to be tight. The whole city was going to be there. Even my mom.

  Two weeks later, I was on a dark stage in a wheelchair and dressed all in black like a death metal paraplegic. Behind me was a gigantic projection of a government movie about child safety we rented from the library for fifteen bucks. After a very quiet and eerie intro song, Blake stepped out of the darkness and summoned Ozzy Osbourne. Ominous guitar music filled the room as white fog did the same. Then a black kid from Blake’s basketball team appeared through the smoke and said, “You summoned me?” in a normal voice. He blessed us all with magic devil powers and even healed my leg by removing the cast and commanding me to walk (which fucking killed). As we praised black Ozzy’s satanic powers, Dead Milkmen vocalist Rodney Anonymous Mellencamp magically appeared with a pitchfork and killed him. We gasped in horror and were inconsolable until Blake pointed out that the show must go on.

  Right before being “healed” by Ozzy. Note leg brace. (1990)

  The rest of the set was all about bringing Ozzy back from the grave. We had written a song for the event with a chorus that went, “Oh-double-Zed-Y, ” again and again and we forced the audience to sing along in an attempt to revive the Sabbath singer. We encouraged people to stop slam-dancing and take a moment of silence to pray for our leader. I even climbed up to the rafters using a rope that took all the skin off my hands and hollered spooky-sounding pleas for him to return. Nothing worked until we all got together to shit in a bucket, which was then thrown into the crowd. That worked.

  The shit wasn’t shit. It was unwrapped chocolate bars but they were very convincing and got such good air, one of them flew by my mom, who was standing at the back with a girlfriend of mine. I was told later that my mom said, “Charming,” after it flew past her head.

  Ozzy was back and we reprised the Ozzy song with black Ozzy himself singing the chorus. We dragged this part out so long, Rodney showed up with his pitchfork again and chased us all off the stage. Then the Dead Milkmen went on. What an intro. As Crass did in 1984 after their Miner’s Benefit, we packed it in after that show because it was obvious we had achieved perfection and there was no sense commencing our inevitable decline.

  After the show, I caught up with my mom and asked her what she thought. She was angry about the poo but I managed to calm her down and explained it was four Oh Henry! bars and a Mars bar. “Oh,” she said, finally convinced. “Well, good then, because throwing feces at people is illegal. You know that, right? It’s assault.” I was going to say, “Well, then monkeys in the zoo should be in jail,” but I didn’t because I realized monkeys in the zoo are in jail.

  Stomped by Very Stylish Nazis (1988)


  The Nazi skinheads in our quaint little government town were like exaggerations of Hollywood bad guys. Their leader, Geoff, regularly made trips down south to meet with militia groups and would come back with a trunk full of guns. He was a Coke-machine-shaped ogre who eventually blew his giant head off with an M16 while on the phone with his baby’s mama. Just below him on the bully scale was Wolf, a stocky psychopath who carried a cane with a removable handle that doubled as a rapier, like he was some kind of British assassin from the 1800s. At the bottom of the top brass was the foppishly named Francois, a French-Canadian nationalist whose entire back was tattooed with three gigantic Klansmen riding their horses into battle—a battle that must have been happening somewhere down his ass crack.

  We tried to fight these guys, but it was like fairies trying to wrestle Skeletor. Not only were we outmatched, we were outviolenced. It wasn’t unusual to be sitting at a house party drinking beer and have a dozen of them swarm through the front door smashing everyone (women included) with baseball bats, only to disappear out the back as quickly as they came. Aidan was particularly damaged by one of these attacks and seemed weird afterward. They would come to our shows and beat us up in the pit, then they’d get onstage and attack the band. We occasionally won, but you sound like an asshole describing a fight you won so I’ll leave those out. For the most part the “Boneheads” met little resistance stealing our beer, our girlfriends, and even our boots.

  Back in the eighties, Dr. Martens were a coveted combat boot mostly used by British mailmen. They were orthopedic and very cool looking, so whenever skinheads saw a punk wearing them, the punk got “rolled for his Docs.” Regular trips to Scotland to visit relatives meant I had special access to this Holy Grail of shoes, but I had to be careful about wearing them in downtown Ottawa.