We want our parents to be the norm from which we deviate. So when my dad came out, my instinct was that I needed to husband-up and get married. As if my family wasn’t freaky enough. Me: adrift. My sister: unmarried. My mom: ? And now my dad. Who would fly the flag of normality? My sister bore this burden more heavily than I did. But I immediately felt like I should be popping out kids within a few years of my dad realizing he was gay. Let our parents be anorexic and gay! That shit is for teenagers. My sister and I would be the adults. We would be conventional, conservative even. Guns, God, country, and my contrarian, reactionary self. (This phase lasted about ten minutes.)
When my father came out to his mom, my grandmother said, “You waited for your father to die, why couldn’t you have waited for me to die?” I knew then that I never want to contribute to the corrosiveness of wanting someone to stay hidden. Despite all my initial conflicts about trying to reconcile the father I had as a child to the one I have now, I am thankful that he is happy, that he did not waste another second. Now there is someone to know.
CHAPTER 5
BORN NAKED
In my junior year of high school I formed a band with a few girls called Born Naked. We agonized over band names (though clearly not for long enough) until our singer, Alexis, showed up with a naked picture of her mother when she was pregnant, and that was that. We made stickers, which felt more important than the music itself, and practiced at our drummer Rachel’s house. Our amps were the size of shoeboxes. Most of our guy friends were in bands. We didn’t take ourselves too seriously, almost as a means of warding off any potential criticism—if we thought of Born Naked as a joke, then no one could make fun of us, we were in on it, we got it. Our signature song was one I’d penned called “You Annoy Me.”
Sometimes I think I have barely moved on from that sentiment. So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it. The lyrics:
The way you look really annoys me
The way you talk really bores me
You think that you are always right
You keep me awake at night
You’re the most annoying person I know
Get out of my life, just go, go, go
We don’t care what you say
We’re not listening anyway
Don’t bother me, don’t talk to me
Don’t talk talk talk talk to me
The few chords I had learned were courtesy of a neighbor and school friend of mine, Jeremy Enigk, who later became known as the singer and guitarist of the band Sunny Day Real Estate. If I sneaked through a nearby yard, walked up the hill, and down the other side, I could get to Jeremy’s adjoining neighborhood, monikers like Ridgemont East segueing into Hampton Place, indistinct except for the name and the smooth newness of the sidewalks. I carried my guitar without a case, out in the open, both shield and sword.
Jeremy was, to quote from a Bikini Kill song, the “star-bellied boy” of my high school. With an angelic voice, bright eyes pooling with color and sadness, and a preternatural gift for melody, he was our genius. We gathered around him on the bus, at lunchtime, and at parties like he was a messiah. He was floppy-haired, cute, and mysterious, shy and funny. But mostly his appeal was that he could sing. He could take all the records we were listening to (Sinéad O’Connor, U2, R.E.M.), deliver an up-close version, and bring them into our world. Jeremy became our conduit, taking these formidable albums and making them feel like ours, as if he were a live Walkman we toted around with us, pressing play whenever we wanted to be reminded of our little friend group, how with enough music, with our eyes closed, we could feel like everything and nothing all at once.
In Jeremy’s bedroom he’d show me chords by way of playing “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” by Sinéad O’Connor. I’d play along to the two-chord song while Jeremy sang. Then he’d get bored and start into R.E.M.’s “The One I Love” or U2’s “New Year’s Day,” both of which required some arpeggiation, and I’d fumble my way through them, often still on the intro as he played the last note. He was patient with me, encouraging. I’d go home and practice, feeling that even with just a few chords, everything was now in my grasp.
At that time, I frequented two record stores: Cellophane Square in the Bellevue Square Mall and Rubato Records, a place owned by an older couple who had played in an early ’80s Seattle band called Student Nurse. Rubato was on the first floor of a concrete, two-story office complex in Bellevue. It was there that the clerk recommended I buy two records from a band called Television, not just Marquee Moon but Adventure as well. He asked if I liked Nirvana, to which I answered yes, and he put in my hands the Shocking Blue LP, which featured the original and much more psychedelic version of “Love Buzz,” a song Nirvana covered on Bleach. If it weren’t for Rubato, I wouldn’t own Isaac Hayes records or anything by the Damned. The owners were excited to have an eager and willing explorer, someone whose taste they could influence. Cellophane Square was the more traditional of the two places, with posters on the wall available for purchase that could help demonstrate your music knowledge. Twenty years too late you could display your love for the Clash or Ramones (and I did!), or you could buy a completely unsanctioned Fugazi poster. You could also buy numerous pins or stickers and outfit your jacket or car or notebook with all the outward displays of identity. I drove around the suburbs with a Misfits sticker on my 1979 Honda CVCC, one that referenced their song “Bullet” about the JFK assassination. The sticker depicted an image of Kennedy getting shot in Dallas, blood pouring from his head—a totally offensive and disrespectful image that I nonetheless hoped would let people know that I considered myself a rebel. These things seemed very important. How else could we identify another weirdo or outlier? These symbols intimated a belief system, a way of thinking not just about music but about school and friends and politics and society. It was also a way to separate yourself, to feel bold or try on boldness without yet possessing it. A little inkling of the nonconformist person you could be—you wanted to be—but weren’t quite ready to commit to. I papered my walls with band posters and what little I could find in mainstream magazines about alternative and punk, maybe a picture of Babes in Toyland from Spin or Fugazi from Option. The iconoclast images and iconography covered my room, a jarring contrast to the preppy blue-and-white-striped wallpaper I’d insisted on in elementary school. I resented the parts of myself that were late to adopt coolness, late to learn—I wanted to have always possessed a savviness and sophistication, even though I clearly had neither.
Born Naked was still in its fledgling stage—a stage from which it would, in fact, never quite fully emerge—when my friend Natalie Cox told me that I should check out what was going on down in Olympia. She thought, rightly, that I might feel a musical kinship with some of the bands coming out of there: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, and others. So, though it felt slightly traitorous up in Seattle, I started seeking out K Records singles and sending away for the cassettes these Olympia bands were releasing. I bought the 7-inch compilation There’s a Dyke in the Pit, which featured the Bikini Kill song “Suck My Left One.” I also purchased the first eponymous Kill Rock Stars compilation that had the Bikini Kill song “Feels Blind.” I remember being deeply struck by the lyrics: “Look what you have taught me / Your world has taught me nothing,” and “As a woman I was taught to always be hungry . . . We could eat just about anything / We might even eat your hate up like love.”
To me, that perfectly summed up being a young girl. It was the first time someone put into words my sense of alienation, the feeling that all these institutions and stories we’d been taught to hold as sacred often had very little to do with my own lived experiences. I had already been listening to punk and had related to storytellers like Joe Strummer and Paul Weller, but hearing Bikini Kill was like having someone illuminate my world for the first time. Here was a narrative that I could place myself inside, that I could sha
re with other people to help explain how I felt, especially at a time when I was a shy and fairly inarticulate teen. I could turn the volume up on their songs and that loudness matched all my panic and fear, anger and emotions that seemed up until that point to be uncontrollable, even amorphous. Bikini Kill’s music really gave a form, a home, and a physicality to my teenage turmoil. Eventually I was able to harness that tumultuousness, build on it and make it my own. It’s hard to express how profound it is to have your experience broadcast back to you for the first time, how shocking it feels to be acknowledged, as if your own sense of realness had only existed before as a concept. I felt like I could step inside something; it was a revelation.
More than they influenced my style of playing, Bikini Kill helped to embolden me. I still see music as an act of defiance as much as it is an act of celebration. A lot of my ideas about earning it and owning it come from Bikini Kill’s early influence on me.
I feel very lucky that Bikini Kill came first. By the time I was playing in Sleater-Kinney, a lot of those early battles—for space, for respect, for recognition within the context of punk and indie music—had already been fought. We were ultimately recognized as a band, not just as a female band, and that is a luxury that cannot be overstated. A certain kind of exhaustion sets in from having to constantly explain and justify one’s existence or participation in an artistic or creative realm. What a privilege it must be to never have had to answer the question “How does it feel to be a woman playing music?” or “Why did you choose to be in an all-female band?” The people who get there early have to work the hardest. Bikini Kill weren’t the first—they had predecessors and influences—but they carved, tore, and clawed out a space in music for which I am very grateful.
—
I had started running away from home in high school—nothing dramatic, simply leaving for a few days with no intention to return. Sometimes I told my father, other times I did not. Late at night, I’d put the car in neutral and push it out of the garage with the engine off. Halfway down the driveway, I’d start the motor. My moods and my whereabouts went undetected for the most part, and I think in part that is why I didn’t want to be around—I felt unseen and thus sought out visibility elsewhere. I took comfort in the families of various friends. I was appreciative of the attention they gave me, the kindness. I spent Easter with one friend by default, as I had spent Saturday night at her house and woke up to the Sunday holiday. For my best friend Katie’s mother I did chores, I vacuumed and dusted. I loved how normal these lives felt so much that I was willing to perform tasks I would only do for my own father after much resistance. I watched movies and sat around dinner tables discussing art and politics, inserting myself into conversations and dynamics so that I could sense what it might feel like to be held accountable, to be required to show up. I practiced being a daughter, a sister, someone who had a role and traditions. I existed half in my own family and half in others. I was such a frequent resident at Katie’s house that her mom asked my father if I would switch to a private school senior year; she feared Katie wouldn’t go otherwise. I applied and got in. I felt like no one was really looking out for me, that I was marginal and incidental. I compensated by being spongelike, impressionable, and available to whatever and whoever provided the most comfort, the most sense of belonging. I was learning two sets of skills simultaneously: adaptation—linguistic and aesthetic—in order to fit in, but also, how to survive on my own.
—
When it came to applying to college, discussing the options with my father, it all took on a desultory shape. Despite my being accepted at Lewis & Clark, it turned out we couldn’t afford it. I was stuck with my backup choice. I really didn’t want to go to Western Washington University. I had no plan, and I left for the northern part of the state knowing only that I would not be there long. Departing for a departure. Nevertheless, I went through the motions. I set up my dorm room inside a building that resembled a Travelodge: entrances on the outside, concrete, unglamorous, and institutional. My favorite thing about Western was the meal card, a fact that began to show up on my increasingly rounded cheeks.
Perhaps it was my lack of commitment that prevented me from making friends. I spent my days listening to records and trying to ingratiate myself to a roommate named Aimee who had grown up in Olympia. In my vision of Olympia, it was mythical. It was Paris or Berlin in the ’20s, it was the Bloomsbury group, it was the cradle of civilization. I sensed Olympia would be my salvation, where I needed to end up. It was also tiny. I assumed that every denizen of that town was a young punk, walking around with a bag full of 7-inch singles and a fanzine, and in a band.
But Aimee had never heard of these bands from Olympia. So she graciously let me proselytize to her about her own hometown, a town she was likely relieved to have departed, off to bigger and better things. I regaled her with tales of indie labels. I played her Heavens to Betsy and Bikini Kill cassettes and KRS compilations. She tried to be helpful, filling in geographical gaps in my knowledge while I filled in musical ones in hers. Aimee became an ersatz lifeline for me, a temporary and tenuous pathway to where I wanted to go. It was a pitiful and one-sided friendship, and one I probably remember with more fondness and importance than she ever will. She was a placeholder for me, just some unwitting kid from Olympia who would serve as a stand-in for my dreams and aspirations.
I went to a show in the cafeteria where a local band played a cover of the Go-Go’s “Our Lips Are Sealed.” I remember seeing the guitarist walk around campus the next day, and I was filled with wonder. I wanted to be someone who had that power to drift in and out of people’s imaginations, who could be bigger than mere human form, a surface upon which others could project their longings. I needed other people’s outward manifestations of self to help me realize who I could be.
A girl at Western named Andie—lumbering and slouched, but way more motivated and less self-conscious than I was—immediately got involved in the radio station, wanting to bring bands to the school. In that fall of 1992, she brought Mudhoney to Western. We learned that there was going to be a surprise guest, and that the guest would be Nirvana. They would “open” the show.
When Nirvana took the stage, they played in front of an audience that didn’t really expect or deserve their presence—which was probably all they had hoped for at that moment. I, of course, completely took for granted the fact that they likely felt lucky they could still surprise anyone, that they could sneak onto a stage and play a normal show, that they could open for friends in a small college town in their home state, that they could pretend to still just be some normal guys. I took for granted that set, the ease and exuberance of it. They played mostly off Nevermind, just three people with the best songs you’ve ever heard, scrappy and guttural and really loud. And as openers for Mudhoney you could really hear the context from which all this was happening: chainsaws making sonic carvings, hollowed-out selves amplified and discordant. There was some thread of sweetness underneath, a melodic sense that hit you in the back of the throat and made you want to raise up a weary, tentative fist, hoping that gesture would mark you as having been found, or ready to no longer feel lost.
And even though it was Nirvana—Nirvana, playing a secret show at my school—the best musical moment at my time at Western was yet to come.
Fliers went up for Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, and Mecca Normal. The three bands were coming to play at the Showoff Gallery in downtown Bellingham.
I had been listening to Heavens to Betsy every day. They had a six-song cassette that intrigued me in a way nothing before had. It was a combination of Corin Tucker’s voice and the lyrics. The beautiful parts were edged in disgrace and disgust; it bordered right on ugly the whole time. The singing was louder than it needed to be—did she even need a mic? The music was rudimentary, the drums like an uneven stagger, a determined but ungraceful late-night walk home, the guitar or bass playing just a pattern that repeated until it was an incision—but
it was the voice that really cut through. The voice asked to be listened to but it did not beg or plead, it dared and challenged, it confronted but needed no reply from the listener. Any sadness was also defiant: it was not the wail of mourning but of murder. And there was so much I wanted to destroy.
I went to the Heavens to Betsy show with Aimee. A sign on the door announced that Bikini Kill had canceled on account of a family illness. It didn’t matter, I’d still see Heavens to Betsy. The Los Angeles Times had sent a reporter and a photographer to cover the show. At the time, Riot Grrrl was a movement that the mainstream press was desperate to understand. News outlets continually attempted to infiltrate the underground, never to really get a handle on it, only serving to mischaracterize its impact.
Heavens to Betsy was a wolf in sheep’s clothing: two small women who took up very little physical space on a stage. Typically when a two-person band performs live, they find ways of compensating for their diminutive population via aesthetic amplification and augmentation. They surround themselves with a cityscape of amplifiers; they use drum risers and lighting to create formidable shadows, a landscape of giants; they find ways to add a sense of largeness. But Corin had only her handmade guitar that her father had helped build. It was a crude piece of machinery painted matte black, and it looked like a home appliance that had been melted down in a fire. And she played with the tiniest of amps, an orange Roland cube with one speaker, the entire thing the size of a carry-on suitcase. No pedals, no tuner. She was accompanied by Tracy Sawyer, the drummer and occasional bass player Corin had dragged along with her to Olympia from their childhood hometown of Eugene, Oregon. Tracy backed up Corin tentatively but proudly, stubbornly, the way a younger sibling would, with a secret and shy courage. The noise they made in Heavens to Betsy was vicious and strange. It completely changed one’s notion of what it meant to be powerful onstage. It was not about strength in numbers nor in size. It had nothing to do with volume. It was about surprise. It was about knowing you were going to be underestimated by everyone and then punishing them for those very thoughts.
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl Page 5