Problems, problems. The problem is us.
“You’re all lucky we don’t charge you with obstructing justice,” Savoie said, glaring at X and me with his eyes bulging. “Who the hell do you think you are? The punk rock Hardy Boys?”
Even Detective Murphy, who had been mostly on our side, held back a laugh on that one.
For X, me, and the Upchuck sisters, Marky’s murder caused a ton of fucking problems, too. X’s father was angry — angrier than I’d ever seen him — that we hadn’t tried harder to contact him about what the kid had witnessed.
“Here’s what’s happening next,” Savoie said, jabbing a tobacco-stained index finger in the air. “You are going to stay out of our investigation! You are going to keep your mouths shut! And you are going to tell us the minute … the minute you remember or hear about something that may be useful to us. Do you understand?”
We nodded our heads, silent. But X just stared at him, his face pretty vacant.
“Good,” Savoie said. “Now everyone go to wherever you live, and stay there until you hear from us.”
X looked at Savoie, expressionless. “Stay there? Does that mean we’re under house arrest or something?”
“No, it doesn’t mean that!” Savoie barked. Unlike his partner, Savoie was obviously no big fan of my friend X. In fact, he looked like he wanted to punch him in the face. “But it does mean that the next time we see you, it had better be under better circumstances, got it?”
X said nothing for a few moments, then: “Got it. Check. See you when we see you.” And we got up and left.
That went well.
C H A P T E R 10
The next time we all saw each other was a week later. The coroner had released Marky’s and Jimmy’s bodies to their families, who decided to hold a joint funeral Mass at Portland’s big old Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where X and I had both taken our First Communion. The cathedral had been around since the 1800s or something, and was across from a park that overlooked the bay. In all its years, I’ll bet it had never seen a funeral like this one.
An hour before it started, the redbrick church on Spring Street was packed with teachers and administrators from PAHS and PHS, and tons of students. Some who were there had regularly tormented Jimmy and Marky when they were alive. X and I glared at them.
The holy water should have been boiling.
Fucking hypocrites.
Many of the lemmings were putting on a good show of grieving, however, which made me want to puke. In the last two pews were a big group of media people — print, radio, and TV — along with some hippie guy claiming to be writing for both Rolling Stone and the NME. All of them kept looking at us and making notes or whatever. The Press Herald guy, Ron McLeod, stood apart from the rest of them, near the confessionals, taking it all in.
Those of us in the X Gang, meanwhile, were gathered at the rear of the church, close to its big wooden doors. All of us — X, me, the Nasties, Blemishes, and Virgins — were wearing black, head to toe. We said little. For most of us, it had been the first time we’d seen each other since the night at Sound Swap. The big stained-glass window over the main doors threw this rainbow of colors over everything.
Not far away, Detectives Murphy and Savoie watched as mourners filed in and started looking for a place to sit on one of the crowded pews. Savoie had his arms crossed, and he looked as pissed off as he had been when we had last seen him. X caught Savoie glaring at him, and he glared right back.
“Think it’s a good idea to get in a staring contest with a guy who wants to throw us in jail, brother?” I said, my voice low.
“Couldn’t care less,” X said. “That old bastard seems more interested in blaming punks than finding a killer.”
I looked over at Savoie. “True enough.”
At that moment, Mrs. Upton materialized, wearing all black. Two short men were at her elbows, there to make sure she didn’t collapse, I guess. She looked frail beyond belief, a wisp, and she looked medicated, too. Before anyone knew what was happening, she suddenly let out a screech, pulled away from the two men, and dashed toward us. Everyone in the cathedral turned around as she pointed a shaking finger right at X’s face.
“You killed him!” she shrieked, totally wild-eyed. “You killed my son!”
C H A P T E R 11
Ah, Portland, you festering crap hole by the sea.
Two things are worth mentioning about Portland, Maine, U.S.A., I guess: its origins and its orderliness. Both of these things did not make it very hospitable toward something like punk rock, or people like X and me.
First, its origins: Portland was founded by Native Americans, of course, but later on, pink-skinned residents (typically) liked to tell themselves that they were the ones who “discovered” the place. In or about 1623, allegedly, a British naval officer was given a few thousand acres to start up a settlement on Casco Bay. The officer built a stone house, left behind a company of ten men to guard it, then returned to England to write a book about his experiences. The company of men was never heard from again. So said our PAHS history teacher.
For the next two hundred years or so, Portland was a fishing and trading village, and underwent a bunch of name changes. It also burned down at least three times, but — unfortunately, I say — was rebuilt each time. Thus the phoenix on the city’s crest, and its motto: “I will rise again.” Portland did, becoming a real town, with citizens and a municipal government and all that crap, when Maine became an official state, in 1820.
I hate, hate this place.
Having been founded and dominated by military forces for its first two hundred years or so, Portland has always been a law-and-order sort of town. Portland residents are always voting for right-wing get-tough-on-crime political douchebags, too, even though we actually don’t have much crime. They generally tend to be more pro-police than the citizens of other American cities. It’s part of their biology. Like herpes.
Have I mentioned I hate Portland?
Second, orderliness: If you look at it on a map, Portland looks like mud splattered all over a boot-shaped peninsula in Casco Bay. It looks messy from four miles up. But Portland was always preoccupied with order and was compartmentalized right from the start. If a couple guys who grew up in Portland met each other for the first time on the other side of the planet and exchanged their street addresses, the chances are excellent both would say, “I know exactly where you live.”
East Bayside had a mix of Irish, Scandinavians, and industry, and was at the toe of the boot; at the heel was the West End. Portland’s downtown, meanwhile, was home to Victorian residences and fancy-looking parks like the West End. It had wealthy parts and poor parts, like every city. Above it all, gulls constantly squawked and screeched and the downtown area always seemed to stink of fish. Fog was a constant, too, making everything look like a graveyard.
Running along the top of the boot, like an untangled lace, was Interstate 295, a fifty-three-mile auxiliary road that connects to Interstate I-95 in the north and south of the state. I-95 starts in Kittery, where my dad worked and lived, and ends in New Brunswick, up in Canada.
In Portland, there were neighborhoods where people had money — like the West End, where Sam Shiller and Luke Macdonald lived. But South Portland was pretty uniformly well off, too. For X and the rest of us, this created a bit of a philosophical problem. It was difficult to holler about the rich (as the Clash did), or favor anarchy (as the Pistols did), while living in the suburban splendor that was South Portland. It was really difficult to do it while getting to gigs in your mom’s borrowed Volvo wagon (as the Upchucks did).
X tried to deal with all of these contradictions — Portland’s militaristic origins, its orderly present, the relative wealth of our neighborhood — with what I referred to as “The X Philosophy of the World.” It had three elements, but one of them was about the existential dilemma of being a punk in a place like S
outh Portland.
The X Philosophy of the World decreed that human beings are flawed, so human institutions are flawed, too. “People are stupid, and they come together to do stupid things,” X said, shrugging, when I asked him how a punk like him could still periodically attend Mass, as he did. “The Church does stupid things, but so does every other institution, group, government, union, or corporation. They are only as good or as bad as the people who make them up.”
I didn’t agree with him, but whatever. Trying to change X’s mind was impossible, pretty much.
So, anyway, with X’s theory, his home on Highland Avenue — in upwardly mobile South Portland, Maine — was no better or worse than any other place. Said he: “Living there gives us stuff to write about. It’s like being under Republican rule. It gives us something to be pissed off about.”
Maybe. Possibly. Anyway, the murders of Jimmy Cleary and Marky Upton gave the law-abiding citizens of orderly Portland, Maine, something to be pissed off about.
Unfortunately, us.
The murders whipped the media, and by extension, Portland’s establishment, into a total fucking feeding frenzy. They went insane.
When Marky’s mother screamed at X at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, it basically marked the beginning of open season on Portland punks. In an instant, popular opinion had shifted, from sympathy for some oddball youth subculture thing to open anger, hostility, and hatred for us. The Daily Sun tabloid devoted front page after front page to crazy headlines about the made-up punk rock menace. One unforgettable example, published without a shred of proof, contained quotes from some anonymous “former punk rocker.” It’s headline read: “PUNK KIDS LINKED TO SATANIC CULTS.”
What the fuck?
Other media pulled the same sort of crap. None of the reporters and editors appeared to notice, or care, that it was punks that had been the actual victims. It didn’t matter to them. At both PAHS and PHS, more gloom descended, and members of the X Gang, Room 531, and the NCNA were targeted with lots of bullshit new rules, including ones that prohibited wearing or displaying anything to do with the punk movement. To ensure there was no confusion about the administration’s new rules, the door to Room 531 was filled with discarded chairs and locked up to keep us from congregating there. The administration wanted the punk subculture to wither and die. Us, too, we suspected.
PAHS was an “alternative” school, and claimed in its glossy promotional pamphlets to be “a learning environment where students are encouraged to be creative, independent, and most of all — individuals.” But following Jimmy and Marky’s funeral, PAHS started a campaign to drive the punk rock menace out of its halls. In no time at all, those of us in the X Gang — as well as the NCNA and the 531 Club — were being pulled into meeting after meeting in the administration’s first-floor boardroom. There, we were handed mimeographed rules describing strict new dress codes, codes of conduct, and even something called “education contracts.”
At one of these totally fucked-up meetings, one of the school’s vice-principals shot hate-stares at us, arms crossed, while X held the document like it was a soiled diaper. “An education contract?” he said, staring at the vice-principal. “Really?”
“Recent events have dictated some policy changes,” the vice-principal said, arms still crossed. “Some of these subcultures, or whatever they are, have gotten out of hand.”
X looked at him like he was a slug. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just have us wear identifying badges?”
“What do you mean?” the vice-principal said, his features darkening.
“You know, like yellow Stars of David, or pink triangles,” X said. “Preserves law and order, doesn’t it?”
After that, X and I — along with the Upchuck sisters and a few others — were forced to attend “dialogues” with the Portland Board of Education’s chief psychologist, Dr. Eugene Fogel. The encounters were to take place in the PAHS music room every Thursday afternoon for four successive weeks.
When we arrived for the first session, Dr. Fogel had placed the chairs in a circle, with his at the top. He was this little guy, and he stood there, his arms wide like a scarecrow. “Welcome,” he said, beaming at us beneath a beard and John Lennon–style eyeglasses. “Let’s get to know each other, shall we?”
Once seated, and after we grunted out our names, Dr. Fogel looked around, smiling some more. “Anyone know why we’re here?”
“If you don’t know,” I said, “we sure don’t.”
Dr. Fogel raised his hands in mock protest. “Okay, okay, I deserved that,” he said, beaming again. “But let’s try again, shall we? Anyone want to take a stab at why we are getting together like this?”
“Stab,” Patti said. “Really? Stab?”
Dr. Fogel looked flummoxed, and his smile faded a bit. Before he could speak again, X leaned forward. “We’re here because the police, and this school, don’t know what the hell to do, as usual.” His voice was low, menacing. “So they want us to go through this bullshit exercise instead, in the hope that it’ll help. It won’t.”
Dr. Fogel’s smile looked more like a death’s-head grimace, now. “You must be the one they call X,” he said, sounding uneasy. “Why do they call you that?”
“Why does anyone call you a doctor?” X said. He then stood up. “This is a joke. I’m gone.” And without another word, he walked out. After a few awkward moments, the Upchucks and I and the rest did likewise.
Dr. Fogel did not return.
While the administration’s efforts to stifle us failed, other people sure didn’t stop trying. Once off PAHS and PHS property, lots of punks were targeted with something else: fists and boots. Other students — mainly the jocks — took advantage of the anti-punk hysteria and lashed out. Beatings became routine and went mostly unpunished.
X and I were larger and therefore usually able to win fights, so the jocks generally kept away when we were around. But we couldn’t be everywhere. Lots of kids, bruised and bleeding, started to wonder if all the trouble was worth it. Their parents angrily answered the question for them: No, it wasn’t worth it. It was dangerous. “I don’t want you to be the next victim,” parent after parent said. “You are to stay away from this punk rock garbage until the killer is caught.” So, more and more, they did.
A few days after the funerals, me and X stood shivering at the blue bus shelter nearest to PAHS, on Congress Street, where someone had scrawled “PUNK KILLS” on the window. “This sucks,” I said. “What should we do?”
“Punk show,” X said.
C H A P T E R 12
In the beginning, holding a punk show had been simple. Ask bands to play, rent a PA system, put up some posters around town, and get someone to watch the door. Whether in Portland or London, the early punk shows were pretty easy to organize. Later, things got harder.
When the Sex Pistols started out, for example, nobody knew enough about them to object. So finding venues for Johnny Rotten and Co. wasn’t impossible, and the Pistols played at places like London’s 100 Club, the Marquee, or the Nashville. After the December 1976 Bill Grundy episode — in which members of the Pistols and their entourage appeared on a TV program called Today and hilariously called Grundy a “dirty sod” and “a dirty fucker” — gigs became a lot harder to arrange. “THE FILTH AND THE FURY,” the Daily Mirror called it. After that, and after few more media-manufactured controversies, the Pistols were forced to tour as the SPOTS — that is, Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly.
Same thing sort of happened in Portland in 1977, although on a much smaller scale, of course. Back then, nobody knew what punk rock was, so booking a community hall — or a veterans’ hall, or a Freemasons’ hall, or a union hall — wasn’t too hard. There was no stigma or whatever to overcome. By 1978, however, finding a venue had become harder. Word had spread, and the word wasn’t good. Made-up media stories about the Sex Pistols throwing up in airport lounges, or the Clas
h getting arrested for acts of mischief, blah blah blah. And the photographs they printed with the stories usually didn’t help: they made the punks look like homicidal maniacs.
Locally, things were not helped by some of the gigs that had been put together by us local punks. At one, an anti-police Riverton Community Center gig, someone kicked a hole in the drywall in the men’s bathroom that was big enough to walk through. For fun, some idiots also smashed a couple toilets to pieces, sending water everywhere. X and I had to pay for the damages out of the draw at the door, and — when that wasn’t enough — out of our own pockets.
Ah, the glories of rock ’n’ roll.
Another notorious gig, at a veterans’ hall just outside downtown, also added to punk’s bad reputation locally. While there wasn’t as much damage as there had been at Riverton, there was a police raid instead: the place was busted by hordes of cops for no fucking reason whatsoever. They charged in with police dogs, which sent nervous punks scurrying for the exits. Things were knocked over and broken. Another mess. More damages to pay for.
At that gig, one Portland cop hustled straight up to X’s younger sister, Bridget, who was the most un-punk-looking kid there, and demanded that she spit out the gum that she was chewing — into his hand. Bridget, shocked, did. We then watched speechless as the cop brought the gum up to his nose and sniffed it repeatedly like a dog. He was looking for the odor of drugs, apparently. “Wow,” I whispered to X, “good thing these morons don’t carry guns or anything.”
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