Every morning at 8:30, we were expected to appear at our homeroom, where attendance would be taken by the teacher who was supposedly keeping track of our progress (or lack of it). The national anthem would be played and the Pledge of Allegiance would be mumbled. After this stupid morning ritual, we would then head to our various corners of PAHS. If we had a seminar to attend, we’d go to that. Otherwise, we’d hang out with our friends, almost always in the same areas, working on course modules called “units.” The jocks had a spot, the geeks theirs, the drama and music students theirs.
The vast majority of the other students looked like clones, with their flared jeans, sweatshirts or T-shirts, jean jackets, and long, teased hair. The ones who could, grew mustaches. The girls wore platform shoes, and some of the guys did, too. From our vantage point in Room 531, the other students at PAHS were mindless, clueless conformists. They all listened to the same (bad) music, and they all took the same (bad) drugs, and they all thought and looked and dressed the same (bad, bad, bad).
They were, however, the majority, and those of us in the NCNA/X Gang were the minority. We, as a result, generally kept to ourselves. To the high school’s ruling classes, we were “fags,” “geeks,” and “losers.” Most of the student population despised the NCNA and the punks. That was okay, because we despised them right back.
“They’re just lemmings,” I explained to Jimmy the newcomer, as X listened. “They’re lemmings, with their ridiculous Farrah Fawcett and John Travolta hair, and their recycled hippie clothing, and their single puny brain. It’s a single brain they all share, so that they all do, and say, and believe, the same things, always. In five years, the girls will be popping out more lemmings, and the boys will be employed in some environment-killing industry, figuring out ways to make life less livable for the rest of us.”
Jimmy laughed. “Is he always like this?” he asked X.
“Get used to it,” said X. “He’s just getting warmed up.”
C H A P T E R 15
Mike lit a cigar. “It feels like someone’s trying to put you out of business,” he said. “It’s what the cops do to us.”
X nodded and I shifted from one foot to the other. I was uneasy. We were in the last place I ever thought we’d be: Mike’s crappy room above Gary’s.
I looked around. There was a sweat-stained bed with a sleeping bag on it in one corner, a bedside table with a tower of true crime paperbacks balanced on it, and a small fridge and two-element burner in the far corner. On the streaked, shiny walls, there were these phantom rectangles where pictures had hung long ago. And, above the bed, Mike had tacked up an old Easy Rider poster, with a grim-looking Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda motoring down a highway toward their fate. I hated that stupid hippie movie.
Opposite the door was one large, cracked window that looked out onto Brown Street. Across the road was a windowless brick wall that ran almost the entire length of the block. If Mike craned his neck, he could see Free Street to the left and Congress to the right. This was Mike’s home, I guess, and X had come to ask for help.
The biker/bouncer examined the lit end of his cigar. “Cops in this town aren’t so good at solving crimes, but they’re really good at making your life a living hell,” he said, sprawled out in his creaking easy chair. He grunted. “That’s what they’re doing to you guys. That’s what they do to anyone who rides.”
X was sitting on Mike’s only other chair, borrowed from Gary’s bar. He said nothing, so I spoke for the first time. “Doesn’t make sense,” I said to Mike. “It’s our friends who were killed. We didn’t kill them. But the cops are acting like we did.”
Mike shrugged. “Maybe they think you did.”
X waited a moment before returning to the reason for our visit. “So can you help?”
Mike squinted at X and then me. “For twenty percent of the door. You get the place, and you pay for our beer, and we’ll do it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
C H A P T E R 16
Every big town, just about, has a punk house. Usually, a punk house is an abandoned place where bands play at parties or practice or whatever. Sometimes, when they can’t afford a hotel, touring bands will stay there. Not as often, punk houses are places where punk zines are produced, or where independent, DIY record labels are based. Most of time, however, punk houses are just someone’s rundown old home where the kids start squatting because they basically don’t have anywhere else to go.
Portland’s punk house, for as long as anyone could remember, was Coyle Street. Coyle Street was an actual two-story home, built by a shipbuilder’s family during the First World War or something like that. It was located at 176 Coyle, just west of Deering Avenue, in Deering Center, in a stand of trees and overgrowth and right beside the railroad tracks. At one time, it was probably a pretty dignified affair, with yellow wood siding and ornate white trim. There was a nice balcony out front, and a big picture window looking out toward the street. The railway tracks ran north-south, from downtown.
It must have been pretty nice. But by the start of the ’70s, Coyle Street was empty and rundown; by the end of the ’70s, local punks were using it for parties or as a place to crash.
In 1978, no one lived at Coyle Street full-time. Punk kids would stay there for a day or two — three or four at the most — then move on. It wasn’t heated and it had no electricity, so places like Sister Betty’s basement were a lot better.
But Coyle Street was a big part of the local scene because it was kind of viewed as more faithful to the punk philosophy than a bar like Gary’s. Gary’s, as filthy and disgusting as it was, was still a money-making business — and it was the bikers’ home first, not ours. Coyle Street was ours. It was also a bit like the punk movement itself: it welcomed the outcasts and the misfits, it was a creative and pretty safe place, and it was free. For a lot of us, Coyle Street became our safe Portland home.
But the Portland cops knew all about Coyle Street, too, and they didn’t want us to treat it like it was our home. Every so often, officers would sweep down on the place, claiming to be following up on a noise complaint. The truth, of course, was that they raided Coyle Street because they hated our guts. So they’d drive some punks out onto the railway tracks, or arrest some of them, and tell them not to come back. City workers would come and hammer up some sheets of plywood over the doors, but those would be gone almost as soon as the police had left, used for firewood or added to the skate ramp out back, near the ramshackle two-car garage.
X’s decision to hold the punk benefit show at Coyle Street was going to be tricky. We couldn’t advertise it like we did with our other gigs — postering construction sites downtown, putting ads in high school and college papers, or making public service announcements on the University of Southern Maine’s radio station, WMPG. If the cops found out about our plans too much in advance, they’d use force to shut us down. The media insanity that came in the wake of the murders of Jimmy and Marky had dropped off a little bit, but the general hostility sure hadn’t. Portland’s establishment — the police, the politicians, the educators — still wanted us to totally disappear. To X, to no one’s surprise, it became super important that we didn’t. The Coyle Street gig would need to attract enough punks to raise enough money for a reward — and to show everyone that the Portland scene was not dead. It would also need to be completely violence free, for reasons that were super obvious.
X and I debated all this as I piloted my battered Gremlin east toward Sam’s house near the Promenade, where he and Luke and Eddie were waiting for us.
“Fuck, X, the cops will be on us like a fat kid on a Smartie,” I said, when he continued to insist that the best venue was Coyle Street. “Can’t we hold it outside city limits or something?”
“Sure,” X said. “But I called around. Nobody will rent to us. And no bus companies will even return my call. So, even if we’d gotten a place, we’d have no way to get anyone there or back again.
Coyle Street is the only option.”
“So the Blemishes play, the Virgins play,” I said. “Who else?”
“I called Moe Berg up in Toronto. He said the Modern Minds will come down for it.”
“The Modern Minds? Wow, that’s fucking awesome,” I said, starting to warm to the idea. “So they’d headline?”
X shook his head. “No,” he said. “We’ve got to send a message to show we’re not going to just die, like they want us to. So the Nasties have to headline.”
“What?” I said, looking sideways at him. “Without Jimmy? How can they play without Jimmy? They won’t do it, man.”
“That’s why we’re going to see Sam and Luke and Eddie,” X said as South Portland slid by. “We’re going to do this show for Jimmy and Marky.”
C H A P T E R 17
One week before the Coyle Street gig, the phone rang at X’s house. It was a super cold Saturday morning; his whole family was at his brother’s hockey game. No one was there except X and me.
X hated small talk, even with me, so he rarely used the phone. When it rang, he’d usually just ignore it. But that day, we were expecting a call from Mike about the gig, so he answered.
“Is this Christopher, uh, X?” a male voice asked.
“Who is this?” X motioned me closer.
“It’s Ron McLeod from the Portland Press Herald. I’d really like to meet with you, if possible … you know, off the record. Do you have time?”
“Why?” X asked, concerned that a reporter had heard about the Coyle Street show, which would effectively kill it. “What do you want?”
“I’ve just got a few questions … as I said, off the record. Don’t worry, I won’t quote you anywhere. Plus, I’ve got some information that may interest you.”
X said nothing for a long time.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” said X. “I know what off the record means. But why should I trust you?”
“I can’t speak for other media, and you obviously don’t have to trust me if you don’t want to,” McLeod said, “but hopefully you realize I don’t make things up like they do at the Sun.”
“All of you make things up,” X said.
He was silent again for a full half-minute. McLeod waited patiently.
“If we meet, I want to bring my friend Kurt. No witness, no meeting.”
“Absolutely. No problem,” said McLeod. “I actually wanted to speak to him, too.”
Me?
That afternoon, X and I took the bus into town and met with McLeod in the cafeteria at the Portland Press Herald building, an old five-story, gray stone structure perched at the corner of Congress and Exchange Streets. A security guard escorted us upstairs, warily eyeing our black leather jackets, skinny jeans, earrings, and hair. McLeod was waiting for us when we got out of the elevator. He was short and balding, with a reddish mustache; behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his eyes seemed to be continually watching, evaluating. We had run into him before, briefly, at the funeral for Jimmy Cleary and Mark Upton. He gingerly shook our hands and led us to the cafeteria.
On the table in front of him, he placed three notepads, a couple copies of the Herald, a tape recorder, and a manila file folder.
X pointed at the tape recorder. “I thought you said this was off the record.”
McLeod nodded. “It is,” he said. “I don’t need to quote you, anyway. I’ve got contacts with the police who are keeping me up to speed.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “So what are your sources saying?”
“A fair bit, I guess,” McLeod said, flipping through one of the notebooks, “but I can’t use a lot of it at the moment, because I can’t get independent confirmation.”
“So, what do you need us for?” X asked. “If you’ve got the cops talking to you, you don’t need us.”
“Because I don’t think the cops know what to make of the murder of your friends,” McLeod said. “I know it, in fact. They’re under a lot of political pressure to solve this, but they don’t seem to know where to start.” He paused. “The punk scene isn’t one they know particularly well.”
“Detective Murphy seems to be pretty clued in,” I said.
“He’s smart, a good guy,” McLeod said. “But his partner’s actually got more experience —”
“Experience at what?” I asked, cutting him off. “Being a total asshole?”
“Right,” McLeod said, changing the subject. “Just a couple questions, okay? Were either of your friends religious?”
“Cops already asked us that,” X said. “Most of us went to a Catholic junior high, for what that’s worth. Why?”
McLeod opened the manila file in front of him, but held it in such a way that neither of us could see what he was reading. “Jimmy was found in a crucifixion position. That is obviously significant.”
“Obviously. So?”
“So … the cops haven’t disclosed everything they know yet,” McLeod watched us closely to gauge our reaction, “… particularly about Mark Upton.”
We kept quiet, so McLeod continued. “The wound in Mark, it was in his side.” He paused again, waiting for a response, but again, we said nothing. “Also, there was a bunch of barbed wire on his head. Like a crown.”
“Christ!” I exclaimed.
X looked surprised, too, but he just sat glaring at McLeod. “What else?” he asked.
McLeod squinted at his folder. “There was some meat found defrosting on his, um, genitals,” he said. “Pork apparently.”
I felt like I was going to be sick. X looked down at the floor.
“I’m very sorry, boys,” McLeod said. “But apart from the obvious references to Christ’s wounds, I needed to see if any of that meant anything to you. Was, um, Mark Upton Jewish?”
We said we didn’t know. Lots of Jewish kids went to PAHS, I told him.
“Well, do your bands have any songs with religious references?” McLeod asked. “I’ve heard punks aren’t generally too big on organized religion.”
“That’s true,” I said, “but definitely not Jimmy’s band, the Hot Nasties. They wrote songs about girls and being a teenager and stuff like that.”
McLeod looked at us, expressionless. “Well, guys,” he said, looking at his watch. “I don’t know what to tell you. But I think you have done something to piss off someone who is big on religion.”
C H A P T E R 18
The Coyle Street gig was one of those ones that everyone in attendance would remember for a long time. It was like Lester Bangs’s immortal words about what rock ’n’ roll — or, in this case, punk rock — could attain if the circumstances were just right. Bangs had written this, in 1977, after seeing the Clash play:
Nothing can cancel the reality of that night in the revivifying flames when for once if only then in your life you were blasted outside of yourself and the monotony that defines most life anywhere at any time, when you supped on lightning and nothing else in the realms of the living or the dead mattered at all.
It was afterward, and a medicated X was reading from his well-thumbed copy of Bangs’s Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. He looked a bit stoned, something I had never really seen before. “That was the Coyle Street gig,” he said, staring off in space. “Supped on lightning, and nothing else mattered at all.”
I looked at him, feeling a little uncomfortable. I mean, X was what a couple of years later would be referred to as “straight edge.” In all the time I had known him, I had never, ever before seen him drunk or on drugs.
Me? I took plenty. But him? Never.
“It was quite a night, X,” I agreed, still a bit weirded-out by his behavior. “It was definitely something else. Now, just take it easy, okay?”
After the bikers took less than their cut, the Coyle Street gig raised over a thousand bucks toward a reward for the capture of the killer (
or killers) of Jimmy and Marky. Like X had hoped, it showed everyone that punk in Portland, while down, was definitely not out. It came off without a cop raid, or in fact any kind of trouble. Until the very end, that is.
The gig was more of a festival than an actual show, I think. The Virgins played, the Social Blemishes played, and others played, too — Toronto’s Modern Minds, Bangor’s Mild Chaps, Animal Kingdom plus the Sturgeons, the only all-black punk outfit in all of Maine. At the end, the remaining Nasties appeared for the final number, a rendition of the Nasties’ traditional show closer, “The Invasion of the Tribbles.” Things got emotional at that point.
For days, and as I had predicted, the Nasties had not wanted to play. Even after X and I asked them, Sam, Eddie, and Luke said it was too soon — and not right — to do any shows as the Nasties. “He was our best friend,” Sam said. “He was the fucking heart and soul of this band. How can we go forward without him?”
So they did, but they also didn’t. Sam, Luke, and Eddie, all looking pretty uncomfortable, showed up at Coyle Street surrounded by about a dozen hardcore members of the Nasties’ fan club. They, like everyone else there, were dressed in all black.
X had asked everyone who came to the Coyle Street gig to wear black. To show that we were in mourning for Jimmy and Marky, partly, but it would also make it harder for the police or nosy neighbors to see the punks as we crept off the railway tracks and onto Coyle Street. The cracked windows had been carefully covered with boards, to keep light from seeping out, and then some old mattresses were brought in to line the exterior walls, to eliminate the possibility of a noise complaint. A makeshift stage was set up, on top of milk crates. On the walls, black flags.
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