“No, no,” I said, feeling a flash of irritation. “I’m sober as a fucking judge. I’m more straight edge than X. I’m just worried about Jess.”
“All of us are. We’re her friends now, too.”
Everyone came crashing through the door, laughing and chattering.
“We’ve got her back. And yours,” she whispered to me.
CHAPTER 31
While Thomas M. Jones’s outburst at his bail hearing had delayed the start of the trial — resulting in several angry phone calls to Martin from the mayor of Portland, the governor, and even the two senators representing the state of Maine — Martin and her two assistant DAs believed every word of Jessie’s story. And the more they heard, the more convinced they became that the rape charge needed to be added to the 121 charges of felony murder and 311 counts of attempted murder that Thomas M. Jones was already facing. A meeting was called to inform Jones’s lawyer, David Dennison, of their decision. It wasn’t going well and voices were raised.
Dennison picked up a tattered copy of The Maine Rules of Unified Criminal Procedure and slammed it on the floor of the Cumberland County District Attorney’s boardroom. The conversation stopped.
“I would thank you, Mr. Dennison, not to throw things in my boardroom,” Martin said, her eyes and voice icy. “And I would also appreciate a more civil tone.” She paused. “You are very lucky your client isn’t also facing a charge of sexually abusing a minor.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Dennison snapped, leaning forward in an effort to intimidate Martin. “The complainant was sixteen, the age of consent in this backward state, when she had consensual sex with my client! And —”
But the DA wasn’t fazed and shot back. “She was not sixteen, Mr. Dennison! It was a week before her birthday. She was fifteen at the time,” Martin hissed. “And it wasn’t in any way consensual.”
Dennison and Martin glared at each other. Their associates glared at each other, too. The trial hadn’t even started, and both sides already deeply despised each other. After a moment, Dennison’s associate, Mr. Popowich, reached down to retrieve the copy of The Maine Rules of Unified Criminal Procedure.
“This is prosecutorial overkill,” Dennison said, eyes narrowing. “He’s already facing dozens of murder and attempted murder charges. You can only hang him once, Miss Martin. What possible value does this rape charge have, other than to inflame the females in the jury pool?”
“So, your client doesn’t intend to sign a jury trial waiver then, I take it?” Martin asked. “That was one of the questions we had for you today.”
“We haven’t decided yet,” Dennison said, leaning back in the boardroom chair, feeling in charge again. “But we have a grave concern about this stunt, Miss Martin, and the obvious attempt you are making to turn this trial into a war of the sexes.” He paused. “That is a war you won’t win. I assure you.”
The DA resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Dennison’s preferred approach to trials was well known: pit men against women. Given the fact that men completely dominated the justice system, criminal and otherwise, it was an approach that had worked quite well so far.
“In comparative terms,” Dennison sneered, “the alleged assault on Miss Jett — a lesbian, an alcoholic — is a waste of the court’s time. It is an admission that your main case is weak, Miss Martin.”
The DA was well aware that Dennison was trying to bait her into an outburst, but she bit her tongue. After spending hours with Jessie, Martin and her two associates knew that the rape could, indeed, be seen by the judge and a jury as a distraction. But they had become convinced it could be seen as something else, too. Something critically important: motive.
CHAPTER 32
I stood there, guitar in one hand, gear bag in the other, looking around.
Gary’s. Home sweet punk home.
Everything at Gary’s was both old and familiar. It was comforting, like an old pair of Converse. To my post-junkie eyes, though, it seemed a bit different now, and unsettling.
I was happy to be back there with my friends, naturally, getting ready to play the songs we’d written about the lives we knew — about relationships, about favorite Star Trek episodes, about how stupid grown-ups were, about going to the 7-Eleven late at night to get a Coke Slurpee and a bag of Cheetos. All that.
But being back there was more than a bit depressing, too. Everything we’d lost came back in rush: Jimmy Cleary, dead in the alleyway out back; Marky Upton, now gone, too, holding the door for me and X when we rushed out to find Jimmy; Danny O’Heran, playing at Gary’s with me and the rest of the Social Blemishes before he got sick; and Eddie Igglesden and Nagamo. All of them were there just a moment ago, but now they were all gone.
Gary’s was exquisitely, royally filthy, with dust and dirt everywhere. The carpet was so ancient, it was impossible to determine what color it had once been. The walls were the same, with yellowish stains and dark splotches of dried-up beer and whisky — and here and there, smears of what might have been either ketchup or dried blood.
The tables were tiny and round, barely big enough to hold an overflowing ashtray and a few empty glasses of draft, which got piled up in the middle. They’d been bolted to the floor — to prevent them from being used as battering rams in fights (which broke out frequently). The chairs were mismatched, ancient, and uncomfortable but not bolted down, so useful in a fight.
And the air? Well, the air was virtually unbreathable — a toxic, stultifying stew that was part cigarette smoke, part dust, and part sweat and piss. I closed my eyes and inhaled.
I loved it there.
I looked around, remembering when we first started hanging out there. At first, we’d been intimidated by the bikers — all of us, I guess, except X. (Gary’s was originally a biker bar, but as their numbers had dwindled the owners had to make up the difference in revenue somehow.) Eventually, they became sort of amused by us and left us alone. Standing there, I remembered one early, early Social Blemishes show where nobody was on the dance floor — except two hulking bikers in leather, and this balding, wiry little guy standing between them. The little guy was wearing a T-shirt with the letters “OFFO” across the front. The three of them just stood there, watching us get to the end of our set. And when we did, the little guy smiled, gave me a thumbs up, and the three of them ambled away.
Later, as we were carting our gear out to Eddie’s van, Mike the bouncer approached me. “Do you know who that guy was who was watching you play?”
I shook my head.
“That was Tommy Blaine,” he said. “The fucking boss.”
“Of what?” I’d asked.
“The Outlaws,” Mike said, rolling his eyes. “The ‘OFFO’ on his T-shirt means ‘Outlaws Forever, Forever Outlaws.’”
“So? What’s the big deal about him watching us?”
“You were in his house,” Mike said, smiling through his big beard. “He was deciding whether he’d let you little freaks live or not.” He paused, laughing. “You passed the test. You get to live a bit longer.”
And freaks we were, I guess. In those days, in the early days of the Portland scene, the punks were this weird mix of Maine College of Art students, gays and lesbians, cross-dressers, poets, nonconformists, anarchists, socialists, the socially awkward, the alienated, the angry. But somehow we all got along.
And after Tommy Blaine decided to let us live, the bikers started to leave us alone, too. They’d stay up at the bar near the front doors, and we’d hang out around the stage and use the alleyway exit, taking care to avoid walking through their territory. Same with the bikers: they’d stay on their side, ignoring us.
Anyway, we got a place of our own, and the scene started to grow, and it took off like a teenage bottle rocket. Boom. What had been obscure and underground suddenly became cool and popular. And then — with new wave and hardcore hitting us from both sides — punk got obscure again.
I came back to the present. X had walked in and was standing looking at m
e.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just remembering stuff.”
He cocked an eyebrow, one of the main facial expressions in his repertoire. “Need help with your gear? I can’t stay long.”
I nodded. “Thanks. Yeah. It’s good to be back.”
CHAPTER 33
“NO NO NO NO NO! YOU PUNK!”
Now, this was going to be interesting.
“LISTEN, YOU LITTLE PUNK, YOU’RE GOING TO GET ARRESTED FOR INCITING A GODDAMNED RIOT, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? GET THESE PEOPLE OFF THIS STAGE NOW!”
I have to admit that the officer’s bellowed threat sounded a lot more like an offer. To a rabble-rousing, currently stone-cold-sober punk rocker like me — and to the usually anti-social bunch of punks that made up the Hot Nasties — getting arrested for inciting a riot would have been pretty fucking cool.
I kept playing and kept hollering into the microphone center stage at Gary’s, and kept looking at the cop, who in turn glowered back at me. He had his hand on his utility belt, which suggested to me that he was about to mace me, handcuff me, or shoot me. Any one of those things would have brought the Hot Nasties’ big reunion show to a crashing halt, but — man! — what an amazing finish it would be! I kept playing. The cop kept glaring. The “rioters” kept “rioting.”
It was a hot summer night in 1981, and the Nasties were onstage. The cheap bastards who owned Gary’s had brought us back, I suppose, because they were interested in selling gallons of watered-down beer to the two hundred plus teenagers who had jammed into the place.
The Nasties didn’t ask what their motivation was, frankly. For us, it was an opportunity to show off our new drummer, Jessie Jett. It was also a way to show everyone that the lead singer wasn’t dead in a shooting gallery somewhere down in Florida. And, naturally, it was yet another way to spread discord and dissent — and maybe even start a riot — in the middle of the tourist-friendly destination that is the port area of Portland, Maine. A riot? Hell, we’d have paid to stir up shit on that scale.
But, still. Having the cops onstage with us probably made our point better than the scores of punks could. Our point being, punk still wasn’t about being comfortable, or complacent, or entertained. It was about pissed-off young people shaking things up, and having a bit of fun, and maybe changing a few attitudes (and redressing a few injustices) along the way.
The cop stepped closer, menacingly, apparently intending to signal how serious he was about arresting me for inviting fans onto the stage to dance and thereby, to wit and henceforth, causing a “riot.” I stopped playing and waved to the rest of the band to cease and desist. Our song, a locally popular three-chord screamer called “Invasion of the Tribbles,” ground to an inglorious stop.
“Okay, okay,” I said into the mic. I was wearing my favorite biker jacket, a Clash T-shirt, pink cowboy hat, and black jeans. The cop was big and towered above us, his back turned (rudely, I thought) to the couple hundred folks in attendance.
“I am going to be arrested for inciting a riot if you darn punks don’t stop dancing and get off the stage.” I paused and glanced at the cop, who seemed capable of murder at any moment. “You don’t want me arrested, do you?” I asked the crowd.
A wild cheer went up.
“I thought so,” I said. “But get off the fuckin’ stage anyway, okay?”
The cops left without arresting anyone. But they hadn’t really been there for us, for once.
They were there looking for another group of guys who took off the second they saw the police coming through Gary’s main doors and shouldering their way through the sold-out crowd.
Here’s what happened.
Historically, of course, we punks hated the cops, and the cops hated us. The only time Portland cops ever showed up at any of our shows was to crack heads — ours mostly. It had always been thus.
This show — the first Nasties gig in a long time, and with the ferocious and amazing Jessie Jett keeping the beat — was different.
The cops were there, you see, to keep us from getting our heads kicked in. Not to kick in our heads. As even X admitted, after the gig as we were packing up our gear, the Portland Police Department had probably prevented someone from getting hurt.
“It would’ve been bad,” X said, helping us to carry amps and guitars out to the van we’d rented for the gig. “Really bad.”
I had spotted them first, I think, because I was onstage and facing the crowd when they appeared. There were four of them. They’d slipped onto the dance floor and were standing up against the back wall. They were all wearing jean jackets and sweatshirts. They were white, youngish, muscular, and all had close-cropped hair. On cue — as we finished one song and before we could launch into another — they all took off their jackets and sweatshirts. And then they just stood there. They were all wearing black T-shirts. On the front of two of the T-shirts “NO MEANS YES” was written in big white letters. On the other two, “ANGRY WHITE MAN.”
Angry white man was almost funny. It sounded like a skit on Saturday Night Live or something. But no means yes wasn’t funny, not at all.
Patti Upchuck, who was standing on the side of Gary’s stage, definitely didn’t think so. She stepped up to Sam Shiller’s mic before Sam even knew what was going on. “Hey, motherfucker!” she yelled, pointing at the guys. “No means no!”
One of the four guys, the stocky, short one, smirked. He put his hands around his mouth, to amplify what he was going to say, which was “Fuck you, you fucking dyke!”
“Fuck you, you fucking fuck!” Patti yelled back, livid.
Sister Betty was beside her now, along with a couple members of Tit Sweat. Jessie, meanwhile, was standing up at her drum kit, squinting in the direction of these four pieces of shit. “Get the fuck out of here!”
Patti started to move to the edge of the stage. The four guys looked amused. I grabbed her wrist and whispered in her ear. “Patti, don’t! We don’t know who the fuck these guys are. They could have knives or something. X isn’t here. It’s not worth it. Not for these assholes.” I nodded in the direction of the crowd, most of whom were oblivious to what was going on up front. Mike the bouncer was quickly pushing his way through the throng, his lead-filled pool cue at his side. “Mike’ll handle it …”
Patti whirled on me, eyes flashing. “Kurt, let me go! I don’t fucking need you or X to protect me.” She pulled away and jumped off the stage. Sister Betty and the rest of the girls from the Virgins as well as Jessie weren’t far behind. They were pissed off. I sighed and jumped off the stage, too.
But before they could get to the four idiots, Mike did. He got nose-to-nose with the short, stocky one. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I could see the four of them simultaneously look down at Mike’s pool cue.
They quickly conferred with each other, picked up their jackets and sweatshirts, and started moving toward the back door to a chorus of jeers and more than a few raised middle fingers.
Soon after they left, a couple of cops arrived and started pushing their way through the crowd, trying to get to the front of the stage. By the time they got to us — and by the time they got onto the stage, where I had invited a couple dozen punks to dance along to a celebratory rendition of “Invasion of the Tribbles” — the assholes were long gone.
But it wouldn’t be the last time we’d see them.
Herewith, a confession.
The punk scene should have been misogyny-free. It should have been a safe haven from sexism. Punk should have been a movement where the genders, at long fucking last, were equal. But it wasn’t.
I admit it: punk did not always live up to its promise. Punk was not everything I cracked it up to be. For women and girls, punk should have been the one place where they were equal. But even for all of the major female punk stars — Poly Styrene in X-Ray Spex, the Raincoats, and Pauline Murray of Penetration — it just wasn’t.
In 1978, for instance, Blondi
e’s record company actually ran a large display ad featuring Debbie Harry in a skimpy dress — below it the words: “WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO RIP HER TO SHREDS?”
Seriously, they fucking did that.
The music industry media were just as bad. They’d focus on the clothing of female punk performers, or their looks, or they’d hit them with critical standards they didn’t ever extend to guys in the scene. It was enough to make female punks want to spit. Or quit.
But Ari Up and the Slits — and the Punk Rock Virgins and Tit Sweat and others — wouldn’t quit. If anything, they became even more determined to shake things up. So, they’d deliberately dress in rags, refuse to comb their hair, and generally refuse to behave like any of the female performers who’d gone before them.
Now, you might say that none of that was particularly new. Mama Cass and Janis Joplin hadn’t been supermodels or paragons of virtue, either. But neither of them — nor any other female rock ’n’ roll star that I could think of — had been as deliberately provocative and fearless as the female punks. They were the first to refuse to play along with the male-run, male-dominated rock game.
If punk was rebellion, then the women of punk were a rebellion within the genre itself. They were flipping the finger to society in a way that no one had ever done before. They’d found a way to break free of a lot of social conventions, especially the ones relating to femininity.
Anyway. That’s my confession, on behalf of the entire subculture to which I belonged: the guys of punk should have been feminists, all the time.
But we weren’t, not nearly enough.
CHAPTER 34
Inside the courtroom, Thomas M. Jones appeared bored as he stood between David Dennison and his associate, Mr. Popowich. Judge O’Sullivan looked at Jones over the top of his reading glasses.
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