Born in 1965 in Torrance, California. Lived in Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, California, in the ’80s and attended shows at various venues throughout Los Angeles County. Currently lives in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and works as a pet groomer.
I WAS SIXTEEN. I think it was freshman year in high school. I was held back a grade, so I was a little older than everybody in my class. This was at South High in Torrance. I distinctly remember that I wasn’t in the scene at all. I am one of seven, and I’m the second to the youngest. I had older brothers and sisters that were very actively involved in high school projects and such.
One of my older sister’s friends was trying to find a band for the prom. They were talking about going to Hollywood to check out a band. I don’t know how it happened, but I ended up going with a guy named Kevin Shorter. I think it was six dollars to get in the Whisky. We were checking out the girl band the Go-Go’s. We put a bid in, but another high school put in a higher bid and got them that year.
That was my first exposure to anything like that. I had very frizzy curly hair. I think I was in a jumpsuit that was straight out of the ’70s, with a big belt. I was lucky I didn’t get myself killed. I almost did. These girls were like nothing I’ve ever seen before. At the time, the Go-Go’s were truly more punk than when they became more commercialized. Belinda was spitting at the crowd and there was a pit. I was scared, but I loved it.
Growing up, I had a few things happen to me at school that made me a little edgy and a little angry and it was a very easy slide into the punk rock scene where that kind of edge wasn’t necessarily bad. It was expected and it was part of the scene. I had a kind of date rape thing happen. The guy was everybody’s friend and people knew I was angry. He had a girlfriend. They were very popular people. I wanted to beat him in front of everybody. I was squished down a little bit and I think that fueled my involvement in the scene. This is retrospective. I could have never put that together back in the day, but punk rock kind of gave me the fuel—a little fire in my belly.
I’ve got kind of a hair trigger and a little fiery temper anyways, so all these things made the perfect storm. I have a space issue even to this day. Don’t crowd me. I don’t like crowded elevators or anything like that, and it tends to trigger me pretty quickly. I did not do close contact sports. I would fight.
Fighting within the scene was all very easy. You’d get in the pit and get black eyes and broken feet or whatever. It’s expected, and that’s what happens there. I fought guys. I employed steel-toed boots after breaking my foot once. Unfortunately, I enjoyed it a little too much. I’m like that crazy little Irish person in the bar—she’s small, but she’s crazy. I think the key to fighting is you just don’t hesitate. If there is a moment of hesitation, it’s over. I haven’t gone to see any of the bands again now. I’d love to, but I tell you, I could be brought back to thinking I’m seventeen again really quickly and I just don’t want it. I don’t need to fight any more.
That Black Flag crowd was tough. If you were going to have a crowd that would just fight for the sake of fighting anybody, that was them. The Dead Kennedys crowd was comparatively mellow. People loved the music and were there for the music. I have a really good story from seeing the Dead Kennedys. I think it was at Godzilla’s, but I’m not positive. They had these huge speakers on the stage. My boyfriend at the time took to climbing up and diving into the crowd. About the third time, they got wise to this. The crowd split and he hit the ground. I remember having to go in there and drag him out unconscious. He kind of ruined it. We had to leave to go to the emergency room and get his head stitched closed.
I don’t think gender made one bit of difference in the scene. I never felt unwelcome. It was genderless. I loved my involvement in it. If I could have changed anything, I probably would have tried to make myself be a little more aware of who I was seeing and what I was doing. I was a little fragmented. I don’t have the names and the places exactly and I wish I would have paid a little more attention to some of that, but outside of that, I loved it.
I remember I would walk down the street and be harassed because of the way I looked. I’d have bottles thrown at me. You could be curing cancer or Mother Teresa in a wig and they’d still hate you. I found some of the punkers to be far more passive people than people would have expected. Even though they loved to physically engage in the pit and all that crazy stuff, it didn’t mean they were necessarily aggressive human beings. People really will just hate you for the way you look and have no inkling who you are. It was an interesting thing for me to discover as a sixteen- and seventeen-year-old, and I think it made me a bit better of a person.
One of my big beliefs is that our society has a lack of rites of passage. I wasn’t raised with any kind of faith where there was a rite of passage or a celebration of communion or anything. I almost feel like punk rock, for me, was a self-imposed rite of passage, because we lack it in our society. It was my self-imposed rite of passage into adulthood. I think a lot of tattooing, scarification, and piercing is like a rite of passage. It’s trying to push yourself to a point and seeing that you can take it and still come through whole. Surviving youth is really an accomplishment. Some Native Americans will have a rite of passage where they take the young man out to the forest. They have to survive for a period of nights and maybe eat some crazy stuff that makes you hallucinate. There’s something to be said about that. I see a lot of kids trying to find that. A challenge. Push me hard. Make me survive it. Make me believe what you have to say. Like an awakening. I think we did it amongst ourselves.