Friday night I was out at a club, and about the time we all were getting tossed out (last call), I ran into that hot little trumpet player that I made out with (and got lovingly molested by), from the Marching Band. We hugged, and she promptly took me to task. "I read your blog about the other night. Was I girl number two, or three, or what!?" Uh oh. I did my usual backpedaling, "Well, I try not to ‘out’ people on my site if I don’t know it’s okay!" She smiled and mentioned something about getting better placement next time. I thought, *she said next time*! Then she mentioned offhandedly that she’d love to "get me up on some RSS." Now if that doesn’t sound like a hot nerd proposition… I said it sounded fun, and let it go, saying goodbye.
The next day she emailed me and said, hey give me your password info and I’ll install some software for you — and I did, and within almost minutes she was sending me a link to an interface that will soon be my new RSS blog! But right about the same time I was trying to upload a file and got an error message that my disk was almost full! Shit — so I called my hosting provider and turns out I was on an old plan from about four years ago, and to upgrade to "Premier" (unlimited everything) I’d have to move to a new server… so the past few days have been spent in a tense panic while my site has gone down for a minute. Tiny Nibbles was actually down for a few hours, but now I’ve got her back up on a pimpin’ new ride of a server, with lots of space and room for my bandwidth. Sexy Marching Band trumpeter Squishy — that’s really her dirty nickname in the band — has helped me with the move, and I think I might’ve gone insane without her. And what does a super-sexy trumpet girl get for geek work? A fat, I mean phat, load of porn ‘n toys for Valentine’s Day. And by the weekend, I hope to have my new blog up and running — which means no more delays in regular posting! Thank you, thank you, thank you Squishy!
Flame throwers. Biker gangs. Illegal boxing. I had no idea my weekend would end up like it did.
I finally agreed to go to the Saturday night Marching Band gig through the haze of a brain-pounding hangover, a self-induced temporary disability brought on by a sudden urge on Friday night to feel alive and excited — and to get drunk to celebrate a decent royalty check and new book deal. And a crappy week at my day job. By four o’clock Saturday, I crawled out from under a pile of erotica books (loaned to me by my publisher for the Cleis Book) to let Angel, a sexy little Asian band girlfriend, convince me she needed me there. I would do anything for Angel. And we didn’t need to be there until midnight, so that meant I could spend the next six hours rehydrating myself, eating eggrolls and showering.
It was freezing out, and I dressed in jeans and a light blue sweater/parka, with big 60’s snow bunny hair. Five of us piled in Hornboy’s car, which was big enough, but the horns and drums always get the best seats and we were on top of each other. The gig was in some warehouse in the worst part of Oakland, I’m still not sure where exactly, except that there weren’t many streetlights, no liquor stores or businesses nearby, and few homes except for housing projects sprawled around the giant windowless warehouses and train tracks. We found a streetlight near the warehouse, and jumped out of the car to haul abandoned signs and junk out of the street to park in the pool of light, the only spot on the block.
The front of the warehouse was so packed with motorcycles that we had to walk in a maze to get to the front door. Remember the Titty Twister in From Dusk ‘Till Dawn? Kind of like that parking lot, but darker, and no Cheech. Thankfully we were ushered in past the line of impatiently waiting bikers as band members, and walked into a huge gutted industrial space packed with easily over 100 black-clad denizens. Many were sporting an assortment of biker colors and vests. There was a makeshift tattoo shack giving tats to whoever came along. Two bars, one hard liquor and the other shitty beers in cans for a dollar that you had to dig out of an ice bucket, located in a shipping container in the back of the building. And in the middle of it all, a huge homemade boxing ring, about five feet off the floor, with thick twine ropes around the edges. It was all lit up, with the crowd pressed around screaming and cheering as men took turns beating the crap out of each other. It was a ‘smoker’ — an illegal boxing party.
The first rule of fight club is that you never talk about fight club. But they weren’t bare-knuckling (yet), and I know you can visit a number of bars in the Sunset district where you’ll see flyers that advertise smokers — but it’s all on the down low. Punk bands were playing this smoker, on a stage at the same level, but about 20 feet away from the ring, a mowhawked singer screaming inaudible lyrics at the shirtless boxers. We got some cheap beers and watched. A trumpet girl came over to shout hello: "I can’t look at it," she gestured toward the men slamming each other in the faces, bloody, out of control. "But I think it’s really surreal. Is it surreal?" I told her yes. A trombone player wandered over, "Wow — this is so fucking cool!" At that moment one of the men in the ring got hit hard enough to propel him between the ropes and out of the ring, slamming through the crowd to split his head on the ground. I took out my camera and started taking photos.
Angel, tiny little Angel came bobbing through the crowd and found us, relieved. She yelled, "I lost you! I lost Van Rippen (her boyfriend). Everywhere I went the guys were making moves at me right in front of their girlfriends. Their girlfriends looked like they wanted to beat me up! I just tried not to make eye contact with anyone. I’m so glad I found you!" I told her not to go anywhere without me again, and we made a pact. In the ring, two biker clubs squared off with each other, three men on three. It was a melee. The audience was screaming at the fighters, which only added to the distorted blare of the punk band.
The fighting was nonstop and there were constant fights breaking out in the audience. We often had to move to avoid someone landing on one of us, or backing into me before a retaliation on whoever was coming at them. It was cold, dark, and the naked aggression was like a current that ran throughout the audience. I almost imagined I could taste it like iron on my tongue, like blood. I could see my breath when I exhaled. The Marching Band finally began their set well after midnight, with a full band bound in hats, scarves and thick coats, while the flag team (with only four members) rode in on a Duster fitted with a giant brass stripper pole. The crowd surged around the dancers, shoving, elbowing. Angel and I grabbed hands so we wouldn’t get separated; though I thought that if one of us fell we’d likely remain upright. I wondered how I got in the dead middle of it all and quelled a brief no-escape panic attack. As the band played their first song, I felt hands brush my ass. I checked for my wallet. I felt hands brush my ass again. I checked for my wallet. Hands stroked my hair. *Fuck,* I thought, a crowd like *this.*
The crowd followed the dancers to the boxing ring, and Angel and I were swept along, surrounded by the horn section. I found myself under the tuba bell, right in front of the stage for the next number, and I was stuck — so I took some video of the dancers with my camera — be warned that this is my first video with a new camera and I had the incorrect focus settings (and I was being shoved and elbowed a lot). Quicktime video.
The band started moving toward the stage, and Angel and I were dragged along again, holding hands like schoolgirls, gripping in a bond that managed to keep us connected despite the pushing and shoving. We tried to go up on the stage steps to stay safe form the crowd, but a huge biker bouncer waved us down — then almost clocked a guy trying to do the same thing. Angel and I moved to the far side of the stage, but when the band started playing, and the mosh pit began, I knew I was in the wrong place. I lost Angel. I got the fuck out of there. After I passed the flag team on my way out of the crowd, they started to turn and head back to the boxing ring. I walked over to the tattoo area, where I’d be able to watch from a distance and figured I’d brave being alone to avoid flying fists — at least fists I wouldn’t see coming in a surging crowd. As I was walking, the last flag girl in line to get in the ring was jumped by five girls in the audience and beaten to the ground. The flag team was having a hard time getting to the stage and no one saw — not even the band, as they were playing, and the mosh pit was moshing, It just looked like another mosh pit. Angel’s brother jumped in and tried to pull the women off her — then men jumped in, slamming Angel’s brother squarely in the face. He turned, a seasoned fighter and stood his ground. He told them to stop and asked who the "peacemaker" was in the crowd. It worked. The flag girl ran past me, bleeding, hysterical. The band played on; the noise was deafening. The dancers danced in the ring. Angel’s brother came over to me and we checked in about what happened. The flag girl was hiding back behind a shipping container, and people were asking me how she was — I said I didn’t know except that she was hysterical, and I waited by the door to watch for the girls who jumped her. I never saw them.
I stayed at the door with Angel’s brother, and Angel found us, phew. The band was still playing, but the dancers had left the stage (now three songs have gone by) and were running to get ice for the fallen dancer. We told Angel what happened and she went to get beer for the dancer, and for us. I said, let me come with you, and she said no, I’m coming right back, you stay together. The band began to come off the stage — I was so angry at the band, how could they keep playing? How could they not know? It all seemed irrational, everything. I wanted to find the girls who beat the flag girl — she’s not even a friend of mine — but I wanted to show them what it was like to fight a girl who *can* fight five girls and win. I was reverting to street mentality, I was sixteen again, when I got in fights all the time for sport — and survival. The six months I spent with a Filipino girl gang in the East Bay when I was fifteen. I felt insane. The violence was spreading to me. I ran up to a few members as they walked by and told them what happened, but I didn’t want to be doing that. A long time passed. I asked Angel’s brother where she was, he said he thought she came back. I said, no she didn’t. I went out after Angel. We found each other five minutes later — "They ripped my fucking shirt off my back!" Her shirt was torn. The five of us who arrived together were together again. Hornboy said, "Let’s go home."
On the way home, we put the pieces of the night together, and mused at the irony of contrast in their next gig — A mellow Jewish birthday party that they’re learning traditional songs for.
