Some of you may well be aware that I was not always this intimidating pillar of togetherness and confidence, there was definitely some moments where I was a dramatic and lost kid. The following is a short story about one of those moments where I found a piece of myself.
I’m what they call a ‘late bloomer’, that’s pretty much a nice way of saying ‘slow to learn‘ but I like the way the first one sounds so lets run with that one. I was attending the University of Calgary but not going to my classes and probably (absolutely) drinking too much. My musical tastes around this age (17-18) included a whole LOT of Wu-Tang Clan (killa bees…we gonna swarm!), the Tragically Hip (ya Road Apples) and some lingering of my fathers music. In other words I hadn’t really found myself musically (one could argue I still have not). There is something to be said about being ‘well rounded’ but there is also something to be said about having the RZA and Huey Lewis giving you life and relationship advice. I’m “perpendicular to the square” but I also know its “hip to be square” so I somehow come out perpendicular to the hip, and it goes quickly downhill after this.
It was end of semester/final exam time and on this particular day I had dropped out of one class an hour before the final exam and attempted to write a marketing exam for a class I went to a staggering 3 times. This did not bode well for my mental stability at the time so I quickly decided I should go to the campus pub and begin my new career as a poet and cigarette smoker (it may have been eleven in the morning on a Thursday). I think in some bizarre way I figured I would just dive head first into being a sad bastard and get it over with. I knew that I wasn’t going to pull myself together enough to be a successful student, so I may as well seem dark and jaded and wronged by the world.
I was one of the many misled souls under the impression that girls liked fixer-uppers, or maybe girls were still at that stage where they actually wanted fixer-uppers, either way it is ridiculous. “He’s so sad and dark and lost. It’s attractive”? I ran with this theory towards the opposite sex for WAY too long and missed out on good people and good times because of it. The kinds of girls who desire a jaded and dark introvert are the kind of girls you REALLY don’t want to be hanging out with. Trust me.
“Hey Jane do you want to go out drinking? Maybe hit up a club and have a laugh”
“I’m an emotional river flowing through myself into a sea of tranquility and loneliness right now. My dark soul yearns for the peace of darkness.”
“Ummm…so no?”
Clearly I didn’t want to face the fact that I was a total piece of shit so being upset at life in lyrical form just made more sense. I think I wrote about rain and how I hated the word potential. I had downed a pitcher of beer, smoked 7 cigarettes and written three songs about how the world was a cold, cruel and bitter place.
At this point in time the campus pub or as it was lovingly known “the den” was a wreck of a place. Pipes hung down from the unfinished ceiling. The carpet reeked of old beer, puke and piss. Horrific lighting purposefully hid the worst parts; in essence as the den got darker the den became more attractive, kinda like most of the patrons. The architecture looked as if it was done by someone who was figuring it out as they went; jaded edge here, pointless ledge there. In other words, I ADORED it.
Decorated with every shade of dark brown, maroon and beige Satan created you could literally smell the den before you saw it. The bar consisted of a hallway leading to an open section when you walked through the front doors. This open section was awkwardly cluttered with old wooden circular tables, thick wooden pillars and chairs. The bar looked like a mash up between the sort of place your alcoholic uncle would go on a Tuesday afternoon and something out of a shitty western movie. Behind the bar there was another open section with a dance floor surrounded on its outer edges by picnic tables and 3 booths on the right side of the floor (the PRIME seats).
I was seated at the back side of the bar, on a picnic table, the darkest one I could find. Barely able to make out the junior high poetry I was composing. With only a handful of patrons there I tried my hardest to look like a lost puppy to conjure up some sympathy. I remember a girl coming over to me, me looking up at her all doe eyed, a glint of hope deep in my eyes hoping that she would take this mortal coil. She asked for a smoke and quickly left. I gave her one and tried to hold back the hurt. Sigh.
For some reason I think I wore khakis that day. Fucking KHAKIS. (Side note: no one deserves to get laid in khakis, ever. I don’t care if you have just saved her from certain death, drive a glow in the dark Porsche and look like that sketch pad Josh Hartnett, if you’re rocking the big K’s….you get no love (it may have taken me 2 years to figure this out. Oh and I think I started rocking them due to early Snoop Dogg and the Boyz in tha Hood movie).
As I mentioned previously there were all these architectural anomalies in the Den, it was like a build by numbers project gone wrong. At this point I’m half cut looking around the smoke filled dark bar and for some reason I noticed a particular ledge jutting out of the wall some eight feet in the air. I don’t even think up until this point I had noticed any of the awkward ledges in the Den actually. I’ll never know what caught my eye or why I reached up but I did. Standing up from my picnic table, my arm stretching out, fingers spidering along the ledge, searching for something I had no idea was there. Then I felt something, a dusty plastic object. A tape. Yes, I’m that old, shut up.
It was like I found some secret treasure or opened a time capsule. I sat down and wiped the dust off. Written on one side were the words “Face to Face” and on the other “NOFX”. This was my introduction to punk rock. This was my initiation. A gift from one drunken student to another. Kind of like those people that lose their virginity to a friend who feels bad for them and wants to help them out. The person who left/lost that tape was gentle, they talked me through it, made sure I was ok, they cuddled me after. They made sure I’d come back for more and wouldn’t run away scared only to come back years later with some sort of neurotic urine fetish.
It’s all too common to hear people say “punk rock saved my life”, in truth I think punk rock has been improperly represented in order to be used as a vessel to destroy peoples lives more often than anything. Drinking rye till you puke is not punk rock. Dying your hair red and piercing your nose is not punk rock. Decking the huge guy you don’t know who just smacked his girlfriend at the bar is. Realizing your self worth and your inner voice is. Saying shit you know people will hate you for but you feel it is true and needed to be said is. I guess in the end I will say that “Punk Rock changed my life”, and it all started on that day, because of one tape, one failed exam and quite possibly khaki pants.
