#derivitave

PETO!!! PETO YOU LIL THANG I LOVE YOUUUUUUU

Friendships at the punk house were always strained to some extent. When you have a bunch of dysfunctional people with fucked up backgrounds all crammed in a space together living in squalor, conflict is inevitable, and as normal as taking a shit once a day. There was a party, and bands were set up in the living room. Alcohol was brought and supplied in surplus by the many attendees, to the point where there were just unopened fifths of booze laying around you could pick up and take a swig of and no one would fuck with you. There wouldn't be any running out that night. This was pre-covid times, so people didn’t care about sharing drinks or being close. Taking a swig meant having the courage to down a good 2% backwash-to-alcohol content from about 20 or so other people as well as the gunk left on the lip of the bottle from the last guy, but these kids had more important things to worry about. 

The space was crammed, poorly vented, disgusting. Everyone loved it. Bands played for about 15 minutes at a time with a few people out front watching for cops who would rotate between sets. On a busy street like that one, noise complaints were not common, so there was truthfully little to be worried about. In the backyard, two girls were making out passionately on a half busted wooden bench, trying to avoid getting splinters in their asses, and a dbeat kid studded head to toe keeled over the side of the back fence to vomit, a romantic backdrop for their little moment. A circle of stoner kids that had no affiliation with punk but kind of just showed up wherever the drugs were sat and passed around a suspiciously funny smelling joint, remarking on how they didn't know about all this “heavy shit” but liked the general vibe. 

Nearby, Henry, double fisting two bottles of store-brand ripoff Jack belched as he attempted to utter the question “So when is our set?” only realizing after that he was, in fact, talking to a fence. He stumbled up the dangerously busted stairs and swung open the back door violently proclaiming that he was ready to party as if he hadn't already been for the last several hours. Henry was sauced constantly, to the point where a lot of his intoxicated tendencies were just seen as part of his natural demeanor. You generally could not tell when he was drunk or not because he was always drunk. 

In the back room several kids piled on a stinky old leather couch just barely supporting their weight, ready to bust. In the middle of them was one kid in a thrasher vest trying to brush his long hair out of the way with his elbow as he attempted to cut several lines of coke on a busted DVD copy of Videodrome. The kid next to him sneezed, and the powder flew like a sad little cloud, and instantly he was shoved from the couch and told to leave, booted out by the other couch kids with great aggression and narrowly escaping an ass kicking through the kitchen door. Thankfully they were all already way too wasted to get up, so when he left the room, it was as though he had not existed. They licked their fingers and wiped the coke residue from the DVD and dabbed it on their tongues fiendishly hoping to get every last little bit. A crusty kid knelt on the floor and tried to sweep up what was left and snorted it, with all the grime and debris it had mixed with. Realistically, he had consumed worse before. His friends laughed.

The last band had finished their set and Henry had set aside his two bottle friends to plug in his amp when Nelson walked in wondering loudly where the fuck their drummer was. Stink wasn’t even a punk kid, he was a DJ and fucked with the electronic scene, who just so happened to really like drumming on the side. Speaking personally as the narrator removed from this situation, I would argue that his insistence in being there while also taking no interest in the music or community whatsoever was the most punk thing anyone present was doing. 

But, where was he? 

As Nelson hurried to set up the mics and get things in order, Hackney arrived with his bass set up, ready to play within seconds. He always had his shit together. His eyes were red from the 100g edible he had just eaten (the thc content in legally sold edibles was not as heavily regulated at that time so these things were easy to access in the city.) Yet somehow he was clear and present, and immediately irritated that even though they were supposed to start their set right now, their drummer was not even present, and the other two members were wasted beyond belief, even for them. 

Just up the stairs however, a frustrated Stink and his girlfriend Melody were amidst a heated quarrel over several unresolved relationship issues that really could have been discussed at another time. But, as alcohol has a tendency to inhibit judgement and heighten a certain sense of impulse, one or the other, it was unclear who, thought it to be the best time to try to have a discussion. Not just thought so, they felt it had to happen NOW, or their fun time for the night would be ruined with no chance of salvation. 

Stink was not exactly emotionally present, or competent, and communicated poorly. He was also a notorious cheater, an aspect Melody would frequently be in denial of in despite of his repeated offenses, sometimes in full view of her and her friends. He truthfully was not the type to be able to have a girlfriend, but was also unfortunately passive to a fault, and could not stand to end a relationship with someone as lovely and admittedly clingily as Melody. She adored him maybe a bit too much, and had this hope that she could change him somehow. 

 A side-note, from your very gay little narrator here: Please, women of the world, understand. You cannot change your dirtbag boyfriend. Leave Him, Honey. You will be so glad you did. I promise you that. You deserve better. You really do. 

They were fully engaged in an aggressive back-and-forth complete with insults and counter-accusations fit for an episode of Jerry Springer. Melody was clutching a broken red solo cup in her left fist she had crushed in frustration, the remaining beer inside it dripping on the wooden floor. Stink was guzzling a pint of Ancient Age between cruel remarks. After a particularly sour comment, that red solo cup collided with his crooked face, and he returned fire with the nearly empty bottle of Ancient Age. Just then, Henry came storming into the room, grabbed Stink by the collar and dragged him out, leaving Melody to sit and sob on the bed for a little while before composing herself and venturing down the stairs to fix her makeup. Not a single person in this situation even once considered that this was not their room to begin with. The gentleman who lived there would soon come home to discover that his space was briefly a theater for domestic violence in his absence, a discovery that enraged him to say the least. 

Having dragged him down the steps the way a fed up mother would drag a misbehaving child by the ear, Henry shoved Stink behind his drum kit which some well-to-do hipsters took upon themselves to set up for him so the time wasted would not eat into their experimental shoegaze/normcore set, scheduled for immediately after. Seemingly not phased by the last hour or so of nonsense, the band immediately started to go through their setlist. In all fairness, they had a reputation for some level of inconsistency, so when they missed their own cues or played in a tempo different from what was intended for the song no one really noticed it. The whole time, Melody stood amidst the crowd of crust punks, dbeat kids and preppy art school kids, glaring at Stink from behind his drum kit. He however seemed indifferent to the whole situation, and avoided looking her direction for the entire set. 

They would not speak for the rest of the night, he sequestering himself off with his bandmates who went to have a smoke out front and then wandered down the street to the bodega for even more booze they definitely did not need; her nestling herself in the comfort of a small group of queer and trans kids who in despite of being welcomed by this “progressive” community felt as isolated and excluded as ever. They fixed her eyeliner and complimented her outfit while giving her some much needed space to vent, and the rest of the night she spent enjoying the company of her new friends. She would not speak to him again for weeks. Conversely, he would act as though none of it happened and wondered with emotive confusion to his friends why she was upset in despite of her having told him very clearly why. The relationship eventually ended, but not before several attempts at resurrection much to the distaste of their friends on either side who could see what neither was able to; that the combination of the two together was like mixing bleach and ammonia. A very bad idea. 

Upon their return, Henry stayed behind outside, lit another Marlboro, and looked up at the sky. The fog loomed over the distant hills. The occasional car on the nearby overpass zoomed by. He found a moment of peace there. He was the eye of the storm, the settling of the dust before it would be kicked up again. On the horizon, the faintest hint of the morning light began to glow over the city, and the night finally ended.