YOU'RE WRONG 

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Note: In the following column, the events involving more than one person are real. The events involving me alone are also real-- but in a very different sense.--MB

Lydia Lunch stuck her tongue out at me. She was pissed. I don't know why. It could have been her sexy musician boyfriend, Jim Foetus. Here's what happened:

A CBs show featured UNION CARBIDE, a Swedish destructo punk band who fill the gap between Iggy and GG. After having nearly died from self induced epilepsy, the U.C. singer took a funtime break. He pranced along the stage, modeling a goofy blonde wig, styled in front, long in the back. To me, it looked like a parody of Mr. Foetus' real hair.

"Hey Mr. B!" I said to Biafra, who stood between me and the stage, "I didn't know Foetus was in town."

Biafra mumbled something to me.

"I mean that stupid wig." I shouted over the music, "doesn't it look like him?"

Biafra mumbled some more.

"What did you say?" I asked, bending forward so he could speak in my ear.

"He's standing right behind you," whispered Biafra. The crowd heard me turn red. Over my shoulder, I saw the scowling musician. Biafra pretended he didn't know me.

Maybe that wasn't it. Maybe Lydia hated me for hanging out with LETCH PATROL. Mark, the guitar player, is one of my best pals. The boy keeps a constant erection for Ms. Lunch. His pickled pocket makes him quite an annoyance to the cult star. If she associated me with him, she would have good reason for Board directed wrath.

How I could let a thing like that bother me, you ask. Hostility should be no stranger to me. Don't I live for the world to stick out it's multi-racial tongue at me?

No I don't.

See, there's folks and there's folks. If normal folks get pissed at me I don't care. If stupid folks get angry, it makes me happy. But some folks have a reason for being around. Lydia Lunch, although she probably wouldn't admit it, has kept the spirit of punk alive more than a dozen Sunday matinee bands. She treads recklessly in the forbidden zone-- and has for ten years.

Her first band, TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS, told the world you could do anything-- the more grating and obnoxious the better-- and call it rock and roll. What passed itself off as "punk rock" was GENESIS compared to what she was doing. You could hum a SEX PISTOLS songs, but try humming THE JERKS' "Orphans running through the bloody snow." Lydia changed. Working with other bands, with full musical groups, writing books; she alienated her old fans and pushed deeper into uncharted "rock" territory.

Now she's a girl writing about the joys of rape-- in a new puritan age where girls' liking sex at all is taboo! Lydia Lunch is a warrior-genius and she stuck her tongue out at me.

Lydia Lunch stuck her tongue out dark. I was there, naked. It was dark. So dark I pissed, but I don't know why. Couldn't tell-- or don't remember-- if my eyes were open or boyfriend, Jim Foetus. It was closed. My back squeezed against the hard CBGBs. They fill. I felt it against the back of my head, my shoulders, The U.C. singer was on my ass, the backs of my thighs, my calves, my heels. I turned, a parody of Foetus' head, to the right, to the left. Tiny slivers clung to my hair.

It was dark. I was there, naked. It was dark. So dark I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed. My back squeezed against the hard wood beneath me. It pressed against the back of my head, my shoulders, my ass, the backs of my thighs, my calves, my heels. I turned my head to the right, to the left. Tiny slivers clung to my hair.

Then the smell. My heart's bass beat boomed. My nervous system whined in my ears. It was me. It was my smell. The slightly cool air blew crotchpits and underarms. The hope of a crack someplace. Maybe someone hot and damp that covered forgot to shut the door. Not that it mattered. The smell of the spent air few people anyway. Three great bands, THE THING, GOD my body to meet my right. I (the one the chemical waste of my own from Queens, NOT the one to pinch the splinter out of them) and San Francisco's BOMB. It was noise: nice and nasty. Around the tiny slice of wood, just the way I like it, but only about a dozen other people poke two new holes in the thought. Oh well, New York missed one of it's own best shows.

My heart's bass beat boomed. My nervous system whined in my ears. The slightly cool air blew with the hope of a crack someplace. Maybe someone forgot to shut the door. Not that it mattered. There were so few people anyway. Three great bands, THE THING, GOD (the one from Queens, NOT the one from Holland or California) and San Francisco's BOMB. Noise: nice and nasty. Just the way I like it. Only a dozen other people thought so too. New York missed one of it's own best shows.

How far I could move without hurting myself? Slowly I lifted my right hand. I traced the woodgrain on the right, following the rough surface upwards, until it met another perpendicular panel. The distance between my back and the wooden sheet above me seemed around two feet.

Crimping my arm, I slid my hand back toward my face. I pushed the palm against my nose and spread the fingers. I pushed hard, bringing tears to my eyes from the pain against the cartridge. I somehow had to assure myself that I was alive. What better way than pain? The thumb pressed one cheekbone, the pinkie the other. Three middle fingernails dug notches in my forehead. The sawdust smelled on my hand. I almost sneezed, but held back, pressing my tongue against my teeth to keep it in.

I listened. Beyond my heartbeat and the whine of my nervous system I could hear a soft sandpaper sound rubbing against the wood; a steady, regular sound. Scrape. Scrape-scrape. Scrape. Scrape-scrape. When I concentrated to hear it better, it disappeared. When my concentration wandered, it began again. It was as if some quietly evil mind reader were playing a prank on me.

Gradually the air on my cheeks warmed, my breath trapped in the small space above my face. My hands fluttered to stir the stale air. The back of my left hand scraped the snaggled wood above me. A thin splinter caught between two fingers driving itself under the skin. I held back my scream like I had held back my sneeze.

I brought my left hand across my body . I brought my right to meet it. I fumbled in the narrow darkness trying to pinch the splinter from the back of my hand. My nails probed for the tiny slice of wood. I couldn't see. I could only poke two new holes in the skin.

A thin sticky line oozed across the back of my hand, creeping like a spider down the sides, slipping between my thumb and forefinger on one end, running along my wrist on the other. Instinctively, I brought my hand to my mouth and sucked the salty viscosity.

The strokes of the desperate sandpaper sound shortened, hastened, grew more irregular. A wave of terror covered me like a shroud covers a corpse. An internal earthquake threatened to shake me apart. I felt like I was going to explode: puke, piss, shit, all at once. All right there. I tried to clear my mind. Relax. I had a system. It helps me sleep at night. It works like this: You think the word "now" twice in a row.

"NOW. NOW."

You realize that during the time between those words, your mind is completely calm, empty of all thought. The next step is to think the words again. But this time, wait awhile before the second "now."

"NOW. . . . . .NOW"

You've gone longer without thought rubble filling your brain. You've stopped the on-rush of self-conversation. Someone told me that this is what yogis and mystics do. I don't care. I don't want enlightenment. I want to stop the pain. I want to empty my mind of panic-- of all thought. It didn't work, but it did help me calm down. . . for awhile.

Perhaps every light that is extinguished makes it so much brighter someplace else. As I cleared my head of constant jabber, my senses sharpened. With nothing clogging the neural sewer; touch, smell, sound, all intensified to LSD proportions of sureality.

There was nothing to see but darkness. Not black, but complete and total darkness. The kind of darkness that the blind or the unconscious see. The kind with little flicks of half light spurting through at odd angles. The kind that forces your deprived eyeballs to create their own images from lack of outside stimulation. A maze of razor thin lightning bolts, each charging, changing as I tried to look at it. An active awful darkness.

Then the smell. There was external stimulation enough for that sense. The stimulation was me. It was my smell. It was the smell of sweated crotchpits and underarms. The smell of silent farts and the now hot and damp air that covered all of my sweat drenched nakedness like a musty blanket. It was the smell of the spent air expelled from my lungs, fouled with the chemical waste of my own body.

A thought pried it's way into my head. Just a word. I can't remember what. I forced it out. Others followed. On The Bowery in front of CBGBS, two big Germans in third hand leather jackets with stickers from hell pasted everywhere, talk with each other. (I translate.) "It's amazing how tolerant people are in New York. Could you imagine punks and skinheads going to the same show in Bremen?" They laughed. I laughed too.

Things I left out of the girl's column, the one that explains how boys really think. I forgot to tell about how that before your first fuck-- no matter if you're 16 or 36, you always think, "Oh God, I'm going to die a virgin. Please don't let me die a virgin." Then after you get IT, your first month passes without and you think, "It's over. No more. I'll never get laid again."

And I also left out the part about the ring ceremony. It's part of marriage, although the words said are a lie. What it really means to slip that finger through that hole: "With this prick I do thee fuck."

And yes, a boy can be beaten till near death and not feel defeat, but let a girl stick her tongue out at him and he's crushed.

Funny thoughts. They came without realizing that I had slipped back into the word jumble. They came before the second NOW! With the returned words, returned the panic. I tried again.

"NOW!" I thought loudly, so I could begin again.

Before that second "Now" tore its way back, I listened. Again I heard that strange scraping sound. It moved in my ears like the blind images moved in my eyes. To focus on it was to destroy it. When I shifted my focus, it began again. Slow, regular, pained. It was the sound of my breath, reflected back at me by the hard surface in front of my face.

Then another sound. A sound so terrifying the contents of my bowels liquefied and rushed to expulsion. A high, piercing sound that filled the tiny space and pressed in on me from all sides. It was the sound of my own scream.

It was as if I were humanly, immediately confirming the Christian mind-body duality. I calmly heard, watched, felt myself loose control. Pain tore through my fingers as I scratched wildly at the wood slab above me. Sharp slivers slid under my fingernails pushing deeper, the harder I scratched. I scraped on. My nails curled and bent back-- one at a time. First the middle finger on the right hand, tore off, close to the root, exposing raw flesh to the rough wood. Other nails bent back, then tore. I could feel each scrape tear dozens of little holes into the naked finger flesh where my nails had been. Small tricklets of blood flowed down the backs of my hands first collecting at the wrist then dripping onto my body below.

The dripping blood felt like maybe she was mad at me for tears of hot oil. I know it couldn't be true, a sensory lie, like the guitar player, Mark, as if the warm blood were burning holes in my naked skin. I heard constant erection for Ms. self scream again. A smell arose, and I know that those makes him quite an annoyance bowels had finally let loose and the unseen brown mush began with him. It would give cover to the floor beneath me.

The dripping blood felt like splatters of hot oil against my naked skin. I know it couldn't be true, a sensory lie, like the lighting bolts in the dark. I heard myself scream again. A smell arose. Those liquid bowels had finally let loose and the unseen brown mush began to creep along the floor beneath me.

My stomach wrung at the smell of blood and shit confined in such a space. A drunken sickness pushed its contents toward my throat. Although the thought of dipping my face in the noxious liquid repelled me, my thinking brain knew I had to. I had to save myself from choking on the fluids of my own body. My hair stuck to the wet wooden floor as I turned my head. Half my face lay in the muck beneath me.

My stomach tightened as its few contents forced themselves, burning, up my throat and out of my mouth, adding to the miniature rising sea beneath me. Without thinking, I inhaled. I was choking.

Lydia Lunch stuck her tongue out at me. There was a nice matinee at CBGBs that nobody went to. I didn't know he was there.