(The amazing and punk-as-fuck folks at Verbicide Magazine published this story in their Summer 2006 Issue).

Jerking off to Agnostic Front

by Sam J. Miller

Sleet beats at Greg’s windshield, and the wind’s fierce enough to make the car lurch back and forth. Up front, Greg and Kevin have the tape deck pumped so high I’m scared the whole vehicle will break apart. Playing Agnostic Front this loud seems unnecessary to me, seeing as how we’ve just left the club and the songs are still buzzing in our ears.

“Dude, that was such a great show,” Kevin says, turning down the music a touch so I can hear.

“Yeah,” I say, dazed, transfixed by the way the headlights of oncoming cars light up Kevin’s buzz cut.

“Old as those dudes are,” he continues, “and they’ve still got so much energy? Unbelievable. That’s what I really dig, is energy. As long as a song has energy I can get into it.”

“So, what are you saying?” Greg says, turning down the music a little more. He wants me to hear this. My education is important to Greg. He needs to turn me into a good obedient little hardcore kid.  “Some corporate-rock bullshit like Weezer comes along, and as long as they have energy you’re down with it?”

“Um… I guess?”

“Yeah, you would. That’s what your problem is, dude. Punk rock is about politics, attitude, that kind of stuff. It’s about challenging the mainstream. If you’re gonna say all you need is energy, then you might as well just go to arena rock shows and fuck skanky girls and eat chicken wings and get drunk all the time. You know? I mean, fuck, dude, Nirvana has energy.”

“Nirvana’s fun,” Kevin mutters, in a quiet voice, hoping Greg won’t hear.

I’ll let them duke this one out. The energy vs. politics debate plays out every time the two of them are together. How could I explain to them that what I come to punk for is neither?

What I get out of punk is a chance to gawk at hot boys. In the mosh pit, in the photos on the back of record sleeves. Kevin, sweaty and shirtless behind the drumset in his basement at band practice. Greg, his face a mask of bliss as he throws his body against those of total strangers.

Back in my bed, long after Greg and Kevin have driven off, I’m finally alone with the hard-on I’ve been nursing since I first stepped into the club. And saw all those poor white boys with unemployed dads and bad grades, who live in the falling-down houses along County Route 23, who in this one spot, for one afternoon, can scream out all their anger and aggression and delirious joy at being young, gorgeous, and having neither rights nor responsibilities. In this democratic space where everyone’s equal as long as they’re male, macho, straight, and white-or willing to act like it.

Can’t they see the queerness of it, what a fag’s dream a punk show is? Our bodies smushing together, guys taking off their shirts, thrusting ourselves at each other? All that grunting and sweating? Outside the sleet has turned to snow. My window’s open a crack, since the ancient radiator in my room doesn’t know when to stop. Cold winds hit me: goose bumps pop up all up and down my body.

I love punk, but hardcore’s another story. I’ll listen to Greg’s records because I want Greg to like me, but the churning power chords and bellowed lyrics of Youth of Today and Vision of Disorder and Chain of Strength just bore me. So it’s weird how much the Agnostic Front show turned me on, especially considering how scared I was of those muscly scary boys in the band. They gave me flashbacks to the jock thugs at high school who beat me up at every opportunity. Between songs, the singer caught me staring at his crotch. I smiled and wagged my eyebrows, imagining me and Roger slipping out the back when his set was done so we could fuck in the back of his tour van. His fists clenched and he leaned towards the mike, and I’m sure he was going to say something vicious and nasty or order that seething floor full of worked-up skinheads to tear me to pieces, but the drummer was already counting down for the next number.

Up close, Roger had the jowly look of drunk working-class dads, or beefy men in straight porn. Plus he has got this creepy tattoo on his chest, of Jesus crucified in a nuclear wasteland, so I left the pit and edged towards the back of the room. The smell of body odor wasn’t as strong, but from there Roger’s sort of a blur, a general impression of energy and macho strength, and that’s a lot hotter than the specifics. The whole band, in fact, was sexy in a thick-eyebrowed surly/stupid sort of way. Which makes it much easier, now, alone in my bed, to fantasize about the five of them pinning me down in the tour van and having their way with me.

This is punk, this is what it does for me. The energy and the politics and the melody are all important too, but in punk rock, as in life, sex is not to be ignored.

How come it’s minorities who cry
Things are too tough
On TV with their gold chains
Claim they don’t have enough
I say make them clean the sewers
Don’t take no resistance
If they don’t like it go to hell
And cut their public assistance

Last week, listening to an old Agnostic Front record in Greg’s basement, just the two of us, I said:  “some of these songs sound sort of… racist.” And slid closer to him on the couch.

“You think so? I read an article once, an interview with the singer guy, and he was saying how he didn’t understand how people called his shit racist. Because he’s half Hispanic, or something. And about how everybody always takes things out of context.” Greg’s self-righteousness, his zeal to make you see things his way, is as hot as his perfect posture. And because he’s got this weird Hare Krishna no-sex-til-marriage thing, it only makes me more desperate to get his pants down around his ankles.

“Well, sure, things get taken out of context, but the context isn’t on the record. These white kids listening to this stuff, going to shows, getting crazy in the pit, they don’t have the context, and you start singing about black people sucking up their tax dollars in welfare and you’re gonna get a lot of not-so-cool energy. You go to these hardcore shows and it’s all about us-vs-them, and we have to stand together, and riot this and bloodshed that, and, I dunno, it’s sort of scary.” I’m not really invested in the argument; it’s just a form of foreplay. That’s my whole relationship with Greg: one long endless session of foreplay, me trying desperately to get him to fuck me. At least with Kevin he’ll let me suck him off as long as I keep quiet about it.  

Live in sin, where you been
You’re all gonna go under
I’m a skin, you’re a skin
You’re gonna suffer
Fight
Push around and stab each other
Fight around and kill each other
Fight Fight Fight Riot Riot
Beat him hard, beat him dead
Beat him harder, beat him down

In the pictures Greg showed me, from some lame late-80’s album they put out, the boys were getting sort of fat. They were all standing shirtless around an expensive-looking motorcycle, and in spite of all the skin and ink that was showing I didn’t give them a second glance. They just looked like aging macho jocks. Tonight, though, seeing them play in some grubby bar in Canajoharie, after they’ve done jail time and been broken up a bunch of times, things were different. Poverty agrees with them. Now they’re skinnier, hungrier, dirtier, like extras from some gay porn flick set in jail. I push play on the Agnostic Front tape that Kevin loaned me-a wretched album from the 80’s called Cause for Alarm, and put on my headphones, and take off my clothes.

Greg and Kevin can’t see me now, lying on top of my sheets in the dark. They wouldn’t like what they see. For them, punk rock is about didactic political lyrics. About expressing your hate and contempt for the status quo. About yelling insults in the faces of the meat-eating rapist jocks. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I hate the jocks too, and I think I have more reason, since I know Kevin’s never in his life had his head rammed against a locker so hard he had blood streaming into his eyes. But I think have a special insight into how much these hardcore kids have in common with the “mainstream scum suckers” they’re screaming about. Not to get too self-righteous about it, but I feel like no one else sees the irony in the way these punks and skins are getting off on the raised fists, the anger and the whiteness, the songs about unity and “our foes,” “the scum of the earth,” the songs called “United Blood” and “United and Strong” and “One Voice,” like it’s some savage pep rally with no authority figures to keep people under control; or some small-town Nazi Christmas party where everyone’s getting riled up to go beat some Jews. But still-all that problematic thrashing was really hot. By the time the second track comes on, my fist is pumping in time with the music and I’m already biting my lip.

In my bed I’m punk as fuck: I’m the only one who gets it.

True sounds of a revolution

Gotta gotta gotta go

I’ve got your revolution right here, honey.

I’m going over the precious time we shared. Roger’s heaving body at my back, biting my earlobe, pushing me down with one sweaty shoulder. Calling me all sorts of ugly names as he fucks me, so I won’t see how badly he needs me.