Midway through my freshman year at a residential arts high school, my older friend Aaron made me a mixtape. He attached it to the door handle of my dorm room with a rubber band—no case, no label, no track listing. I loved every song. I’d pester him to tell me the names of the bands, but he ignored me. I was, after all, a freshman.
The tape allowed me to fantasize about worlds I hadn’t known existed. I’d just moved out of my parents’ house in Mobile, Alabama and all I knew about life was the mall, middle school, and MTV. Let’s lynch the landlord—ok! Robert DeNiro, sit on my face—yes! We’re Bikini Kill and we want revolution. Girls don’t wahhhhhh—Girls don’t what? Don’t what?
The songs that mattered most to me were at the end of Side A and the beginning of Side B. The band sang about passing letters, pissing on cops’ faces, and bloodthirsty forty-fives playing out of tune. Gay boys dumped other gay boys. I didn’t want to be first to disapprove but the taste of my mouth’s grown tired of you. Where was this world? It seemed so real for a full eight minutes. It was nowhere to be found in Birmingham in 1995.
I’d heard about riot grrrl that summer on MTV. Courtney Love had socked riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna in the face at Lollapalooza. That’s how MTV’s Kurt Loder described her—"Riot Grrrl" Kathleen Hanna. MTV treated riot grrrl like a cutesy coven of witches: dangerous, but too frivolous to be taken seriously.
Riot grrrl, I was told, happened in Seattle, Portland, Olympia, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis. According to the older boys at my high school it was a bunch of girls "singing about their periods", and Birmingham punks were "too smart for that." Supposedly, a couple of riot grrrls had tied a boy to a tree and "sucked his dick till he started bleeding." This was the lore.
Aaron’s mix tape was my first exposure to riot grrrl, my initiation. I was so curious about what girl rage sounded like but MTV only showcased major label bands, and the Internet was not yet a proper place for music. Anything underground require an enlightened elder passing you a tape, a zine, or a flier.
The band at the end of Side A and the beginning of Side B sounded different than the other riot grrrl bands on the tape. The singers had English accents. The songs were more militant, violent even. Being gay had never sounded so punk, and being punk had never sounded so tough. Who was this mysterious English riot grrl band of witches and fagboys?
Social life at the Alabama School of Fine Arts was strictly codified by age and musical taste. I was into boys and girls. Art school should have been a mecca of make outs, but the students were image conscious. Cool was more important than sex. Everyone wanted to be cool, but you couldn’t belong to more than one circle. You couldn’t smoke pot and listen to D.C. hardcore. You couldn’t skateboard and get good grades. You couldn’t kiss other boys and be punk.
That’s how it felt in 1995, anyway.
The only queer punk scene I knew about were the four songs on the mixtape, and I didn’t even know the band’s name.
In class you’re three seats up from me
This note is all the indication I need
I feed off ideas like yours—
Sex and confusion, sabotage and hardcore.
I listened to these songs over and over in my dorm room. A menacing surf-rock guitar riff faded into distortion, and then the singers started to bark at an unnamed older boy. I feed off ideas like yours—Sex and confusion, sabotage and hardcore. The taunting sounded flirtatious.
I sat behind Aaron in Music Appreciation class. I wondered if he might be into boys, too. It was so hard to tell. In my fantasy, he’d turn around and hand me the mixtape. All the bands would be listed. The cover would be a pixelated silk screen of Ronald Reagan’s smiling face. The title: Sex & Confusion, Sabotage & Hardcore.
Yeah, yeah, the letter you sent me.
Yeah, yeah, the letter you sent me.
In the fantasy, we’d do really sexy stuff like hold hands and walk over the steaming potholes of downtown Birmingham. I didn’t let myself imagine anything more.
The songs on the tape stirred me into action. Maybe Aaron liked boys too? I had to find out.
We were smoking cigarettes in a locked stall in the bathroom. The juniors were taking turns admitting who they liked. They looked at me.
Fuck it. Punk rock and honesty. I told them that I liked Aaron.
"Aaron?" one asked. "Aaron," the other said. "Kessler, you’re not gay," the third one said. "You wish you were gay," the first one said and they all started laughing.
By final bell the next day, everyone knew.
Aaron didn’t avoid me. He just didn’t act kinder.
I took it hard. I yelled at myself. I ate lunch and dinner alone. I dangled my feet off the parking garage stairwell. I had no one to talk to. I walked around downtown Birmingham, searching for some imaginary store full of people who’d get me. Then I’d go back to my dorm room and listen to the songs by the band whose name I didn’t know.
My boyfriend…Teen Angel
My boyfriend…Irresponsible
My boyfriend…Venereal
My boyfriend…Violates his parole.
In my fantasy, I dumped Aaron. I would pace my dorm room and imagine yelling in his face, berating him, he'd hang his head, knowing that he had wronged me. I'd scream that he was irresponsible, venereal, a teen angel. I didn’t know what venereal meant, but I assumed it was a clear ointment like Neosporin. Liking a boy didn’t feel mainstream, but it didn’t feel punk either.
For eight minutes, the English riot grrrl band provided the dreamscape upon which my fantasies unfolded. In my head I screamed at Aaron; on my stereo the band screamed at me. I was punk, I was fine, I was good.
I needed to hear more, but only Aaron could tell me the band’s name. And now I was too embarrassed to ask.
On the last day of school, the kids packed dorm rooms. I stared out my window and watched the cars and trucks whizz along I-20. I picked up the phone and dialed six of the seven numbers and hung up. Finally, I called.
Aaron’s little sister answered. She yelled his name. She yelled his name again. Aaron said hello. I knotted the phone cord around my index finger and tried to act calm as he recited the track listing on this tape.
I’d fast-forward, push play on my stereo, and Aaron would rattle off a band name—Unwound, The Dead Kennedys, Bikini Kill. Soon we got off-topic. We talked about Kill Rock Stars, the Fugazi show in Huntsville. We talked several more times that summer. We still talk today.
"Oh, hey," he said. "I got to go. My mom needs the phone."
"Wait," I said. "Who does the spoken word track at the beginning of Side B? About the boys and stuff?"
I played the song.
Darling of raspberry
Lip Bit
Mother and shit shit shit
But angel’s on a mission to earn redemptive ears.
"Oh," he said. "That’s Huggy Bear. They’re pretty much the best band in the world."
I ordered Taking the Rough With the Smooch the next week at a local record store. It took six weeks to arrive. I called the store every other day. I became known as "that Huggy Bear kid."
The vinyl was so small! I envisioned a triple LP opus. The twelve songs lasted twenty-two minutes. Every time I played it, I’d close my door and put on my headphones. The music was a secret.
By the time I’d discovered them, Huggy Bear had already broken up. I’d heard that they believed that all bands should break up within three years, that they refused to have their photo taken. I don’t know if any of that’s true. But I do know that Taking the Rough With the Smooch meant a lot to my other queer punk friends who grew up like me, isolated in places like Alabama, Kentucky, Arizona, and Missouri.
Huggy Bear did for me what no one else did that year—they listened. I shut my eyes and thought about Aaron; Huggy Bear screamed and yelled and after the music was over they whispered. They told me that somewhere, somewhere far away from Alabama, there were others in the world like me. In the summer of 1995, that was the only thing I needed to hear.