Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing

by Abram Shalom Himelstein

  Maureen and Sam and I had tickets to the Holocaust Museum for 11:30 and we went to Hellers Bakery on the way downtown. It was 10:30, so the punk rock breakfast rush was in full swing. A crowd of punk rockers was harassing the counter help with intricate questions about what kinds of margarine and wheat were used to make all of the baked goods. Sam and I introduced Maureen all around and people were surprisingly friendly and cheery. Maureen and Sam left to buy orange juice. The non-punkers who had been waiting while the P.R. kids got their vegan fix got served and left. One of the aproned employees came from the kitchen with a steaming fresh tray of poppy seed humentashen, so I ordered six (had to complete the authentic Jewish experience for Sam and Maureen). You’d have thought that I had sold my only begotten sister to the pharaoh or something. The punk rock peanut gallery: “You’re eating that, that’s made with butter,” “Ewww, gross.” I thought about throwing the Jewish issue/holocaust trip back in their faces, seeing how quickly I could hush them by bringing my oppression into play, but opted for the classy move, and walked them to the sidewalk where I threw the humentashen at them and ran to meet Maureen and Sam. (One busted Aaron Pavapolis’s carefully sculpted coiffure.) Maureen and Sam asked for the baked goods, and I tried to explain what happened, but they just wrote it off as some joke of mine. (It’s not so different than a lot of jokes I make.) Bad mood about the stupidity of the life I live here in DC for the length of the bus ride.

  After pouting all the way to our stop, I remembered that Maureen was in town, which is all too rare, and found a good mood. We bought cornbread on the street outside the Smithsonian, and passed through the archway of the museum.

  Oy yoy yoy, thirty billion displays of atrocities, people with our last name, someone with your exact name, Hannah Rosenberg. There was this guy who died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprisiong that looked just like me. It was genuinely eerie. They all physically resemble us. And it was really obvious that anybody remotely political, who cared or protested, was going to end up super dead. And it was sad, but then I started noticing how there were pretty much only Jews being discussed and remembered how Dad had taken great pains to explain to me about gypsies and gays and Catholics being targets for extermination. And so I started paying attention and getting mad at the museum for excluding everyone else, but wait, then I found two mentions of gays and three of Catholics and two of Gypsies. And I started reading more carefully and so much of the text was about what great Germans the Jews had been and how they were so smart and what a tragedy it had been because of all the great brains and businessmen and poets that had died. The tragedy wasn’t that millions of people were murdered, just that a lot of them were really smart. And I couldn’t hold it all, all the evilness of the nazis and how sinister it was that the museum people had forgotten, excluded everyone else, and how the tragedy was that they were such great Germans.

  I went and sat in the meditation room, which is conveniently shaped like a Star of David to mourn all the dead Jews. Sam and Maureen finished and found me there, and we started to walk out. They wanted to go to the bathroom before the bus ride home.

  As I stood outside, waiting in the cold, this 40ish Jewish man with a thick New York Yiddisher accent approached me. “Do you know the way to the Smithsonian?”

  “End of the block make a right, can’t miss it.”

  “Do you want to take classes?” he asked me.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well it’s important that the children have only one religion, and better that it be your religion,” his finger points at me, “than her religion,” he points at Sam as she approaches. (She’s Korean-American) I guess he saw us together in the museum and cared enough to follow me out into the cold to give me this advice. I’m disgusted/repulsed/shell-shocked beyond words and start to walk away, but hear him mutter, “So you’re dating a shiksa.”

  And I couldn’t even begin to explain what had happened to Sam and Maureen. And once again I played the role of an adult wearing a yellow feather covered costume talking about some hairy invisible elephant. But it really all did happen. I swear. Despite all that, we had a good visit. Maureen sends her love.

  Thanks for listening.

  Love,

  Elliot

  P. S. If anyone ever tells you that high school is the best four years of your life, don’t get suicidal. Hang in there, it gets better. High school sucks, everything afterward is definitely better, previous two stories to the contrary. I love my job, and I’m usually having a really good time. If you need any humentashen ammo…

  No one signed up. Sucks that I’m madder at the politicos, who I feel like should walk the walk, than at the fashion punks who I knew would do nothing. Probably for the better. Imagine punks tutoring.

  “We can’t read this book to children. It shows the garbage men smiling, which is part of the way the system reinforces class roles.”

  Accessory after the fact. I feel like I should write in code, so that this evidence cannot be used against me. Guy I know at work, D.J. , came in and told Evan about killing these two “small time thugs.” Don’t think that he’ll get caught. Considered dropping a dime, but mostly just wish I didn’t know. Which is kind of a fucked-up, hear no evil attitude, but it makes me nauseous and sad.

  Violence walks through this city like a dumb, dangerous caterpillar. Like one of those caterpillars with spikes that sting. And the powerful hire police to keep the caterpillar corralled into an area far away from them, not caring enough to actually try to figure out what’s up, wherefore and whyfore comes this beast. No discussion or caring (or worse, discussion without caring) about those who live daily where the police encourage the caterpillar to stay. And the police do their job, more or less, and on the rare occasions that the beast “gets loose,” it’s usually slow and awkward and tremendously outgunned… And we, “we” make made-for-tv movies and get close-up looks at those powerful spikes.

  And then punks and do-gooders live at the edges of this violence, for the more raw and real life. Showing where our “real” sympathies lie. And tell ourselves how we’re not a part of that other world. “I mean, I don’t even pay taxes, so, you know, they aren’t my police force.”

  Date? with Jenny. Not very fun, not very exciting. Think that I could kiss her if I wanted to, which I don’t think that I do. The excitement, I guess, is that I could.

  Ah, the conquest theme. Christa would be so pleased.

  Not a bad day after all. So we’ll tour. Pretty stoked to leave town, get the hell away from all of these people. So many years watching people get on stage and do it, can’t wait to see what it’s like. If every half-talented musician can get on stage, at least I can get up there and not be stupid, or say something. I wonder if we can stay with Super Vixen in Seattle. Ha.

  I wonder if T or J know anyone with a video camera. That they want us to take all over in a van and get food and our feet on.

  Reread tonight Soul on Ice. Sickly, insanely, pathetically wished that I had been given fewer freedoms, so that I could fight the good fight. The “genuine”/“authentic” liberation struggles aren’t mine, and I sometimes wish for my own Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. All this fucked up shit floating around in my brain, being attacked with great cunning/ acumen and the glorious end result is that the language that I use is slightly more inclusive.

  I see a lot of white kids my age “acting black,” and looking silly, though it’s easy to see the attraction. The story of the underdog, playing against a stacked deck, against a system loaded with guns and laws and couched in hypocritical, noble-sounding terms-well you’d be an idiot and asshole not to find the story compelling, not to see some of the truest minutes of beauty in the victories, not to admire anyone doing their part in the struggle.

  And the white kids are born (I am born) into privilege (so are a lot of black kids privileged, in a lot of ways, but I haven’t walked any miles in those shoes, and I am trying to judge). And the struggle to use that privilege against the system isn’t full of flashy passion, b
ut just the slow burning sensation of doing something to make the world a little better than you found it.

  Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a village very close by, there lived a little girl. She was born into a family that seemed very happy. They had a big house, and plenty of food to eat. The family was waiting, though. A long time ago, there had been a man who had claimed that he was going to make everything better in the world. Then the man had gone away, promising to come back and save the world from all of its problems. There were lots of people who were waiting for him to come back. And during this recess, during this in-between period, many of these people had decided whose problems that the man would fix, and to whom he would give worse problems. These people were making lists of those people who had been bad, and they stood ready to tell the teacher. Those that had been bad were going to have to spend forever holding up heavy textbooks on outstretched arms. Those that had been good were going to game-time and ice cream. Forever.

  The little girl’s parents had decided that people who had sex for reasons other than children were going to have to hold textbooks. Especially if it was with people of the same gender. They told themselves that they were blessed to have been given the criteria for judgment. So blessed. They collected money to send people all over the world to tell everyone. So that everyone would be warned that they will have to hold heavy textbooks. And who would chose heavy textbooks when they could get game-time and ice cream?

  Every Wednesday and Sunday the family worked extra hard, and talked about exactly what the criteria were. And as she grew, she learned about how many things could stop her from getting the ice cream that she had been offered. Drinking, smoking, drugs, sex, bad words-all of them could make you lose game-time, forever.

  When she was fourteen she got to work with the older kids to spread the criteria that the man was going to use. This made Christa very happy, because she believed and loved the truths that she had been taught. But the strange thing was that these kids spent a lot of time doing the things that might make them lose ice cream. But only when none of the adults were watching. Sometimes when they would get caught they would say that bad men made them do it. Sometimes they would say that they were sorry and cry and accept the criteria again. Christa, the now not-so-little girl, was very sad that the other children in her group might lose ice cream. She had a friend, Beth, who also believed, without time-outs, the truth of the word. And all through tenth and eleventh grade they did everything together. They prayed, studied, volunteered at the church, wrote letters to prisoners to spread the word. The summer before senior year, they went together to Church Retreat in the mountains in Virginia. On the first night, all the presidents of the youth group made speeches of invocation, and the way that Robert spoke made Beth and Christa’s hearts leap. “It says very clearly, ‘I set before ye this day a blessing and a curse.’ And then goes on to tell us how to choose the blessing and therefore eternal life. But think about it, y’all. There are so many people who’ve never had the chance to be told the good news. Who’ve never had the chance to choose the blessing. And that breaks my heart.”

  When he was done speaking, Robert came over and sat down next to Beth. She told him how much she enjoyed his speech, how blessed they all were to hear his words. Beth and Robert took a long walk that night, and at lights out, Beth told Christa that she liked Robert a lot. “He’s so passionate about our Lord. He has so many good ideas about how to spread the word.” The next night they again took a long walk, and Beth told Christa that she thought that she might want to marry Robert, that she had always wanted to be a preacher’s wife. Then on the third night, after their walk, Beth could only cry, nodding answers to Christa’s questions. Robert had stolen the most precious gift that a girl can give to her husband. And three other girls in the cabin told similar stories about boys in the youth group. Christa couldn’t be in the youth group any more.

  Her parents didn’t want a daughter who did not love the Lord. Even if she said that she did, she didn’t want to go to youth group any more, and they wanted the kind of daughter who was grateful for the word and felt honored to work to spread the word. Two choices: youth group or out of the house.

  Out. She wanted out of the house. She couldn’t go back to church, didn’t want to stay in her parents’ house. A few of her friends that had also left the youth group had a house. And they observed most of the criteria, they didn’t drink, do drugs, smoke, have sex, or eat meat. And it seemed right, because they really did none of these things. They didn’t promise one day and then drink the next. Or have sex when the girl didn’t want to.

  And so she left home and moved into the house, with her parents in shellshock that their only daughter was choosing holding textbooks over game-time and ice-cream. One of the women in the new house was a stripper, which even if it wasn’t the sex that was forbidden, was part of the sexual world.

  In her new house she and her new friends talked a lot about How Fucked Up the World Is. Together they decided that they had been told many lies about the criteria, and maybe the whole story had been a lie. No game-time forever. Christa started to swear, and sometimes she would drink alcohol. Also she began to wear clothes that her parents and church said were evil. She went around wearing shirts with pictures of girls kissing girls, “Read My Lips.”

  But in real life at the end of her lips was no one. No girls, no boys, no one. She and her friends talked about the way that the Death Culture had programmed them to like boys or girls that looked certain ways, but they were going to fight back.

  When a certain Jewish boy with a big nose and bad posture came into her life, Christa saw an excellent opportunity to apply theory to real life. She remembered that the original man in her life, the one that she had been waiting for all of these years, was a Jewish boy who yielded not to temptation. She had high hopes for the experience.

  He was proof of her success in liberating her desires from the ones that the Death Culture had tried to force upon her. She found that she liked to have someone to call and cry with, and that it was nice to occasionally find someone at the end of her lips.

  This Jewish boy, however, had not struggled enough against the desires instilled in him by the Death Culture. She tried to lead him away from temptation, but he still thought that temptation could be satisfied, did not know that the only true satisfaction came with the death of desire.

  Again and again she tried to show him the error of his ways, tried to explain how he ruined it for both of them by not trying to resist his desires. He doesn’t want to save himself, and she can’t paddle to safety with him holding onto her. So they part ways as she swims toward land, away from the Sea of Death Culture.

  Bye-bye.

  Sam was supposed to go shopping with the ladies next door, and they didn’t answer the door. She saw them through the window earlier, so she went around back to see if they were on the back porch. She came around the corner, saw them duck, and was like, “Hey guys, are we going shopping?” and they popped up and got ready to go. She asked them why they were hiding and they tried to deny that they had been. They tried to deny that they had ducked down after she saw them.

  Sam said, “Hey, if you guys don’t want to go shopping, fine.”

  I guess that was just too real for them. They got all defensive and tried to play it off, but she just came home and cried. I wonder if it’s about her living with me, a known patronizer of the King’s Castle. If so, I’m sorry, but our next door neighbors should be able to forgive Sam my sins, or at least be honest.

  Hiding on the back porch.

  Usually I think DC punk rock is like high school. Today seemed more like fourth grade.

  CRUZAPALOOZA ’95

  Henry Rollins smokes a cigar as he rakes in his chips at the Malcolm X Beat The Man Black Jack Table.

  Only last year, the Tibetan people were suffering horribly at the hands of the genocidal Chinese government, and now, thanks to Mike D, Ad Rock and MCA, the room is full of Tibetan monks pulling the levers of t
he Che Guevara Rage Against the Slot Machines and the Crazy Horse One Armed Bandits.

  Converted from an oil tanker, with 137 channels of cable, and permanent uplinks to the coolest, most alternative sites on the world-wide web.

  All of the slots are solar powerec and recycled from pinball machines, so it’s all super-eco.

  Man, we are so much radder than Boatstock III or the 2 Live Cruiseliner. As long as I can get my free Che tat for playing third stage. Viva la revolucion!

  When I look around I see the chickens are coming home to roost

  But we can use our zines as umbrellas and not get hit by the chicken poop

  In thirty years the president of the United States will have a tattoo

  A real cool one, REVOLUTION in red, white, and blue.

  There’s a new program, latest and greatest grant. It’s about “test-readiness,” to “counteract the cultural biases of standardized testing.” It involves using our tutors to teach how to take multiplechoice tests. It looks like this: “Let’s study vocabulary now. Alright, so which one of these words means deserving… Good try, but actually, ‘merits’ means deserving. Say that back to me, ‘deserving means merits’… Good job, now let’s look at number two.”

  So many ideas have been so badly played out. So many bad, ineffective, half-heartedly, half-fundedly flung… Good ideas end up better funded in other neighborhoods, bad ideas, well at least they’ll know not to do that with their own children.

  White people have little to glamorously “give.” Already taken and stolen and starred in too much.