Austin Punk Vignettes

Just like almost everyone else in town, I had the biggest crush on Karla from Toxic Shock.

I remember one night a bunch of us sitting in the alley or some courtyard or some courtyard in the alley-whatever it was, it was off 6th street, before some idiotic city planners decided to rename it Pecan Street, back in the days when it was Mexican joints and winos and gay bars and Antone's was still there, before it became a cleaned-up outdoor-mall fern-bar tourist frat hangout, and there was some little experimental theater joint where punks tried to act or something and after some event of a new-wave and experimental nature we were gathered out back drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and probably not saying very much because we were all a profoundly uncomfortable bunch. And Karla was there, looking uneasy, staring at the ground or the wall or just generally away, not saying very much. She was probably wearing a leather jacket over a sweatshirt or a ripped up tee-shirt maybe some sort of bondage pants or maybe a skirt over tattered stockings boots home cut peacock hair, and she was beautiful.

I remember looking at her and thinking, "you're such a beautiful girl, why do you make yourself look so ugly," while knowing the answer. It was the same reason all of us did. It was because (forgive me Karla for putting my words in your mouth) we felt ugly. Mohawks held up with soap and egg whites and dyed with Kool-Aid no mousse or gel and tattered clothes held together by safety pins were not a fashion statement you could buy at the mall next to the place where you got your tongue pierced. They were an anti-fashion statement. It looked ugly to us at the time. We were saying "yeah, we're fucked up. We don't fit in. And fuck you for making us feel this way."

It often seemed to me that being beautiful is what made Carla feel so uncomfortable. You couldn't help but notice her, and I don't think she wanted to be noticed.

I did some work with a bunch of Hollywood squatter punks a few years back. "We're carrying on the traditions you guys started," they said, and that comment kinda floored me. It took a few days to realize why it didn't sit right. The answer was obvious: starting a tradition was the last thing on our minds. We were about negating tradition and everything else that we believed had resulted in our alienation. Not just negating it but burning the motherfucker to the ground, even if it meant taking ourselves with it.

It occurred to me that for a "movement" based almost entirely on negation and self destruction to still exist some 20 years later could be seen as proof of its failure.