Punky's Diary -- a Friend's Experiences, collected by Selbryth.
February 8, 2007
So here I am again. I know, I know, you're bored with me already, but that's cool.
Still a free country.
Anyhow, in my ongoing quest for class (which I guess by now is pretty much hopeless but what the fuck), I decided to get into music. I mean I love listening to music but I wanted to play it. Like rock stuff, ya know? So I went to a Guitar Center and bought myself an electric guitar (Epiphone Les Paul, which is really pretty), and an amplifier and a cable and some picks and stuff. I bought a music book too but the shit was way too complex for me.
I started just foolin' around with it, trying to tune the thing and then making chords and trying to strum them. It was pretty cool actually, to be making sounds even though they're pretty fucked up sounding.
So like two days after I start, this buddy of mine says she has a gig at this place downtown and can I play anything? And I'm thinking,
no, I just started. I can't even play a whole song.
Turns out she means can I play an instrument—not a song. So I tell her I just started and she says to just come on down to this club and bring my stuff. Their other guitar player broke her arm in a fight.
"At the club?" I'm asking her.
"Well, not exactly." she says, but then I'm thinking, why the fuck not?
The next night I show up and it's this total grungy dive looking place, and I'm not talking the Seattle music scene either. I go in the back and there's like this guy who's gotta be almost seven feet tall and a hundred feet wide and he looks at me like I'm an old paper plate or something. Then he notices I have my guitar and amp and he breaks into this huge smile and helps me lug my stuff in.
I get to the stage and there's nobody there but he tells me to wait and then my friend comes out and hugs me. She's wearing glittery body makeup.
And that's all.
So I'm thinking, 'okay, that's rock 'n roll, right?' So we go back to the dressing room so I can meet the rest of the band.
Everybody's like totally naked. We're all chicks so that's cool, but bare-naked with glitter, that was about it.
So then my friend's telling me about the club a little and that's when I find out I'm not going to be wearing anything either, which is like 'wow I wish she'd told me or something!'
We sit around talking and it's half an hour till the people start coming in, and then this tall weird looking geeky guy comes in and has this radio box for me to use on my guitar. Wireless. He starts plugging it into my guitar and showing me how it works and then leaves. I'm feeling pretty special actually because here I am playing just a couple of days and I've already got a wireless thingie on my guitar strap!
So then the time goes by and my friend says for me to get undressed. I don't mind, really, because it's all chicks in the band, and when Ava, my friend, tells me it's a chick-club, that makes me feel even better. So I stand right there and strip down naked, and then the other girls are helping me put the body glitter on and I've still got some 'elastic lines' from my underwear, but they're telling me it won't matter because of the lights.
Then they see my snatch is bald and Ava tells me that it's a sort of 'semi-natural' club meaning they prefer that the performers have at least pubic hair. So I'm thinking 'okay, but I can't just grow it on the spot!'
Ava and the girls have some tricks in their makeup kits and in a few minutes they've made me a glue-on muff, and I glue it on, and...problem solved.
Then it's only like ten minutes before we go on and we can already hear people cheering and stuff and I suddenly feel like I'm going to vomit. I mean just totally upchuck green bile and the whole thing. It was exciting and an honor to be there but now I'm getting stage-fright and I have to tell you, it's pretty fucked up. Props to musicians who go onstage every night!
Then I'm padding out with all of them toward the stage (padding because we're all barefoot), and we reach the stage and the lights are just beaming down like lasers and I feel faint. But then the drummer starts and I totally freeze up, and my friend nudges my shoulder with hers and nods and I go "What the fuck am I doing?" and she just grins at me.
"Just play loud and don't worry about anything." she says.
Then she's playing and I watch her for a second and really get impressed. I mean she's strumming all these chords I never saw before and she's grinning and stomping around and the bass player's playing really loud and the drummer is kickin' and so I just start playing.
I don't have the foggiest fucking notion what I'm doing but I'm making noise and looking at the band girls and I feel really good inside because I'm actually a part of something.
Then I glance out over the audience and feel sick again, but not as bad as before. I mean with all the lights, you really can't see anything but shadows out there, so I start getting a little braver and going out to the front of the stage and exaggerating my playing motions and the people cheer and then I step back so Ava can go up front and sing.