No Fun Club
On Punks Who Came Back Wrong
Essay Originally published in the print version of Cripple Punk 3 Mag in Feb. 2023 by Alma R @knifefemme
It’s hard loving something that doesn’t love you back.
Or, to be more specific, it’s hard loving something that only loves you when you’re in pain.
As it stands, this is my relationship with live music. I grew up in my local Punk scene, going to at least three shows a week for most of my late teens; my first foray into the career that I have now was writing about shows, as many of them as possible, and rarely missing one my friends were going to. I found a community at these shows— I was a weird gay goth that most people recoiled from in polite society, but within the sticker-covered walls of my local venues, I was seen. People embraced me and were happy to see me show up. Live music was a lifeline for me when I was going through traumatic experiences at home as a teenager, another universe where nobody could hurt me.
When I think about my longest friendships, all of them come from that scene. The impact it has had on my life is absolutely unmeasurable.
I never imagined, growing up, that I would start to resent the very thing that used to make me feel alive— but then everything changed when the pandemic hit.
In 2020, before vaccines were widely available and despite masking everywhere, I caught COVID. Long story short, my lungs never recovered. I can do a lot of things now that I couldn’t do when my symptoms were at their worst, but the damage was considerable; it just isn’t possible for me to stand for long periods of time like I used to.
The hardest part of it, more so than the weight I feel in my chest when I do anything physical, has been the alienation. When venues reopened mid-2021 and shows started back up, everyone I know was ecstatic to finally get back to it. Artists, understandably, were relieved to have the income from touring back. And then here I was in the middle of it, with ribs that hurt every time I sang along to anything and a body that wouldn’t support me — I felt like I had come back wrong, like a graveyard had been opened and everyone had crawled out of their grave as a full-fledged human being while I’d come back a failed zombie.
But more than anything, going back to shows after that time away showed me how ill-equipped my local scene was when it came to accessibility. Things that I used to joke about as quirks of the DIY Punk scene became real barriers, like the fact that so many venues are in old shitty buildings with stairs all over and no elevator or ramp in sight, or how stage times weren’t posted anywhere so people would come and watch every band.
In a time where everyone was stressing the importance of supporting live music after so many musicians in our community lost income, it was hard to feel like I had a right to voice these things; especially in DIY scenes, there’s sometimes a sense that we should be grateful that we can do any of it at all and therefore should just take what’s offered to us. But if a scene that preaches community and thinks of itself as better than the soulless capitalist machine that corporations have made mainstream live music into can’t do better, what is it actually worth? For the past decade and a half, this scene had been telling me that there was a place for me where I fit in, that it would celebrate me for being different. Yet when that difference manifested itself not as being a freaky goth but as being someone with different accessibility needs I felt like an inconvenience, like an afterthought to the structures that preached inclusivity for everyone.
When I think of the shows I’ve been to in the past few years, I actually have trouble thinking of people I’ve seen there who were using mobility aids or other disability accommodations. Obviously this doesn’t mean disabled people weren’t in attendance, as we all know that it’s impossible to tell by just looking at someone— but it troubles me to think that other people, like me, have had to pretend to be able-bodied to still enjoy places where they should be able to come as they are.
Even now, after going through a lot of therapy to come to terms with how I feel about my health, I am still grappling with how to approach these conversations, and how to ask for accessibility at these events, because so much of it is so opaque. This is to say nothing of the fact that going to shows at all right now is still a huge risk when it comes to the pandemic; it’s a choice I have to make every time I decide, against all other factors, to come to a show.
I could, of course, choose to stay home to avoid all this, as I did when my symptoms were at their worst and I still sometimes do if I’m having a flare-up. But I shouldn’t have to; if shows and venues were more accessible, I wouldn’t have to choose between seeing my friends and being able to walk the next day.
I truly do think a better DIY music scene is possible; after all, we built it from nothing. But the work required to get there feels, frankly, overwhelming, and at times like I would be putting myself in an adversarial position against people who are putting on these events, even though it would end up benefiting them as it would mean more people could attend.
There are some moments where I have hope things aren’t totally bleak, like when my friends make sure I’m comfortable in a crowd or check if I need to leave and sit down. But if we want disabled people to even be there to have those moments in the first place, we need larger community changes, like exact timings for shows.
For now, though, it’s still going to be me and the pain in my chest.