The Cutest Nerd in Hardcore

Entering into my second hardcore era I moved away from the hardcore noise for the sake of noise and into a preference for hardcore that had a bit more swing in its two step and thought in its lyrics. I was done with Black Flag and My War and Slip it In, lyrics that lacked any nuance, done with Dayglo Abortions and their fart jokes and kinda racist lyrics, and the like. Instead I was much more interested in bands like Reagan Youth, Zero Boys, The Germs, Agent Orange, The Modernettes, SNFU, The Clash, Bad Religion, The Kids, The Proletariat, X-Ray Spex, and whatnot. It wasn't so much that I was done with those old bands of before but their approach to song writing got really boring to me. A lot of those bands less wanted to write music and wanted to write "noise". They prioritized speed and cacophony, over writing good music. And consequently a lot of it got old fast. There can only be one fastest band, one noisiest band, one "rawest" and once you've heard those you've kinda heard them all. I had left the shock value of bad music in exchange for fun and intersting songs.

Zero Boys is such a good example of this. All of their songs have a concrete throughline, and definitely matured with time. Both Vicious Circle and History Of remain two of my favorite records to this day. There are thoughtful criticisms of many aspects of politics and society that you can see throughout both records. Civilization's Dying, acts as a critique of gun violence and gun control which was surprisingly uncommon for the early 80s. Dingy Bars Suck is about, well you probably get it, but it is another uncommon perspective in the world of beer and vommit stained punk culture. While other bands we writing "Police Bad" and "Politicians suck and don't like us kids". I mean, c'mon, compare Black Flag's TV Party with The Germs' Media Blitz. Six Pack with SNFU's My Humble Life of Disarray. Even some carry-over bands I loved from the previous era like the Freeze would do the one thing I wished punk would do more; critique punks (see: This is Boston Not LA). They also wrote a very silly but very clever anti-drinking song in It's Only Alcohol. And into the 90s they would be writing songs about Animal Abuse, Mass Murder Psychopathy, and, yes, continue to criticise punks and alternative culture. Gang Green and FEAR just continued to write about beer. At least FEAR sounded different I guess.

This genre change wasn't strictly in terms of music. I'm going to be honest, 18-21 was a lot of listening to the "right" bands, dressing the right way, behaving the right way, etc. I was crude because I was supposed to, I shaved my head because it was an easy way to look "raw", I was mean, I was shitty and I was Punk TM. This new age was accompanied with me legitimately not giving a fuck anymore. Actually, no, that's not true. I gave a fuck. Enough of a fuck to find it fun to fuck with punks who thought there was a correct way to be punk. I was done with trying to be punk and I was now armed and ready to stir the pot. At 19/20, towards the end of Phase I, I had started a new band after Bad Batch had failed. I won't name this band for fear of doxxing myself (much easier than I've already made it) but these early songs were, well, exactly what I would come to hate. Lyrics with nuance extending no further than "Police Brutality Bad" and "Capitalism Bad". Not really a whole lot to it. From 21-27, Phase II I took a different approach to writing songs, especially lyrics. One song, which I still think is one of my better (punk) songs lyrically, dug into anarchistic politics, comparing a lot of the beliefs and behaviours to radical right politics. Rhetroical points, for example, like within anarchistic disdain for gun control, seemed to be less about a real moral or political belief and was almost exclusively "when the fascists come knocking, we're gonna have to have guns to fight back". A lot of the way these anarchists tended to talk was very much in line with a "death or glory" mentality that I couldn't help but notice the connection between that and the way Right Wingers talk about guns as "What if someone commits a crime in front of me, if you take away my gun, how can I save them?" It was political heroism, and I found it to be equally thoughtless. The song offers a call to move beyond the political sport of colors and side leanings and to focus on ideas to fix problems you see with the world. A call to stay furious, find power within it, and use that power to improve things, instead of falling for the trap that features of the utopia when isolated from that utopia and applied to the world as it is will lead to monotonically towards improvement. In other words, just because something is part of the system of your dream world doesn't mean that you can take that thing alone, apply it to this fucked up world and expect it to be progression towards that dream. In reality, taking pieces of the entire dream system and applying them without the rest can actually cause massive problems and make things worse.

One of the things that I became a big fan of was poking fun and critiquing punks and punk as a whole. I wrote a song called Fuck Cops that had a nice, fun, chanting chorus for all of the punks in the local scene to sing along "Fuck Cops! Fuck Cops! Fuck Cops!". The verses, and the bridge, which no one would pay enough attention to to really understand, were about how boring punk ideology was, how punks speak with zero though or nuance and how they're all just here to chant with me as I say: "Fuck Cops! Fuck Cops! Fuck Cops!" This frustration as lead me back to old bands I had loved but put down for fear of judgement, bands like MCR and Sum 41. I got deep into Cringecore, became unapologetically a nerd about math and computing science, and there was no going back. In fact, we used to do a cover of My War. We had a fill in bassist for a show and he started playing Enter Sandman on the bass for fun during practice. I realized we could do that as a silly little intro to My War, which we did at that show. We started playing enter Sandman and just a few seconds into the start of it, pretending like we were gonna play it for real, some of the punks at this super duper cool, very hip, underground punk venue walked out. This was so funny to me, and I loved it so much we continued doing it. We did Holiday by Green Day, Dammit by Blink 182, and I promise you this is 100% true: Lose Yourself by Eminem. Yes, I had to rap. My dream was to use My War as a segway into Welcome to the Black Parade because I knew that no song would piss these losers off more than gay-ass MCR, but our guitarist, who was beginning to become exactly the boring, cringe (derogatory) thing I was mocking, shot it down because they didn't want to play it. Let's not talk about how playing My War in the first place was their idea and I hate that song but played it anyways.

Within this push back I came to realize how much femininity was not accepted in punk. I learned how sexist punk was, how women in the scene had to deviate from conventions of womanhood in order to be accepted or respected. And definitely if they weren't hot, they weren't shit. I got sick of it. I got so fucking sick of it. And towards the end of this era I began to experiment more with feminine things. I painted my nails, not the cool guy black virtue signal everyone else did, but glittery purples and blues and pinks. My favorite was metalic blue which appeared pink in some lights. It was beautiful. I started to wear this fitted mohair womens jacket with a giant pope Jean Paul pin and a holographic Jimmy Carter pin. I bought this fluffy white fitted cropped sweater and started wearing it to shows. I still wore my engineers boots, but now I was experimenting with skirts more. It was liberating. I realized what held me back more than anything was punks distaste for femininity and how experimenting in this way made me feel "inauthentic" -- a no-no in the punk scene. Punk kept me from exploring my identity the way I wanted to.

I'm not going to say that I was always trans or whatever. I don't subscribe to that shit (I'll explain on the next page). But definitely I was tired with the way punk men seemed to use certain acceptable aspects of femininity and queersness to communicate their Feminist TM beliefs. Y'know the punk version of soft boys everyone knows to be really fucking weird and honestly basically sexist.

I lived with one of these guys. This guy would kiss guys at parties, talk about how he loved kissing guys and then use that as an excuse to say and do really homophobic shit. We lived together with a disabled transman, and he used his soft-boy shit to garner favor with our friend group and roommates while isolating this trans friend from the same friend group, turning everyone on him, and bullying the shit out of him to the edge of suicide. Like, I need to make it super clear: I'm pretty sure I was the only one in our group who saw what was happening, who remained on my friends side while everyone tuned on him. On multiple occassions he called me to talk him out of kiling himself because of it. A couple of times I slept on the couch in our living room with him because he didn't think he was safe to be alone. This guy weaponized his disability against him, even claimed he was faking, and it wasn't until it people started to connect the individual abuses happening to them, such as legitimate gaslighting, cheating, and fucking sexual assault at our parties, when people realized what was going on and this guy left the house with his tail between his legs. EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. under his spell I still talk to and every single one regrets how infatuated with him he was. According to one of his exes he refused to wear condoms because they were "too small" and after getting a girl pregnant dropped the classic misogynist excuse that she was trying to trap him. This guy has never apologized, and still uses all of this queer-feminine shit to make people think he's some kind of progressive feminist. He's sexist, transphobic, and his band is frustratingly popular.

That rant aside, I hope you understand what I mean now. Punk is a farce. It's a joke. It's not progressive, it's an excuse to be a fuckwit. And if we're not going to come to terms with that it will only ever remain frat culture with a lemony alternative twist.

So I fully believe my internalized trans-misogyny was bred into me by the sexist toxicity of punk culture. The Henry Rollins -- trans women aren't women until they've had surgery -- the Descendents incel-spew with songs like Hope, Sour Grapes, Bikeage, Catalina, and NO FB (No Fat Beaver, literally about vaginas), the NOFX shaming a girl for lifting up her shirt at a show, the Wasted Youth slut shaming, and the list goes on. Let's not forget the classic story of Bad Brains dropping out of a festival because they found out the vocalist of Big Boys was gay calling him a Bloodclot Faggot. [Bloodclot likely referring to the Jamacian slang Bloodclart/Blood Cloth]. I've also heard a story of some people at Oki Dogs in the lates 70s early 80s beating the shit out of a gay man nearly to death.

ANYWAYS. Punk sucks and I want it to be so much better, and in a lot of ways it is. I just saw Babe Haven and Die Spitz last night, but even then when Die Spitz said they wanted there to be only girls at the front (which included transgirls) two dudes refused to leave because they didn't want to. I mean you're here for two predominantly girl bands who sing a lot about sexism and how women need to be heard and listened to and hear you are being a fucking weenie about it. It was cringe as fuck. So while punk is getting better it's still not great even in the best of places.

So towards the end of this era I began to accept femininity. And when COVID hit, I was granted an opportunity to really dig in. At the time I was living with a very feminine gay bottom (who I love dearly I miss him) and a lot of my closest friends in that house were women. So there could not have been a safer place for me to explore. Between my gay friend absolutely gassing me up whenever I did to my girl friends supporting me in a myriad of different ways. I started shaving my legs with one of my mens face razors which really fucked up my legs. One of my friends discreetly gave me a propery womens razor that helped a lot. I would paint my nails while listening to music on one of my girl friend's beds, a classic teenage girl experience that left me feeling a little robbed.

The breaking point for me would be none other than Occult Enemies by Against Me. Despite listening to it quite a bit before for some reason the line "You think time isn't your enemy as well" really hit me. I mean I was now a 26/27 year old who at 18 thought they would kill themselves before they were 21. A 26/27 year old who, for the past ten years, had been progressively adding to a suicide note, cataloging their suicidal ideation over the years, with each entry feeling like it would finally be the last. A 26/27 year old coming to the realization that they would likely be living out the rest of their life and that it might be time to really decide what that future should look like.

So I decided I would transition. I reached out to my doctor. Turns out she wasn't willing to start me on HRT because she knew I was moving out of province in a couple months and she wouldn't be able to monitor me properly. This was fair enough and probably for the best since it would be over a year after moving before I would have a doctor. I moved across the country, into the big city, my master's degree started and my life restarted.

My first year before starting HRT, while growing my hair out, this is often how I dressed.

I was flying out to a conference in the UK and took this in the airport. It was October 2022 so taken during covid.

When I played AA hockey we were required to wear a suit before and after the game, so this was one of the looks I would do.

This is that mohair jacket I mentioned. I found it at a value village.

This was taken with a klein bottle I got for a friend. The guy who makes them, Cliff Stoll, sends a bunch of photos of the bottle and him as he goes through the process which is really cute, so I thought I'd send him one back =3

TELL ME I couldn't have been the live action Milo Thatch. TELL ME. I fucking dare you.

My partner and I went down to portland and we went to this sick pan-asian vegan restaurant.

This is one of the more common outfits I would wear to shows. The beret and the jacket especially were staples.

Before I started transitioning I got this skirt from a friend, which would be a bit of a crutch of a skirt for the next little while. It sadly doesn't really fit anymore...

CW: Blood. I played a show in a garage with my new band in which I decided, because why not, to gash open my chest with my keys.