Every now and then our thoughts go back to our time in Ohio, where we lived out our early adulthood until our mother died on Thanksgiving day, 1984. This was back in the day when the gay community still knew what the word "twink" meant, because we were one. Luckily we fell in with a crowd of artistic punk-rockers in 1977, at a restaurant where we worked full-time. And they loved us so much they would take us out to the punk bars, in the Cleveland-Akron-Kent area. This was the only place to be at that time (sorry NYC). We were fifteen when we went to our first night club and was introduced to the scene. The next day we got a hair cut and threw away our seventies clothes. We were the talk of the town. Dancing and drinking to all hours, and one never showed up before eleven or midnight, and that, with classes in the morning.
We are a very social creature and hit it off with almost all the young men, women, musicians and, more importantly, the bartenders & bouncers. This is to say that we were in with the in crowd, fairly quickly. We won't mention any names right now; We are not a name dropper. But, indeed this leads us to the point of this gibberish: We all went by aliases, as was the fashion at the time.
We were known as Will Knott and we had two sisters: Shirlee Knott and Mae Bea Knott, friends of Lizard Boy & Spike Heel (both of whom had to drive to NYC to help with some set designs for the premier of a new television station called Music TV)....
These people and their chosen identities vanished when video, did indeed, kill the radio star by the fall of 1982 when the freshman class arrived in Kent, they loving the music without understanding the scene.
L' avant-garde est morte....
All of us moved on.
Sometimes we think about all of these insane, intelligent people that we knew then and the times that we had, the shows, art, drama and romance......
But mostly how we loved them.
We wonder where and how they are?
Sure, we know where Paul Bearer is, but then again, so do you all, because he made good.
But the rest of them?
How do we find them?
We never even knew their names, nor they ours....
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| Plasma, JB's Down |
We are a very social creature and hit it off with almost all the young men, women, musicians and, more importantly, the bartenders & bouncers. This is to say that we were in with the in crowd, fairly quickly. We won't mention any names right now; We are not a name dropper. But, indeed this leads us to the point of this gibberish: We all went by aliases, as was the fashion at the time.
We were known as Will Knott and we had two sisters: Shirlee Knott and Mae Bea Knott, friends of Lizard Boy & Spike Heel (both of whom had to drive to NYC to help with some set designs for the premier of a new television station called Music TV)....
These people and their chosen identities vanished when video, did indeed, kill the radio star by the fall of 1982 when the freshman class arrived in Kent, they loving the music without understanding the scene.
L' avant-garde est morte....
All of us moved on.
Sometimes we think about all of these insane, intelligent people that we knew then and the times that we had, the shows, art, drama and romance......
But mostly how we loved them.
We wonder where and how they are?
Sure, we know where Paul Bearer is, but then again, so do you all, because he made good.
But the rest of them?
How do we find them?
We never even knew their names, nor they ours....
Cool. You made the most of those times.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Ann Arbor 1976-81.
I didn't know what a special space in time it was at the time, I was young & just thought: "how groovy is adulthood".
ReplyDeleteIt always seems that the most special times don't reveal themselves till years later.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story, though.
PS: A unix system administrator I worked with used to refer to the network administrators as "twinks."
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSadly, so many of my friends from that era died by the beginning of the next decade...
ReplyDeleteNone the less, had you and I known each other then, we would definitely have hit it off. And probably caused all sorts of trouble!
lx- Perhaps he meant twits? twink= Teenage White Into No Kink...
ReplyDeleteThombeau- Yes, I'm quite sure that more than a few of them had short lives, there were even a few deaths while I was still there. Even Patty Donahue who had a pretty clean lifestyle (at least for that crowd), left us young.
ReplyDeleteBirds of a feather...
Of course we would have hit it off and caused trouble! I'll bet we even knew some of the same people...
I must remember to tell the story about "The Real Akron Museum of Art" , sometime.
xoxox
He was from the Bay Area, so I'm sure he was speaking figuratively rather than literally as none of the network guys were teens.
ReplyDeletelx- Yes, I think I knew that. But like many words originating in the gay community, they get co-opted... And used, and the meaning becomes convoluted.... This is not to say that I, or anyone is angry, it is just that that particular word, as the intonation would imply in the straight world, would be: "That's the kind of girl that you marry"...
ReplyDeleteI, was not afforded the Luxury that so many take for granted & that you fought for...
(I am certain that you understand).
After all these years it has just become synonymous with a google search; And worse & much worse...
Even the word "Gay", Mr. Large Extra Entropy, either means that the universe revolves around an extraordinarily large canister of Aqua-Net, or perhaps a single, small, sour cherry.
xoxox
w
Beautiful. I will always define myself as a punk first and foremost, with zero apology! The most vital scene / subculture, and we're still feeling its reverberations. Ohio, huh? I was lucky enough to drink with Chrissie Hynde in London a few times back in the 90s. I bet you knew here back in the day?
ReplyDeletebitter- It was an amazing time....
ReplyDeleteI only met chrissie a couple of times, but I was friends with her brother back then.