Fauxgazi Faux Jour

I never saw Fugazi live. My fandom came late to the band. I found them only after I was involved in my first real band in the late 90s. But, then, I loved them hard. My bandmate friends and I listened to them often. We played them on any rare jukeboxes we were able to locate them on. We even considered a cover of Suggestion, a wonderful song that deserves covering.

Tonight, more than 10 years after they disbanded, my partner and I attended our first live showing of Fugazi songs. He has seen Fugazi a few times, and, while we both adore the band, we were on the fence whether we should walk the few blocks up to see this touring band covering Fugazi songs: Fauxgazi.

We decide to go. Being old, it turned out that we arrived early by showing up at the show time. We moved down the street to our local bar for a couple drinks, and returned back in time to see Fauxgazi setting up (yes: someone resembled Ian, and someone else resembled Guy).

20-some others were in the bar as we settled in. About 12 of those of were in or with the opening band we sadly somehow missed on our hiatus. Among these was a very demonstrative couple: a floppy-haired tall dude who we learned was the drummer, and a clearly chemically impaired (but very upbeat) highly fem woman in high heeled boots, ripped tights, and lots of makeup painting her Debbie Harry-esque face. She could have been easily mistaken for me from a rough description of hair length, build, and coloring. They were hard to not notice before the show started. They circled the room, sitting in various booths, then moving on to another after yelling at each other. She stumbled and spun, and smiled. The two of them made out on the open floor in front of the stage, her knees buckling as he held her tight around the waist and reached up her short black skirt. Her eyes were glazed long before and long after these kisses.

“Ian” from the band came over to kindly introduce himself, and to let us know that the microphone set up on the floor was for anyone to use. We asked “Ian” how the tour was going, and talked about appreciating both that they were in town, and the guitarist’s Hiwatt amp. "Ian" was lovely, and happy to share what he knew. The tour was short, but going well. He let us know that the band members were all in different touring bands, but they aligned around love for Fugazi. Also, he said that Ian MacKaye even gave his blessing to Fauxgazi when they received high praise for performing Repeater at a Halloween show last year and contacted him to ask if he would not disprove of them going on the road to play Fugazi songs. The amp was the guitarist’s, with a “special story” attached to it that we never learned.

The show started, and Fauxgazi played Fugazi. They sounded great. Throughout the set, though, the stumbly woman made her presence known on the dance floor. She danced. She took to the mic. She clung to her headbanging not-drunk boyfriend, who moved her around to the front of him, holding her around the waist as he flailed her about. She laughed during this, collapsing to the floor when the songs ended and he released his grip. Once after this, her boyfriend put his foot on her slowly rising buttocks and pushed her forward as she tried to stand, causing her to crumple to the cement face first. She stood up after this, patted her hair, looked around, and quickly ran to her boyfriend’s side, oblivious. Her head nodded downward as she kissed him ardently. She moved to the front of the audience to shimmy around the mic stand before dancing back to hold on to her boyfriend, and to have him slam her around again.

At one point, "Ian," the bassist, jumped off the stage to play on the floor. After having his head rubbed insistently by the dancing woman, he backed up to another female in the crowd. Over his shoulder, he called to her, and instructed her on how to reach around his arm and play the bass line. On his prodding, she offered her left hand to the neck, and followed his lead. Quickly, she was playing his part. Pretty great. He cheered her on as the dancing woman was, again, back in her boyfriend’s arms. He whipped her limp head side to side, her tight black shirt pulled up to bare more of her midriff, her feet at times off the floor. She weaved her way back to the open mic, purring slurred complements to the band as she writhed clumsily about the stand. A tentative (but directed) stripper joke was given from the stage. The drummer, clearly frustrated with the woman, took to his mic to ask her name. His brewing anger and wit were diffused by others’ intentional decision to start a new song. A couple of the few audience members in the club (male) gave the woman the stern stink eye as she clung to her boyfriend in the pit. The room had found her deserving of derision, and had corroborated this from many points.

I had moved back from the dance floor a few times at this point. What the fuck? Where was security? What was protocol here? Why is this couple not getting booted? What the fuck? My partner attended a metal show at this club last night, but this was my first time seeing a show here. I didn’t know the culture. I didn’t want to offend the culture. I also didn’t want to keep having to watching this, or to have this continue. I get roughness and consent. I also get drunk fun. But this woman was clearly far too impaired to give consent. And she was being treated super roughly by the person who she went to for safety, to the point that he was flailing her about and kicking her to the ground when she was trying to stand. As a result, she was now being treated disrespectfully by others.

I didn’t go to Fugazi shows (and many other punk or metal shows in Chicago) when I was younger, in part, because I worried for how women would be treated. Mind you, I know Fugazi looked out for their audiences. It was one of the reasons I loved them. But still.

It should be noted that I was no shrinking violet. I played guitar for a punk band. I attended all of the rock and punk shows I could find in my small college town, and I had a small crew of friends that I knew I would go to the mat for at a moment’s notice if they were being messed with (and a wider group of associates who I would have done the same for). But it was different with some of the bigger bands I loved. I knew mosh pits and meathead dudes, and I knew that, for many shows, they were mainstays. Even if you tried to stay far to the side or to the back, out of the pit, odds were that some guy would decide to enlarge his (it was always “his”) highly self-involved path around the room to smash into me (I’m looking at you, Valient Thorr douche at Reggie’s last December). I would always push back if I could, of course. Unincited, I once shoulder-checked Jello Biafria at a show (it was Jello Biafra). Roughhousing is part of this scene. But still. Consent matters here. If there's not consent, roughhousing is aggression. And consent is not implied by entering the space where some choose to roughhouse.

I never wanted to pay to be in a space where I was not able to just focus on the action. I never wanted to pay to be in a space where those who were able to focus on the action were able to impose roughhousing on others, to treat others with self-centered dickishness. And, overall, I never wanted to be in a space where aggression against any group, against anyone, was normalized. These things were common in some of these show spaces. Not all, but some. And I didn’t want to be part of it.

So I often didn’t go.

Years ago, in GirlZone's final GrrrlFest shows and from time to time in playing with The Violents, we enforced female-only mosh pits. We called out audience members (read: males) from the stage who harassed or interfered with others' (read: females') ability to have a good time. We acknowledged some of the misogynistic norms held by audiences at live shows, and we made a point to disrupt them whenever we could.

Tonight, in a room with eight real audience members, this did not happen. Instead, a super drunk and messed up woman was being thrown around the floor by her partner and insulted by others, and nobody did anything but continue to pile it on her. She was sloppy, condoning, and overtly sexual, so the insults and aggression she received were brushed away perhaps even more quickly deemed justified.

I told the bartender I was very concerned about her. “Yeah,” she said. “She was on something. Then she had two Long Islands – one from the other bar. Now she’s totally messed up.” I asked if the bar could do something, since she was clearly being thrown around and seemed unconcerned but highly impaired. “We’ve cut her off.” Shortly after, a security guard who bonded with me earlier over lyrics asked if I was ok after I stepped back from the audience. I said I wasn’t, as I didn’t like seeing how this woman was being treated. The security guard let me know she was ok because with her drummer boyfriend. “I see she’s with him and that she doesn’t seem to mind it,” I said, “But she’s too messed up to give consent. He needs to stop doing this to her.”  Bad relationships are bad relationships. Ideally they don't happen at all, but I said that I would hope that someone would intervene to not condone this treatment in public. He talked to the drummer. Shortly after, the woman laid down on the floor. She unzipped her boots and pushed herself to the edge of the room, throwing the boots into a booth one by one. She stood up quickly and circled the room, then slumped over into a chair. Her boyfriend appeared next to her a while later. Soon after, she was gone.

Her boyfriend reappeared about 10 minutes later to listen to the band.

I spoke to the Fauxgazi drummer after the show. After our discussion, he agreed that it was best that he didn’t call out the woman by name. Still, I am having a hard time processing the following things: the boyfriends’ aggressive treatment of the woman. The ability of everyone in the room to dismiss the aggressive treatment against the woman because she was with a boyfriend. The ability of everyone in the room to dismiss the aggressive treatment because the woman was sloppy drunk. The privilege of the opening band's dick drummer in being allow to treat another person violently with that much impunity – to be able to treat a woman violently with that much impunity. The fact that, in the end, social scorn and ridicule was directed only toward this woman. By the end of the night, this woman who was repeatedly being thrown around was made fun of from the stage and jeered at by those around her. She was wasted and boisterous and dancing suggestively. Apparently, this meant she was asking for it.

I am coming off a week with a lot of thought given to structural inequalities, to publish or perish, to our race-to-the-bottom momentum and to how, as a critical scholar, I am lucky to not feel the need to be popular. I had hoped that a little faux Fugazi would be a welcome release.  Instead, it’s a pissy reminder of what I already know too well. A reminder of how easily we bond over others' weaknesses. A reminder of how females' overt sexuality and perceived damage renders them culpable and deserving of violence, of othering, of dehumanization. A reminder of how injustice happens and how we support each other in not getting involved.

I talked with my partner about the situation on the walk home. Would I have been as upset if the drummer was doing this to a guy, not to a female? Yes. If one had so much more power than the other both physically (with only one consistently aggressing the other) and mentally (with only one intentional and not fked up), as was the case here, yes. I would have definitely been as upset if some brah was aggressing and humiliating his super-messed up brah friend/partner who appeared to trust and rely on him. Nobody deserves that.  But I have a feeling I wouldn't have had to get upset, as others would have intervened. The theoretical arrangement is more difficult to steer clear of as another "domestic issue" or to pass off as another case of a "dumb deserving blonde fem slut." Guy-on-guy intimate aggression is just harder to normalize and, thus, to condone and look away from. As a result, I am guessing the aggression would have been seen as a problem here, not the person aggressed.

--> I interviewed Ian McKaye once. He was a lovely and generous human being. I would like to think that the real Ian would have responded differently to the action in the room tonight. More importantly, I would like to think that the tenor of the room would have been far less accepting of this crap at a real Fugazi show. I’d like to think that a wasted and highly fem woman being knocked around would not have been collectively understood to be deserving of ridicule and violence, that I wouldn't have felt my safety and validity in the space somehow feebly guarded by my sobriety, by my butch black skullcap, baggy clothes, and Chuck Taylors, by my invisibility. But I am left to seriously doubt it.

 

She does nothing to deserve it
He only wants to observe it
We sit back like they taught us
We keep quiet like they taught us
He just wants to prove it
She does nothing to remove it
We don't want anyone to mind us
So we play the roles that they assigned us
She does nothing to conceal it
He touches her 'cause he wants to feel it
We blame her for being there
But we are all guilty
-Fugazi, Suggestion