Rude boy
Today: Rax King, author of the essay collections Tacky and the recently published Sloppy.
Issue No. 540
The want to fight squad
Rax King
The want to fight squad
by Rax King
Gentlemen, take note: a guy who’s medium-old and out of shape looks great in a fitted polo tucked into tight jeans. Neither article of clothing ought to be uncomfortably snug, but they must indicate a certain insouciant pride in the wearer’s gut, which will burst from the waistband of his jeans with chutzpah. The key to the look is to treat the belly like a guest of honor rather than an unwelcome one. After all, it’s a working man’s gut, is it not? Don’t you have the right to fill it with beer and sandwiches after a day of hard manual labor, to emphasize its presence with a pair of braces rather than trying to hide it under a shame hoodie?
In related news, early British punk legends Cock Sparrer appeared at the Brooklyn Paramount recently, and they put together one hell of a send-off for what they say will likely be their last New York shows. Prankish Québécois punks Béton Armé opened, along with demonic hardcore behemoths Sheer Terror and the New York-based quintet Disket. The venue overflowed with aging punks, all soigné in their skinhead finest: Levi’s jeans that appeared not so much skinny as tattooed on, and Doc Martens polished to a high gloss. The venue had a coat check, but most of the men opted to keep their leather jackets, the better to show off patches for crews I assumed to be long defunct. Skull tattoos were so sun-faded as to be all but inscrutable. Jewel-toned polos and checkered button-downs in jaunty colors abounded, in a palette reminiscent of a party scene from Gone with the Wind—except in this case the men were the bright and colorful ones, preening exclusively and heterosexually for each other.
The venue’s deep blue-and-red lights gave all those skinheads’ skulls the merry, bauble-like appearance of Christmas ornaments. I’ve never seen so many men in their fifties embracing with that kind of gusto—they all gave each other unselfconscious heroes’ welcomes, with nary a “no homo” in sight. The mood was jolly and collegial, somewhere between an unusually fun union meeting and an unusually masculine pageant. (Not that kind of skinhead, to address the elephant in the room. These guys mostly looked like they’d spent the nineties beating up Nazi punks, not celebrating them.)
My husband Sean and I had a good vantage point on all the peacocking from our post at the front of the room, where I park for all standing-room-only shows because it’s the only way I can see. We arrived within minutes of the doors’ opening and negotiated our way to the barricades that separated stage from audience. One guy in our vicinity stood out the moment I became aware of him. For one thing, he was wearing a red-and-white-checked Ben Sherman button-down that Sean also owns, though my husband has never cared to replace the missing buttons on his and this guy’s was sealed tight up to the throat. He also kept appearing with different mixed drinks, first a clear one, then a brown one, and finally a PBR tallboy which he would eventually huck at the stage in a moment of dumb skinhead exuberance. He had a habit of grabbing his much younger girlfriend in a sort of romantic headlock and slopping kisses onto her mouth.
As the crew set up for Sheer Terror after a high-octane set from Béton Armé, the guy turned his attention to Sean. “You a Sheer Terror fan?” he asked, his voice full of weird, jovial menace.
Keep us breathing fire!
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