All of the quirks and mannerisms that our society flags as “kinda queer” are abundant in our music scene. There are boys with long hair wearing makeup, and girls with short hair that aren’t wearing makeup. We’ve got pants that don’t fit right according to sitcom standards, our shoelaces are bright, and we just don’t give a shit.

This is our time to be comfortable, because tomorrow, we’ll be back in some institution of sorts, where in spite of ourselves, we will give a shit that we’re the minority, and we’ll either sit with our spines curved inward, and our eyes low, or we’ll overcorrect, and throw our shoulders back, staring down anyone with a GAP denim jacket who might accidentally cast an offhand glance at our lip ring for a little too long.

I have to interject now, after reading back on my first couple of paragraphs, I realize that I’m making an over-generalization of our scene. (and I also haven’t indicated that I am at some point planning on making a point) A good half of the crowd at the shows don’t visibly deviate from your average target consumer in the 15-26 age group. There is, however, an assumption made about them due simply to their presence at the show alongside the aforementioned “kinda queer” lookin people, and that is that they are open-minded.

This is not to say that our little “rock”? “punk”? (do we still use these terms?) shows are a utopia of any sort. We can tend to be hypocritical, and closed-minded toward large coffee chains and certain belly-button exposing pop idols in the same way that many of their patrons/fans may be condescending of our little whoop-de-doo. To finally make a point, gay people don’t stand out amongst the crowd at our shows. Since we’re not all on the floor making out, it’s hard to tell who would prefer kissing who, and even if we did know, I’m not sure we’d really care.

*shawn
*the Matches