Basically a massive whinge

I just had an AWESOME TIME reading lots of blogs I haven't read in ages (Sof Jacques Faith Allie Brosh bit of Angry Greek think that's it) and it made me realise I haven't written in even longer, so HELLO. This shouldn't be very long, partly because I am recovering from a hypo and may sound a bit insane at points because of this, and partly because I get v. limited internet time these days what with not having it in my house and I am meant to be sorting out All The Bills for next year. But I can't right now because I am not fully lucid.

Basically my life recently has been mostly crap with moments of awesomeness. I moved house, and tidied and cleaned everything with only two of my housemates, and am the only person in my current house so have to do lots of things there too. I have yet to unpack hardly anything and the house is a tip because of this. I have to organise getting a first attempt resit for my Romantics exam. My mouse Annie died yesterday. Also on the same day the previous tenants cancelled Virgin so now I only have Freeview to while away my breaks with. Also I on that day I got a letter through the door asking me if I fancied a fuck and leaving a boy's name and number. I don't even know what to do about this - it's totally inappropriate and intrusive and it makes me feel really uncomfortable but it's likely that it was written by someone else so if I call the number and have a go that's like a win for the author, and even if it was written by "Tim" getting attention for it was probably the aim; since it's technically soliciting I could contact the local police but whenever I contact them (twice so far) it's always about sexual intimidation and I know this is irrational but I'm worried that if I do it for stuff that doesn't bother me as much as men following me in cars or men following right behind me up a back street with their hands in their pants then the police might start thinking I'm oversensitive and stop taking me seriously? Also, what if they could, like, be focussing on an actual rape case or something, but then I go along and am like 'I got this message which is probably a joke but I do not find it funny' and everyone's like HUMOURLESS FEMINIST and I obstruct worse things being sorted out? Not that rape really gets 'sorted out' usually but you know what I mean. Also yesterday I got a call from DEBT COLLECTORS and now I have c. 28 hours to pay a £300 bill left outstanding at our old house; Ryan and Sof can come up with their shares, I will have to contact my father for mine which is stressful but I can do it, and Tom is still on holiday (on holiday. At a time like this?! Moving time? I am cross about this and want to talk to him about it but want to do it face-to-face and can't do that until he comes back from holiday) and I tried calling his mum but have as yet had no response and argh. Debt collectors?! GOD. Then I also have to set up TV licence and internet and phone line and TV content and electricity and gas and water. And get a new mouse because they're social and it's cruel to have them by themselves unless it's necessary i.e. they are my old mouse Fran who bit the other mouse's balls off. Also I have therapy every week from which I always leave feeling better but is a lot of WORK and about which I am always apprehensive before I go in. Also I have to revise for two exams. Also I have to read as much as I can for the coming year, having done basically nothing for at least a fortnight. Also today I discovered I do not have enough money even to take a tenner out of my account.

I MEAN. I'm sorry to whine. But this is essentially my life now. Although I am obv not obliged to keep everyone up-to-date about everything. But still.

GOOD THINGS, HOWEVER: Sapphic Traffic was RAD, especially DJing fun and Sof birthday fun and seeing Faith and Ray-Ray was AWESOME, Corin is now here after only being away for a week and that's awesome and if she can get a job in Leeds she will stay for summer which would be lovely, Germany has made me interested in football?? so that's new and interesting, once my room is done it will be lovely, I like reading, I have three pretty comfy sofas in my living room, there are a few beers in the fridge for later on. There is also a lot of Friends on TV, which I appreciate, although accept that there will be less now that I have fewer channels. Julia Downes' EastEnders barbecue is coming up and that will be brilliant, I have decided. Also soon I will hopefully have money.

A sad story

Tonight I went to see Scream Club. After listening to a few too many Robots songs this afternoon I realised that they were actually quite annoying and I was possibly not in the right place to see them, and so Scream Club became all the more the focus of my evening.

I arrived at the O2 Academy and everyone there was a twatty fifteen-year-old girl bleating incessantly and taking MySpace pictures of herself and her friends. Throughout the evening I saw one woman I thought might be gay, barring Scream Club. This isn’t anything to hold against anyone, but it did make me feel a bit more alienated than I was expecting to be; I later found out from Corin that Scream Club had only sent an email saying they were going to be performing in Britain a few days ago, so I guess those who might have been interested probably weren’t aware.

The first band on were fucking dire. They were called 123 something (123 on? 123 go? Something shit like that) and were comprised of lazy fucking ‘pretty’ boys who seemed to believe that being male and wielding a guitar meant that they were worth something. They sounded like an awful mixture of Low Shoulder, Euphoria Audio and Fall Out Boy – they sang in American accents despite being British. The lead singer was only a performer in that he performed privileged male heteronormativity – he was constantly flirting with the audience in a really sickening, authoritative way, and most of the teenage girls were fucking loving it. I felt grossed out and left to rant at Corin for a bit down the phone.

Upon returning to the room I bought some Scream Club merch, feeling more than ever that they were to be my salvation from marginalisation and general extended fury. I spent £22 at their table on a DIY purse and a t-shirt. The t-shirt was an XL women’s size; I did not get it because it was the last size they had; I got it because it was the size that fitted me. I usually wear a size 14, although I can sometimes fit into a 12 depending on the generosity of the sizing. Size 14 is not fucking extra fucking large. I felt a bit grumpy about this but didn’t pursue it, still mostly excited for Scream Club to come on. It was at this point that a girl a couple of people along from me started repeatedly impersonating a rape alarm. I wanted to tell her to stop because it was triggering and trivialising an important issue but I felt like I'd just come across as lecturing and mental. I also hoped she'd just stop. She didn't.

And then Scream Club came to my rescue. They were wearing awesome stripy DIY suit-y things and looked superb. Cindy Wonderful said that Party Time, their opening track, was about everyone, ‘boys, girls, in-betweens’ getting together and having a good time. There was audience participation (SC: What time is it? Everyone: PARTY TIME!). Things were looking promising. But that was literally the queerest moment of the entire gig.

While they didn’t go so far as to remove all references to homosexual feeling from their lyrics, they cut out swear words and more explicit sexual references. This fucked me off because I thought Scream Club were all about sexual liberation, about being able to be explicit without being told you were being inappropriate or wrong. Turns out I was wrong. They still played And You Belong and Girl, You Look Expensive, but the queerness was only visible if you already knew they were queer; the vocals were not particularly clear and their between-song banter indicated nothing.

The worst twist of the knife came when they closed with Revolution. Cindy, who clearly thought she was being inspirational, was talking about how the song was about the importance of challenging injustice. The examples she used were sexism, racism and ablism. Of course I think these are laudable – but they missed out homophobic?! They didn’t even mention the elephant in the fucking room?! I mean, Jesus fucking God, the three –isms mentioned, whilst barely always fully acknowledged, are the most fucking famous ones, and also the ones which many an ignorant person can (to their minds) unproblematically tell themselves they are tastefully avoiding. They did not acknowledge the insidiousness of prejudice; all they did was tell a roomful of twats that ‘revolution’ was flapping around with fake guns and feeling self-satisfied. Of course you can’t hope to convey every complexity of discrimination in one set, but you could try a lot fucking harder, especially if you’re a band whose core fanbase is comprised of queers who felt they had a home in you. That’s what I felt – I thought they were going to relieve me from feeling misplaced, and represent, or even just acknowledge, my values and identity politics. But nothing of the sort happened – they seemed to be far more concerned with appealing to as wide a demographic as possible rather than staying true to the very principles that they purported to support. I was left feeling disenfranchised and really, really let down – particularly when these people eschew playing Sapphic Traffic, a genuinely positive queer night where the audience would really get something out of seeing them and where they could be fucking real and inspirational, in favour of playing with a bunch of penises with guitars and a band whose every output sounds pretty much the same as all the others. Or the fact that they wouldn’t play ST at all if Staffy didn’t pay far more than she was willing, or even able, to do.

Cindy said they were going to be at the merch table after their set to meet people. At first I left the room, feeling like there was nothing I wanted less than to meet those sell-outs, but then I thought that perhaps I could turn the situation into something positive and just try to encourage them to be a bit queerer, maybe. I imagined telling them about how I’d found out about them, that my girlfriend had told me on the first night we met about the bands she was into, about how they were one of the bands she said were her favourites, along with Team Dresch, and that I’d had no idea who these people were and it was really awesome to discover all this queer music I’d never known before, and how she’d put Internationale on the first mix CD she made for me and how we used to listen to Big Deal at her house all the time. I imagined saying this to them and then casually mentioning that I was surprised that their set wasn’t queerer; not berating them, but just sayin’. But after twenty minutes they hadn’t shown up and Robots were going to start their set in ten and there was no way I could even hope to express this to them once they’d started, and I also realised that I was probably far better at expressive myself in writing, so would be better placed to try to email them or something. I left and called Corin and ranted to her all the bus-ride home.

Now I’m in my house with my mother and dog and some wine. I feel a bit less upset, but still rankling. I have £22 worth of merchandise that I am going to have to seriously work to reclaim. I understand that being out is difficult, I do. But when you are, you make a promise, however tacitly, that you will defend your right to be. When you are an out queer artist, you lead your fans to believe that you will represent them, because you are in a far better position than they to do it. I am not naïve; I don’t think that being an out queer artist is going to give you financial security, or that financial gain doesn’t matter to the artist. But there is a fucking line between compromising and selling out, and tonight Scream Club crossed it.