Aurora Magazine 2017

Macy Dorman A Punk Oasis

He always sang on the night of his last show he wanted to be singing so loud that hisheart exploded. It was lyric that I wanted inked on my arms one day. I was situated in the hot pole barn in backwoods Indiana between a girl who was having a pretty good acid trip, kissing my shoulder, and a guy who could have been my dad’s age, crying and holding my hand with a toothy smile while he shouted every other word coming from the stage. I was in love with the thick air. It was the last day of Plan-It- X fest and the last show. The last show Ramshackle Glory would ever be performing together at the last PIX fest there would ever be. It would be the last night Pat would ever sing on a stage. The last few years of my life had been supplied with a soundtrack that was just his songs. But he needed out of this scene. So we waited for the end, all of us in that barn. The thing about the folk punk scene is that we love communal living and stealing too much to be any good at money. We knew that it would end one day, but it was kept hush until the last day. The yellow shirt venue workers broke the news. The studio, the festival, it would be a magical and extinct thing soon. It had given rise to more music and coaxed out the voices of scared little queers on the run. This place was supposed to be our home, a real way to live and be with each other. I was drunk with amputees, travelers, star children, and people like me for the first time in my whole life. To me this was never just a party place to listen to off-key music. In my room, locked in a trailer in backwoods Indiana, the voices of song by these anarchist hippie punks made a warm soundtrack to waiting for this. PIX was a home that I hadn’t ever felt before. It wasn’t being quiet and good in a fucked up idea of pastoral rural heteronormativity anymore. It was: making buttons out of old pogs, getting tarot cards read in exchange for a smiles and secrets, coming clean by being dirty kids who didn’t give a shit about acting the right way.

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