Crystal Passion Ch. 11

As soon as the demonstrators spotted us they began yelling and shouting in our direction. There could be no doubt that we were the infamous coven of Godless English Lesbian Punk Rockers that they imagined us to be. In any setting, there was no way a group of more than a dozen young women could blend into the background especially given our relatively eccentric dress. And in South Carolina, there was the added cause for prejudice in that two of us were black and one Japanese. And that we were all either exclusively lesbian or openly bisexual. But nowhere before had I heard the kind of bizarre and oddly archaic taunts thrown at us. Words like "Dykes", "Atheists" and "Jezebels" would have been considered terms of praise at the Sisterhood Festival. Expressions like "Whores", "Blasphemers" and "Satanists" were equally irrelevant insults. And there was little potency in less monosyllabic taunts such as "May God Forgive Your Sins!", "God Hates Lesbians!" and "Thou Hast Committed an Abomination and Art Cursed in the Eyes of the Lord!"

The actual words yelled at us was irrelevant. It was obvious that by accident rather than design we were now the object of intense hatred for this small gathering of protestors. And nobody was more upset about this than Crystal. Throughout her whole life she'd endeavoured only to understand and love other people.

Actually getting into the Penitence wasn't as simple as we'd hoped. First of all we had to locate the artists' entrance at the side of the venue. It was out of sight of those waiting to see us perform but well within sight and earshot of the demonstrators. After many repeated attempts to attract attention by ringing the doorbell and increasingly panicked by the emboldened yells from across the road, we hammered on the stage door and yelled as loud as we could to try and get attention.

"Yeah. Yeah," said Skull as he opened the side door with bleary red eyes and the hair on one side of his head visibly flattened. "I heard you guys the first time."

"Just fucking let us in," said Judy Dildo, who was in no mood for chitchat. "Just get us away from the fucking Bible Bashers before they lynch us."

"OK! OK" said Skull who stood on one side of the door while we filed past him into the club's relative safety. He glanced across the road at the small gathering who on noticing him launched into cries of "Shame on You!" and "Shut Down the Penitence!" As he closed the doors behind him and padlocked the security bar into place, he was chuckling to himself. "Well done, guys!" he said. "You chicks have got yourself the best fucking welcome committee you could hope for."

"Some fucking welcome!" exclaimed Jacquie.

"Even better," said Skull with a huge grin as he regarded Jane and Jacquie for the first time. "Hey. Wow! Not just fucking nudist dykes, you've got nig...African American chicks in the group too. The more ruckus caused by them Fundies, the more tickets we sell for the gig. I reckon we'll do good business tonight. I even asked Golly to do an extra shift at the bar."

At this stage, it was usually Crystal who'd pay attention to practical matters such as locating the dressing room and stage, but she just wasn't in a fit state to do that. Her face was etched in tears and her mouth was gasping like a freshly hooked fish. She was more upset by the hostile reception outside than anyone else. Clearly, things had got too much for her.

While Andrea and Philippa tried comforting Crystal, it was up to Judy to get things organised.

"Whatever, Skull," she said. "Just show us where we do the sound check."

"Sound check?" said Skull. "Oh yeah, of course. You're real pros, ain'tcha? And I don't mean that in the vulgar sense either, girls. What I mean is that you've got a professional attitude..."

"And we need to see the dressing room, too," said Olivia.

"Dressing room?" said Skull. "You serious? I s'pose you must be if you're gonna change out of your dresses. I got a room at the back you could use but it ain't got no make-up mirrors or any of that shit. In fact, I dunno if there's even space to get all of you in there at one time..."

"Shall we just see what's on offer, Skull?" said Judy who like me was already seeing her already low expectations of the facilities offered by the Penitence drop yet further. "We'll just make do with whatever you've got."

I can't claim that our gig at the Penitence was one of the Crystal Passion band's finest. From my point of view, at least, it was one that in different circumstances I'd much prefer to be able to forget. Crystal was still very unhappy during the rehearsals and into the concert itself. She was hardly able to restrain her tears and it was a great effort for her to stand on stage and sing and play the guitar. It was almost as if she'd decided to simply go through the motions: something I could never accuse her of before. If anything characterised Crystal Passion as a musician it was that she put her heart and soul into every performance. When you saw her on stage, you were witnessing someone who'd somehow bypassed the limitations of communication and was literally speaking from deep inside her very being.

Not tonight, however. This was Judy Dildo's gig and, given the circumstances, nobody was going to object to this at all.

Was this the way it would be from now on? I wasn't at ease even during the sound check where only Crystal took off her clothes (to Skull's obvious delight). Until that night, we'd never played our music so fast, so furious and so ferociously. The songs, the lyrics and the melodies were all Crystal's. She'd composed them and she retained authorial copyright. But on this gig the electric guitar was pushed right to the front and played louder and faster and more forcefully than it had ever been before. Tomiko mixed the percussion, the drums, the bass and even my keyboards to emphasise the hardness of the beats and to pump up the lower register as a counterweight to the energy and propulsion of Judy's electric guitar. The mid-range represented by Andrea, Philippa, Thelma and the Harlot could barely be heard at all except as an accompaniment to the lower and higher registers. And Crystal was almost inaudible. Her acoustic guitar was overshadowed by Judy's electric guitar and her vocals were mostly heard only in harmony with Judy Dildo, Thelma and the Harlot. On this occasion, it was Judy's abrasive singing voice which was most prominent.

So, on this gig at least, I was now the keyboard player in a Rock & Roll Band. This was something that my sister and I, not to mention Jane and Jacquie, had sworn never to do when we first met Crystal. This wasn't the music I wanted to play. But Judy Dildo was well in her element. She was effectively the band's leader, overshadowing everyone including Crystal.

And bad though it had been for me in the rehearsal where, with Crystal's tacit approval, Judy encouraged us to rock like an all-girl Metallica or Napalm Death, it was much worse at the actual gig. I'd never been more grateful for the lines of coke and sulphate that Judy laid on for us all before we hit the stage. That, with the Tijuana shit and the Carolina Bourbon shots that Skull so thoughtfully supplied, got us into something that approximated to the right mood for the evening ahead. But this was a gig where Andrea and Philippa fought to get as far into the already crowded rear of the stage where Olivia, Jane, Jacquie and I were playing.

It was at the front of the stage where the action was taking place. Thelma and the Harlot had joined in the spirit urged on by Skull's expectations (and those of Conservative America and its Syndicated Media) to follow the example usually set only by Crystal and, less regularly, Judy Dildo. And that, of course, was to bare their flesh. Only the Harlot bared as much as Crystal. For the first time she appeared on stage totally nude and somehow seemed much more naked, in a raw and physical sense, than Crystal had ever done. Her shaved crotch, nipple rings and tattoos promised with great frankness exactly what the Harlot had to offer any of her lovers, which was many times more than what anyone in the audience was ever likely to have experienced before. The Harlot wasn't the only one onstage nudist. Thelma flaunted all but her neatly trimmed crotch, which was obscured by a flimsy bikini bottom. Judy Dildo had forsaken even the black nipple plasters that was normally her only pretence of modesty given that her vagina was obscured by the much more obscene and fully erect representation of male genitalia after which she was named and which was strapped on to her crotch.

I can only imagine what the almost exclusively male audience made of the huge black plastic dildo Judy flaunted and which she thrust towards the rowdy young men to the percussive rhythm supplied by Jane and Jacquie and massively pumped up by a shadowy Tomiko in the sound booth (who didn't need to take any of her clothes off to arouse the libidos of at least a subsection of the male audience).

In the sense that we earned an encore and that the audience were obviously excited and enthralled by the Crystal Passion band, this gig might be pronounced a success. But it was obvious to most of us that this hadn't been Crystal's show at all. And this was proven by how she burst into tears as soon as we'd finished and were out of sight of our fans. Only Judy Dildo, Thelma and the Harlot seemed to have enjoyed the gig, perhaps because this was the concert where they were most in charge.

"That was fucking great, girls!" said Skull who came to see us backstage and was clearly disappointed that the lead singers had managed to get dressed before he made his presence known. "I can't fucking wait till Friday's gig. We should have double the crowd. We'll either have to cram them in like sardines or turn 'em away."

Only Judy Dildo chatted to Skull while the rest of us gathered our gear together, with Bertha and Jenny Alpha as fast and efficient as ever. Olivia and Philippa shared the duty of selling copies of our CDs to the audience as they filed out. Not surprisingly, the record that sold the most copies was Passing Passion: the only record sleeve to feature Crystal in the nude. I couldn't help wondering how disappointed our audience would be when they came to play the album (or even the wholly acoustic Triad) to find that it was about as unlike a Punk Rock album as you could imagine. They weren't to know that a couple of decades later, their purchases would now dramatically soar in value thanks to Polly Tarantella's efforts (and even more so, if they bought the then significantly less expensive vinyl edition).

"I just want to go to the airport now and fly home!" Andrea declared as we walked back to the Camper Van. "I've just about had enough of this tour."

"It's been one fucking humiliation after another," said Jacquie. "At least that perv Skull didn't try to get us all to strip off."

"It wasn't that bad," said Thelma. "You heard how they called for an encore. That was better than anything we got in Boston."

Crystal said nothing. She was weeping softly and walked along with her head facing the ground and her shoulders hunched. Judy also said nothing, but although she had a comforting arm around Crystal's shoulders it was clear that she wasn't upset. And this, as far as Polly Tarantella is concerned, is just one more piece of evidence of Judy's treachery and scheming. How dare Judy Dildo allow Crystal Passion to be so humiliated!

Crystal's misery for the evening didn't end just with the shame of being overshadowed by her lead guitarist (though only Polly is as upset by that as much as I was). When we were in sight of the Camper Van, we could now see our folly in having parked such a conspicuously psychedelic vehicle in Rock Hill's streets.

"Fuck!" exclaimed Penny Alpha. "It's a fucking write-off."

"I hope the insurance will cover this," said the more practical Olivia.

"More's the point," said Bertha who was weighed down by the heaviest equipment (mostly mine and Tomiko's). "How the fuck do we get back to the hotel?"

Thankfully, the Chevy had been totally untouched by whoever it had been who'd vandalised the Camper Van, but it had never been intended for use as a shuttle service to the hotel for the band and our equipment while Judy and Crystal hunted for a nearby phone booth to make the necessary calls to local garages to take care of the Volkswagen Camper Van, to Kai Pharrel to determine our liability and to car hire firms to get a replacement vehicle for our subsequent gigs. And at the time, of course, we had no idea how pointless this last concern would be.

Although I have my own ideas as to who smashed up the Volkswagen Camper Van and Polly Tarantella has no shortage of hypotheses, the culprits were never found and, to be honest, nobody expected they ever would be. But it was clear that those who'd attacked the van weren't just opportunist car wreckers. The tyres had been slashed, the windows smashed and the doors prised open. That was sort of what you'd expect. What self-respecting vandal would leave such obvious targets untouched? There was little inside the van of any value, but what there was had been knifed open, pulled apart and strewn across the parking lot.

But the way the vandals distinguished themselves (although it could never be used as evidence in a court of law) was by the nature of the graffiti sprayed over the psychedelic celebrations of the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and Spirit.

'Rock Hill Hates Dykes'.

'Cristal Sucks Dick'.

'Jesus Dont Forgive Your Sins'.

'Cristal, Whore of Punk'.

'Go Home Punk Dikes'.

Crystal sniffed as she brushed aside a tear from the corner of her eye. "They really don't like me, do they?" she said.

"It's not you they don't like," I said. "It's what you represent."

"It comes to exactly the same thing, believe you me."