JULY 13th, 1990
She was cool, arresting, and very Russian, part of that new crop that washed up on our freedom-laced shores once the Berlin Wall had fallen: Willowy, magnetic, and pale—-with dark hair and shining blue eyes—-she sported a black dress punctuated with a pair of red Doc Martens.
“My name is Masha,” she said, lighting a smoke and shooting me a shy smile. “Are you going to the show?”
Of course I was going to the show. It was Mudhoney, after all, and while perhaps late to the party, my cassette copy of Superfuzz Bigmuff played in constant rotation on my boombox, along with Nirvana’s Bleach, Soundgarden’s Louder than Love, and two different recordings of the Screaming Trees.
While I had grown up a proper classic rock and roller, the new music percolating in my corner of the globe had me absolutely gaga, a perfect synthesis of the heavy blues riffs that I knew so well, along with the punk rock coursing through my adolescent veins. It was all a bit too much to take in, but once I realized I was sitting at ground zero of a musical revolution, I dove deep, and that meant seeing as many shows as possible during the summer and fall of 1990, back in Olympia, my hometown.
Ken and I had arrived downtown pretty early that day. After all, there wasn’t much else to do. We met at Mario’s, the smoke shop/coffeehouse/pinball arcade/freak safe space where so many of the punkish crowd huddled at the time, before wandering into Sylvester Park, where we blasted a covert bowl underneath the cover of the gazebo.
After that we wandered the chilled-out streets of the capital, baked off our asses. The incense wafts and chime tone of Radiance—a new age hippy shop—drew us through its doors, and before I knew it I’d spent fifteen bucks on a leather necklace containing a crystal, which the salesclerk guaranteed would bring “good energy” my way.
I believed her, and when, just an hour later, the leggy form of Masha was staring into my eyes, I thought the crusty clerk may be onto something. After all, Masha looked the part of the perfect girlfriend I had spent so many hours conjuring in private, back when I was dumb enough to believe that real love could be forced through discipline and hard searching, rather than utter chance and pheromones that swept you away with the power of a flash flood.
Masha had a car as cool she was—a black Dodge Dart—and after a bit more weed she offered to take Ken and me to the show, which was taking place at the Chambers Grange, an old farmer’s meeting hall that could be rented out for private parties, or all-ages punk rock shows, as happened in Oly.
The Grange was a wooden building that must have been close to a hundred years old and when we rolled up, scores of kids were already mustering out front, smoking ciggies and sneaking drinks and bowls and soaking in the glory that is a PNW summer night, where daylight doesn’t seep away until about ten PM.
Masha had invited a couple of other downtown kids to pack into her Dart, and once we arrived I shed my Mexican poncho (a gift from my brother) along with the crystal necklace, knowing ahead of time that it would be a liability in the mosh pit. I threw them in the passenger seat where I had ridden, as at least in my mind she had favored me. Surely I’d be back to claim my goods? By her smoldering looks and touches to my arm, it looked like this one was in the bag.
I was pretty new to shows at the time, having spent my local high school years as a drama geek, rather than spelunking the deep punk scene that Oly had to offer throughout the 80’s. I had friends who went to shows regularly at all-ages venues such as the Tropicana, but it was only now that I’d gotten hip to the business, and even though I was tardy, I knew a number of people milling throughout the crowd: Chuck, J, a few of the downtown kids, and my friends Tina and Suzy, who I often partied with in the Ash apartments next door to the Evergreen State College.
Tina has a massive gallon jug of MacNaughton’s Canadian whisky, and gave me a fat pull right away. Beat Happening, the low-fi, super-hip local trio whose ringleader—Calvin Johnson—had organized this whole gig, opened the show. I’ll admit to spending most of their set outside, watching the July sun bleed into the clouds, as I was no punk rock OG and had yet to come to appreciate their brilliance. I was still young and very conventional.
Which meant that I was following Masha, who hadn’t exchanged a glance with me since we’d arrived. In fact, she was nowhere to be found, until, two songs into Girl Trouble’s set, I saw her holding hands with a rugged, long-haired cat who was as beautiful as she was. I knew at once that my cropped head and baby face could never compete, so I sulked out of the grange while the raw garage band of my birth town (Tacoma), raged and twanged on.
Next up was Billy Childish and Thee Headcoats, whose 60’s riffs and spoken word vibe was something like I’d never seen before, completely bewildering, but kind of cool, like a foreign dish that you’re not so sure about, but calls to mind deep comfort food.
The room grew in bodies and sweat and I escaped again, only to find more people outside than inside. I even ran into a couple of high school classmates of the jock-o, backward baseball hat variety that had never been to such a show; it seemed these gigs were drawing deeper than that regular set.
I saw J. He smoked me out with Chuck. Then Tina came cruising in with half the whiskey bottle still intact. I staggered into the field in back with her and felt fiery liquor light up my guts. She kissed me and I kissed her back, hard. Then Suzy sidled up next to me, glugged from the bottle, and macked on me even deeper before feeding me more booze. Here I was, stumbling in the grass behind Chamber’s Grange with a fuck off bottle of whiskey and two girls on my arms. They weren’t beauties, but hey, they were alright, and in the process, ethereal Masha suddenly evaporated from my thoughts.
Mudhoney poured forth the rage and humor that night, whipping the room into a froth of sweat and purpose. Even when the power went out Mark Arm made jokes out loud, but the show went on, and cut this idea of local punk rock power into my bones, so much that I’d see them at least eight times more over the coming years.
It was so sweet and natural that we took it for granted, that we just thought things would continue on like that: massive wattage, all ages parties, parking lot whiskies, and make-out sessions under the relentless northern sky.
Masha slipped away with her picture-perfect grunge boy before Mudhoney finished, along with my poncho and hippy crystal necklace. I was too blissed out to notice, but later lamented the fact that I would never again take up that passenger’s seat.
But I also knew that something real had just transpired, something worth much more than my own vain and silly youthful quest to land the perfect girl: history. Rewinding my life, I would endure a thousand rejections to get to witness the music and community I was part of that night, just one more time. Romance comes and goes. Such overarching moments do not.
I don’t remember where I slept that night, other than that it was alone. I don’t think it really matters, though. Does it?