Punks are very much in the beerlight, strewn about and making me feel at home in the ways I ought to, and utterly alien in other ways I ought to as well. This is a community, it has no obligation to be mine. It is a four-by-two car paved drive leading to a ramp into a room which has (almost) everything it ought to. It has the requisite signs in large tapestries, hung at fifteen feet, halfway to the ceiling, which would have been the ceiling of the second floor, summarily removed to give the cathedral the desired effect. It has the sleeveless door person, helmet of hair long in back and clipped to scruffy bangs in front; anarchist perfection. It has badges with further slogans, and patches with other slogans, and screened posters with instructions for overdose victims, how to dismantle capitalism, and the point at which transformative justice becomes transforming one’s hand into the weaponized fist of justice. As an old Red friend once told me: “there’s not much room for debate with someone who has told you they want to kill you.” It has the hanging sculptures, crafted out of scrap metal and pieces of instruments, lovingly disembodied and preserved, because the revolution will be beautiful as well, but it almost gilds the lily, as it would be hard for the place to be much more beautiful. The service tonight is queer, indigenous, and includes, I quote directly, songs about “both gender and pizza!” Preaching to the converted is encouraged, which is lucky, because the converted are in attendance. There is a zine library, wherein I meet the voice of the Cliterati, a friendly minister who comments only passingly on the degree to which I appear to be over—or under, depending—dressed. We share a hearty laugh at a cartoon dinosaur which appears to be eating a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., though he is resolute and appears likely to prevail. We compare notes on the best tactic for the violent and complete annihilation of the concept of “manhood,” and part ways relatively satisfied. A group of queer radical librarians dance their way into the library next, each clucking his tongue and tutting as he leafs through the (I thought quite lovingly) arranged archival material. There are secrets here, collected and collective knowledge which strikes me as likely to solve a variety of social ills, and, once again and not for the last time, to inspire whomever feels the impulse to decode them. I am just about to satisfy this divination hypothesis of mine by pulling three at random and laying them out on the tiny desk, seeing what sorts of theses emerge, when I see it. Up a few steps in the corner, behind the curve of what must be a spiral staircase above, is the door, and sprayed beside it in what could easily have been there since the slogan’s inception “DESTROY POWER NOT PEOPLE.” I understood this message immediately, it was an invitation, and I was about to enter the rabbit hole, but in this warren I was seeking no queen of hearts, I was after Penny.
Fittingly, my journey began with our own personal opium-smoking caterpillar, Dallow, who popped through the door and let me know “it’s huge in there!” before sliding past me and out of the library. The door locked strictly from the inside, so I had the plausible deniability of attempting to lock it and leave through another exit, but I wouldn’t need it. The cathedral would await my return, and I felt like magic as I stepped in and locked the door behind me.
I found myself in a shared room, all bronze wood and indirect lighting. As I got my bearings, I made out the dim sconces set into the wall, entirely likely gas at some point, and the expertly mismatched table lamps. There was no ornamentation in this room, which was rather shocking given those from which I had entered, just white walls with the same weathered-but-relacquered wood molding. To my left were giant parabola windows obscured from the outside by trees, and couches which looked well-slept in, pillows tucked away and blankets folded on the arms or backs. Directly in front of me was one option for ascending, because I just had it in my head that Penny was up high, a monk meditating on the service below, perhaps drawing energy from it or else just being glad that his ardor had continued. I am certain he would hate even the allusion of Abrahamic religion in my descriptions, but to me it is apt, and I have it on good authority he will never read these words anyway.
I was divining at this point, anyway, and needed to find a restroom so that I would be wholly undistracted when I encountered the man. So I would not use those first stairs, because I had decided they would not lead to a bathroom. To the right of the staircase was a slight step down to a kitchen which looked rather medieval, save for the modern refrigerator and range. But the counters and cookware were spectacularly weathered, and the earthenware jars which held dried goods almost had to have been produced on site. At the large sink, someone toiled away at dishes, moving quite deliberately as they washed for a bit, then switched to drying, wiping their hands on an apron between. Their presence drove home that I was an invader, neither invited nor otherwise solicited, save for a few words innocently spray-painted next to a door. But then again, Dallow had his journey, and I was damn well going to have mine. Take only memories, etc. Still, I suddenly had the urge to move a bit more stealthily, as I was standing a mere fifteen feet behind this person and neither wanted to startle them nor be thrown out. But their devotion to the task at hand was such that I had a moment to steal a glance at their footware just before I ducked up another staircase, and it was just as I had hoped, despite seeming generally out of place in the scene. Red high heels.
Along the stairs were hung portraits of Kropotkin done in crayon, too expertly to be done by a child or even an amateur, though no justification for the choice of medium was soon forthcoming. I thought the green beard a lovely choice, and his light blue eyes shone behind the thin-rimmed purple glasses. These must have been the stairs over the library, as I could hear the muted combination of music on the P.A.—Yes Sir, I Will (pt 2), an interesting but ultimately buoyant choice—and loud chatter over it. The stairs were creaky and reminded me of the urgency of my mission. At their summit was a long, maze-like hallway with an endless number of doors, uniform in style, which suggested they may have been original, or else were purchased in bulk, but set in walls of varying depth, which suggested those walls had certainly moved at different intervals. The play of the sconce light refracting down the hall was somewhat vertigo-inducing, and even if Penny was down there, I did not think I had the fortitude to open each of them in search. I considered shouting “external control, are you gonna let them get you?” and seeing what kind of response I might get, but the potential for a chorus of currently undesired answers was too high for this tactic. So, the hallway was not really an option. Luckily, when I turned around to see where the other corridor, much more uniform due to its being flanked by structural walls on either side, I found the bathroom, an oddly shaped cut-away with an abnormally large shower cubicle, loaded with every manner of homemade, as well as every price point of store-bought, hygiene and cosmetic product. I used the facilities, looked in the mirror, and vowed to find Penny.
I first worked my way down the hall, gently nudging each of the doors on the right, which seemed likely to be bedrooms, and the one which was somewhat ajar to begin with revealed as much. As for those on the left, I could hear sounds emanating from within which suggested music was being made, and I truly did not want to disrupt it, but my quarry was, after all, a musician. I hadn’t had to endure much in the way of awkwardness to this point, and so it seemed worth a bit if the man was inside. When I turned the first two handles, working my way back towards the staircase, they not only felt locked, but appeared to be painted shut from the outside. The third, however, gave, and I took a deep breath, cautiously opening it inward into purple light. I could tell from the sound of the door opening that it was a larger room, and as I closed the door behind me, I could see that the other doors were indeed painted shut. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all painted in a textured black, and the only illumination came from inverted black lights along the ceiling, and an orb in one corner, glowing antique white behind transparencies of mushroom cloud photographs. A chorus seemed to loop over and over, swelling in volume for one pass and then receding back for the next. I went over to the orb and upon closer inspection, the mushroom clouds had been manipulated to look like horrified faces, the billows of atomic smoke making up their human features. I listed to the music for a few minutes for further directions, but it seemed almost non-linguistic, so layered and blurred and polyvocal were the syllables being sung. The opposite wall was a curtain, but this all seemed like a dead end, and I began to feel stupid to think that Penny would be here and not pulling turnips at Dial House back in the England he had sought to disrupt. I turned and left, looking to retreat through another downward staircase I had not noticed, which in retrospect was because I left through a different door than that through which I had entered. I must have come out in the vertigo hallway, but it didn’t matter, because I was now descending a broader staircase with a single landing, and someone was descending it in front of me. I was sure I saw a sweep of long grey hair around the corner, but not sure enough to accelerate and overtake someone who might derail my at least returning to the cathedral undetected.
At the bottom of these stairs, I felt as though I was in a different house altogether, this one done up with all of the screened posters, cats, and plants I would have expected all along. There was a gentle bubbling from the hydroponic (or is it aquaponic?) setup, and this side felt generally more alive than the other, which was very much asleep or vacant. It occurred to me that I had not followed the sound of the person in front of me on the staircase, and they touched me on the shoulder from behind, another dangerously thin punk lacking sleeves and sporting stick-and-poke tattoos of varying qualities and ages. He asked if I was looking for something, and I told him someone, in fact, and he told me he knew most everyone and who was it, and I rather sheepishly told him it was Penny. He smiled and gestured to a metal door behind us, which led back through the kitchen, in which he said “thanks Jess” to the dishwasher, who did not respond and continued at their labor. He pointed me to the initial staircase, the one I had skipped past for no one particular reason, and suggested I “go all the way up,” emphasizing the “all.” He said to find him to lock the door when I went back to the show, and, oddly, shook my hand somewhat vigorously.
It was definitely nearly show time, and I didn’t see how I could in good conscience get to wherever “all” the way up was and make it down for our role in this event. I hesitated on the first step for a moment, and looked over my shoulder to see the punk nonchalantly watching my back, as if he had been waiting in case there was any reservation of my part. He gave me a sort of awkward salute this time, and himself turned to walk away, so I did the same, now armed with a “someone downstairs told me to find Penny at the top” in the increasingly unlikely instance of any obstruction. So I trudged up, thinking about what I would say, how I would avoid talking in slogans, muttering to myself, and watching my feet reach the first landing, turning 180 degrees, and then the next, where a series of buckets were catching slow drips from above. Upon closer inspection, the buckets seemed to be draining slowly, and the drips were emanating from tiny funnels in the ceiling, suggesting I had found myself in another art installation of some sort. As I gaped up and down, listening to the rhythm and tone of the drips, an older punk with long, stringy grey hair and a just-coiffed-enough five o’clock shadow, looking like a mixture of Ian McKellen and a wizened, undersized sea monster, donning an army green t-shirt and sandals, came down from the next staircase, carrying a book, only part of the title I could see under his arm: “Further Notes on a.” I looked him up and down with the same motion as I had the drip exhibit, and he spoke through a tiny, smoked-out laugh:
“Not expecting rain, were we?”
It was him, there was no doubt about it, and if it wasn’t, and if there were some doubt, then it was close enough, in that I was hallucinating him before me. But he was warm, in both senses, and he was here, so I had best exchange whatever words I saw fit, and be done with it.
“I suppose not. It is beautiful, though.”
“Yeah. You only have a couple of options when you find a little leak. I like that they chose the…aesthetic one.”
He emphasized each full syllable of that penultimate word, “ass,” “tet,” “tick,” which stuck with me. I felt the grains of this moment slip away, and part of me wanted to continue upward to see where he had come from, but I was still a bit stunned and had the internal clock of stage time ticking away at my side. He put his arms through mine and turned me towards the stairs.
“It must be about your time, eh? I can see it on your face. You know what I like best about the water drops back there? The smell. It smells like copper and resin, and the buckets go right through the water filter. So the water will only smell like that when its dripping down through that combination of materials.” He laughed again and turned to me as we headed down the final flight. I thought of Feli, but I had to ask:
“I don’t suppose you’d like to play a little drums?”
He narrowed his eyes as he opened the door to the library for me, and then laughed again at my clearly being taken aback that I could have offended him with the request.
“No, I think not.”
