“Red Cross”
Liv Go
Tipsy on Coronas and cheap vodka, we walk down a dark street.
I announce a fair warning.
This could be weird.
I want people to be prepared, but what I’m really doing is freeing myself of blame. After all, I’ve asked my friends to give up their Friday night plans to come see this house with me. I feel a certain responsibility for people to have a good time. Earlier, March’s boyfriend asked me if he should take a shot, and without hesitation, I told him Yes, definitely.
I ran to get him a glass. Now I hear him trip over his shoes a bit, catching himself from injury, but not entirely from embarrassment. He says something about free will and destiny. March clutches him tight.
I remember seeing it during the day: an unassuming white house in need of a power wash, a large red cross hung right next to the front door. I swear I know that streetlamp, and from what I can recall, we’re close. I try to listen hard for any indication that a show is happening, but it’s a quiet, typical Northampton night, and all I hear is our own clumsy footsteps and drunken babble. When we turn the corner, we see a house with the porch light on, a few loitering bodies outside the door.
“Is that it?” In a half-whisper, I turn to ask Nellie and she tells me yes. I can’t see the red cross through the darkness. There’s a debate going on about whether or not we should go in since it’s clear that the show has not yet begun. The decision is quickly made by several people’s oppressive need to pee.
Onward.
Red Cross House is a Western Mass institution. A place for punks, partiers, and freaks alike to lose themselves in a-little-bit-shitty local music at DIY shows. It used to be a Red Cross Association building before it started being rented out to tenants and for the past decade has been passed between musicians and close friends.
We approach the porch and are greeted with the smell of burning American Spirits and Marlboro Golds. A man in his mid-thirties with long stringy hair, glasses, and a patchy, half-hearted attempt at a goatee sits in a lawn chair and asks if we are here for the show. I nod. Yena, who stands close behind me quickly asks if there’s a bathroom inside. Goatee Guy opens the entrance to the house and tells us it’s the second door on the right.
Yena and a few others bolt for the bathroom, March and her boyfriend split off to stash their beer bottles in a bush, and I linger out on the porch unsure of what to do with my body. Smokers sit layered on top of one another on a pink couch caked in dirt, others are crouching down, supporting themselves against white shutters. They all know each other. Or at least that’s what it seems like to me. They seem like they belong with and to each other. I see Flora from last semester’s anthropology class and we give each other a wave. I turn to walk through the doors of the house.
I was in my sophomore year the first time I had heard about this place. I don’t know what I expected to be inside, but I’m especially struck by its warmth and the inviting yellow light in the center of the kitchen that hugs the room in a soft embrace. Even though the show starts in fifteen minutes, someone has started to cook a pot of dinner. It smells savory and delicious.
Chuka, Jackson, Corey, and Miguel from Bubble Scary are sitting in the corner right by the entrance. These are not big musicians and this is not a big venue, but I still feel a little surprised to see the band hanging out so casually, just right there. I give them an awkward wave and they generously return the favor. They leave shortly after to sound check.
I walk around the kitchen with my hands behind my back. There are several things on the walls. Various art projects from the tenants, inside jokes scribbled in Sharpie, random framed posters I assume are treasures picked up from thrift stores. There are coats and bags and pots and pans hung haphazardly on nails without order. There’s a dying propagated plant sitting on the microwave and photos of friends playing guitar together, held up by scotch tape. It’s a museum of human existence.
At some point during my observation, Yena, Nellie and Maya have come back. Yena complains about the couple making out and who were hogging the bathroom for forever. March and her boyfriend come in from outside. He is carrying a ceramic mug of something.
“What is that?” I ask him.
“It’s curry.”
“Curry?”
“And rice.”
He tells me he got it from the stove.
“Are you sure you’re allowed to just grab that?”
“He told me to get myself a portion.”
“Who?”
“The guy- the one with the goatee. I guess he made it, it’s really good.”
He offers me a spoonful and I take it. It’s the same curry my mom used to make for my brothers and me growing up. Nostalgia dances on my tongue. I go in for another bite. Nellie and Maya ask to try. March points to the rice cooker in the corner. We all grab our own bowls. We do something none of us were prepared for tonight: share a lovely meal.
We eat our curry and walk around the kitchen like it’s an installation. Nellie nudges me and points to one of the pieces.
Fridge Lamp, 2023
“I love that,” she tells me.
And I have to agree. A brilliant beacon.
Yena and Maya are standing by the refrigerator observing another work. They beckon us over.
“You have to look at this.”
BDSM Testimonies, 2023
We lean in to learn about Jennifer’s life-changing spanking experience. I bury my head into Yena’s hair, stifling girlish laughter.
Goatee Guy walks around the kitchen with a plastic jar asking for donations.
He approaches my friends and I. March shoves a crumpled five in the bin and I pay him a compliment and tell him his dinner was delicious. He laughs and says thank you. He tells me that he always tries to make a communal meal for the people who come to the show. He wants to make sure everyone is safe and fed.
I turn to Nellie and ask her if she happened to catch his name.
Andrew Wang. A techno musician and one of the original tenants of Red Cross. Also an excellent curry maker. I add him to my list of notes that feel simultaneously arbitrary and of the utmost importance. He first got into the music scene when he was a student at Amherst College, then he graduated and moved into Red Cross. That was ten years ago; he has been here ever since.
“Yeah, I don’t know, I just stayed. It kind of has a way of sucking you in.”
And how do you feel now that the Red Cross House is closing?
“I’m sad to see it go, it’s been really cool– But I’m also thirty and it’s time to grow the fuck up.”
The ceilings are caving in and the people living there can no longer make rent. They can’t survive on the five-dollar donators alone. I look around at the kitchen and at the marks of friendship, community, and DIY shows past. I try to picture a nuclear family moving in here and my mind can’t quite conjure the image. I suppress my urge to ask Andrew what “growing up” actually means.
People begin to put out their cigarettes and make their way down to the basement. I’m so immersed in this kitchen that I forget the reason why we are actually here. I scoop a last bite of curry into my mouth and begin to follow the crowd. We descend, single file, down the narrow stairs. It smells like mildew. There’s a dancing blueish-purple light coming from below, luring us in. I look behind me to make sure my friends are following, but instead, find someone I don’t know. She tells me she likes my jade necklace. She says that her friend taught her how to spot good jade, and that I had it. My hand instinctively goes to play with it. I thank her.
“It was my grandmother’s”
I reach the bottom of the stairs and walk deeper into the room. In the front, I see Miguel on the drums, Jackson on bass, Corey on guitar, and Chuka in the middle holding a microphone. She shyly tells people to come in closer, but not many people listen. I look to my right and I see that Flora from Anthropology has secured a front-row spot.
The air is thick with anticipation.
They start to play.
***
A few weeks later, I drive to Amherst to sit across from Miguel, Corey, Jackson, and Chuka on floral furniture. It’s 8 PM on a Tuesday. They texted me 45 minutes ago saying the only time they could meet was tonight, the sooner the better.
I shift in my seat and sink deep into the chair’s universe. I pull myself back up, cross my legs, and remind myself to focus. Chuka messes with her bangs and asks if it's okay that she eats her dinner while we do this. I look down at her plate of buttered toast. I assure her it’s okay.
***
The drums and guitars are mind-numbingly loud. To his rhythm, beads of sweat bounce from Miguel’s forehead. His glasses slip down his nose and they hang there for dear life. Corey’s cheeks glow pink as he clenches his teeth. Jackson’s long curls gets stuck in his eyes staring down focused on his bass. The band suddenly quiets and Chuka's voice floats whimsical and whiny through the room.
I miss my mother
I need something new
I want to feel consumed
She’s reading from an open notebook on the ground, scribbled scrawl on white pages, I like to think that what’s on that page is a language that only she can fully understand. When her verse concludes, the band gets loud again.
***
Jackson met Corey first. The friendship budded almost immediately after they got to the University of Massachusetts. Then they met Miguel “by accident” although they never specify what exactly the accident was. The three of them bonded over music they liked and music they liked playing. They’d spent several months together jamming when one day Jackson mentioned that his friend Chuka was looking for a band to sing in.
Jackson and Chuka grew up their whole lives just one street away from each other in a Massachusetts suburb, but they weren’t really friends until they were teenagers. In high school, they started a band together called Tomstu.
“Take that part out,” Corey jokes with flailing hand gestures, “No free promotion!
Miguel tells me that “Once Chuka came into the picture, everyone was like, oh shit, we’re a real band,” Corey and Jackson disagree.
The boys bicker back and forth about the exact time they felt like they were a real band. Chuka stays quiet and looks at me embarrassed.
I ask if they would call themselves best friends.
The label has an air of juvenility and they seem to not know how to answer the question.
“I mean, we hang out all the time,” Miguel offers.
They tell me their music has always been separate from their friendship and they rarely talk about the band outside of practice.
For the first time in twenty minutes, Chuka opens her mouth and in earnest says,
“We are all very close.”
***
I notice that Chuka faces away from the crowd and sings towards the band to form a small circle. I find it unique and tell myself to remember this detail for later (the same later I write in now). The four of them are packed together and although they are all different heights, from where I am standing they look the same size, no one bigger or more worthy than the other. I see Corey smiling.
***
“Oh yeah, that was something we started doing recently. We saw a band we like do it once and we thought it was sick.” Jackson tells me.
Chuka says that the reason she likes turning inward is because it makes her feel more connected to the band. “It’s the way we’ve always practiced. I feel like it makes us sound better because we are so used to it.”
Miguel nods, “I’m sure there are people who would say we aren’t bringing much of a stage presence but to me sounding good is more important.”
There’s a pause where the members take time to think about if they really agree with that statement. Jackson breaks the silence, “Maybe this is the ultimate stage gimmick and we just come off as pretentious assholes–”
“That’s my greatest fear,” Corey quickly admits with laughter.
“But we also really don't care,” Jackson says resolutely.
On this, the whole band seems satisfied.
***
I look at Flora and their friends who are violently head-banging and slightly offbeat. I smell Flora’s shampoo even though I’m not standing particularly close, smells like spring. Their hair gets caught in their lip piercing and they have to pause before resuming motion. One of Flora’s friends starts to push, and then another one, and soon there are several people pushing and flailing against each other in the middle of the floor. I take a step back to watch the scene unfold, I look at it and I feel myself smile. They look like little popcorn kernels about to burst. A worshipping dance with heat and oil, with heavy drums and long guitar riffs.
For Flora, as a trans person, moshing is something where they can be in a physical space and are present without feeling hyper-aware of their body. “It’s simultaneously intimate and communal, it’s a rare thing: collective awe”. They tell me they want to keep going to shows after school. Their dream is to become a bartender and live in a punk house like Red Cross. They are burnt out on their major,
“Fuck biology”.
***
“Moshing is purely organic - it’s visceral and beautiful,” Corey says. The other boys nod in agreement.
Chuka rolls her eyes and takes a bite of toast.
Miguel tells me that at every DIY show he has gone to, whenever someone falls down in the moshpit, there are always people ready to pick them back up and help them. “I’m not saying it’s impossible to get hurt, but moshing isn’t about fighting, it's just people being into the music and wanting to move.”
“There aren’t any rules to it. People are discovering this stuff together and there’s a community that’s made because of it,” Corey adds.
They all agree that the community is what is most special about this whole thing. The hours of practice, the shows, the moldy basements that push us close to one another. It exists because there are familiar faces who appreciate it. Faces with nagging lip piercings and patchy goatees. I started going to shows last February, I wonder if I have made it among the recognizable crowd.
“So what happens next after you graduate?”
It’s the same question I have been asking myself.
All four of them speak at the same time, “We’re staying together.”
This wasn’t the answer I was expecting and their unanimous sureness surprises me.
“I don’t want to rush away from this. This isn’t just a college band, it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Maybe will ever see in my life,” Jackson says, “I mean right?”
He looks around at his bandmates.
Chuka takes the last word before I turn off the recording, “We’ll stay in Western Mass because what we created feels unfinished and it’s really special. We wanna keep it safe, ya know.”
Sometimes it’s as simple as recognizing a lovely thing.
“I know.”
***
I’m stuck thinking about the lack of hierarchy in this basement, finding myself in the same place as Bubble Scary’s music. The band is no more important than the people who listen and the house that holds them. It is a head-banging-guitar-ripping-floor-shaking display of
symbiosis.
They conclude their show and people cheer loudly. Andrew tells everyone to hang around for the next act, but I turn towards the exit ready to rejoin with the community that I’ve chosen for myself.
We walk up to the kitchen and out into the night. It’s the same feeling as when you walk outside of the movie theater and you are reminded the world still exists. It’s a relief and also a bit of a disappointment. We linger on the porch. Nellie and March ask each other what they thought about the band turning inward.
“It was kind of pretentious don’t you think?” Nellie says.
“A little bit, yeah. There wasn’t really a stage presence,” March agrees.
“Maybe that’s the point though.”
Maya is bumming a smoke off of some circle she worked her way into. March’s boyfriend pulls a fresh pack out of his jean pocket and gives a thin cigarette to March. She reaches for it and he gives her a tender look that I believe to be love. We fumble around in our bags and coats for lighters, but before we can find one, March lights the cigarette by bringing the tip of it to Maya’s. It glows brighter when they are together, touching. I think it looks beautiful and some part of me wishes I could stay here forever. I take a photo instead.
