Asking For It

Part 3

Davey Havok’s interviews border on unbearable. He gives vague, cryptic answers about a morally bankrupt society that would be better if the whole world went Straight Edge/Vegan. Most people probably understand the concept of vegan these days, it’s basically vegetarian without milk or eggs. Straight Edge was a movement that started in punk rock and hardcore music that rejected the use of drugs and alcohol. Credited to Ian MacKaye and Minor Threat for it’s creation, Straight Edge had grown into a monster by ‘99.

In our late teens, my group of friends were all sXe. The popular expression is giant black X’s on the backs of your hands. Our expression was to buy 40’s of IBC root beer and proudly display our X’s when the check out clerk tried to card us. We then explained our lifestyle choice in depth whether the clerk asked or not.

We didn’t fight anyone, we weren’t that kind of straight edge.  Most of us hung out at the rave house with the kids dropping acid and breathing Hippie Crack all around. Those were our friends. There weren’t many underground kids in Binghamton, so we had to stick together. Even very few of our hardcore kids were face-kickers. Those that did were ostracized out of the scene within a few shows. Dr. Filth broke edge first, of course, but everyone in Binghamton ends up a raging drunk by 25.

Hardcore music took sXe to its awful extreme. Take a bunch of young angry tough guys and give them an enemy. Most agreed that Straight Edge included sex as well, leaving these meatheads overflowing with desire to fuck another dude’s face with their fists. Syracuse, NY, was the epicenter of this bomb with the explosion of Earth Crisis.

I only saw Earth Crisis a couple times, and I never liked them, so I can’t tell you exactly how much this band advocated violence toward drug users and meat eaters, but that was certainly the message the fans took away. The bands that followed ran with it, and ended up with a scene where you could get your ass kicked for smoking a cigarette in front of the wrong bald meathead. Rumors flew that a sXe gang called the ‘Syracuse Sluggers’ trolled shows beating up anyone who didn’t live up to their moral standard. I never saw a Slugger with my own eyes, and I’ve always assumed they were just an urban legend.

I support anyone making these kind of life decisions to improve themselves. Unfortunately, most life decisions are only used for masking insecurities. The typical path was to adopt a vegan and/or straight edge lifestyle, beat everyone else on the head with it, either metaphorically like a club, or with a club, and then give up and go full-on into meat and drugs a few months or years later.

Continued tomorrow