Murder, Girl

The brick-arched doorway houses two twin wooden doors. It smells of early-summer piss. Under the marquee, a small blue and white sign reads, "Air Conditioned." But it's a lie: the club will be sweltering.

I'm here for the Swans Concert. It's May 10, 1988, a hot night for Cleveland. School is almost out for summer. I'm done, even though I've got to go tomorrow. I'm 17. 

My feet, encased in army combat boots, walk up the entrance ramp. Lizard the Punkrock Cop, who we all kind of hate but admire too, checks my ID. He sharpies both of my hands with big black X's--Underage. The symbol of sobriety for my straightedge friends, but not me.

Peabody's Downunder dank basement, always fetid. Already blanketed by a blue haze of smoke and the tang of spilled beer. Acrid sweat swills through the cramped venue. 

Here's where me and my friends seek solace, exorcize our demons. We're here to feel. At home, there is a plaid couch, several televisions, and parents who drink vodka by the tumbler. Here is dirty, dark. Real. I can be me: heartbroken, rageful, and powerful. 

I aim for the stage, sticky floor underneath. The front row demands early commitment or later violence. I choose the former. The band won't go on for hours. We all want the artists to see us, spit on us, acknowledge we are real. In return, we beam snarling admiration like love.

Near the most pit, I feel okay, a rare state.

I don't think about if I belong or not because I do. This place is made for me and my friends. Once, Watti of the Exploited shoved the mic in my face, and I screamed, "Sex and Violence," along with everyone else. We all know all three words to the song. Solace in calculated danger.

Jenny's next to me tonight. We got ready together in my bedroom back in suburbia. I backcomb my bleached blonde Marilyn Monroe hair, spray it with StiffStuff, the strongest hairspray you can buy at RiteAid. Jenny teases her black mohawk high. I paint a spider web from my eye with liquid eyeliner; she adorns her wrists with chains and gummy bracelets. We have an in-joke about wearing black lace underwear, just in case. Just in case someone picks us, in case someone loves us. 

Jenny's smart and funny and snarky. She wears her leather biker jacket like a second skin. My friends' jackets each have their own personality. Something different painted on the back, patches, embellished with diverse pins. Jenny's smells like Opium, her perfume of choice. She spritzes and runs through it. Jenny says we are dykes, but I don't believe her. We do use our lesbian-adjacent relationship as an excuse when dudes hit on us too hard. 

The year before I meet her, Jenny's mom kills her lover and herself in a murder-suicide. Jenny's in 8th grade. Jenny tells me a couple weeks after we meet. Two trauma kids trying to survive, our friendship blossoms fast and hard. 

A year of friendship under our belts, we steal a steak knife from my dad's kitchen. Use the serrated edge to tear our flesh. Carve Xs on our hands. We use the blood to sign an oath, friends always. I pick at my scab for weeks. I want a scar.

When my mom says, "Let me take you to buy a record for your birthday," I want to believe her. We drive through snow to the mall, the warmth of Newberry's general store. I pick out a Swans album. She sees the PMRC warning sticker. She tells me she can't in good conscience buy it. She's afraid it will make me depressed. It won't make me feel dark and suicidal because I already am. We leave empty-handed but hard-hearted. I go back and buy it alone. 

The Swans' dark and ominous noise swells. Louder than a thousand jackhammers. Louder than a thousand preachers condemning sinners to hell. Haunting but in no way ethereal. The industrial sounds of machines pounding on metal: discordant, monstrous. I've only listened in my room. Hearing it in person is validation. 

My ears are full of love. In the heavy emo chanting is a message that pain is warranted. "I will cut off my right hand and stand in your shadow," intones Michael Rolfe Gira. I feel the truth of life as it really is, not the sanitized version I'm always being told. It's a relief, an adult finally telling the truth. 

I wake with the same hair and makeup the following morning. Heading to my car, I grab a diet coke from the drawer in the fridge. That's breakfast. 

Sitting in first period, I feel half alive, pain ringing in my ears, aching exhaustion in my body. Jenny and I had gone to Denny's after the show. I got home around 3. Even in the fluorescent light of my too-early English classroom, I know what's real. It's my life outside of here, my friends who carry switchblades, smoke clove cigarettes. Who know what bands have stayed true to the scene and who's sold out. 

Two weeks after that concert, my friend Rob takes his own life. 

After the news, I take some prescription pain pills I find in the bathroom cabinet. I drive to work at Geppetto's Pizza and Ribs. I like the floaty feeling those pills give me. All night, I answer the phone, "Geppetto's, what can I get for you?" Things are surreal. Rob can't be dead because we are teenagers. Because he always calls me 'sunshine' when he sees me. Because we eat strawberry crunch ice cream bars from the school cafeteria for lunch.

Then it's summer. I am released from mandatory learning. I feel ripe, hot, and beautiful. White eyeshadow and black lipstick from Wet n Wild. Jenny and I steal a Siouxie tee shirt from our friend Eric. We shoplift earrings from the mall. We skinny dip in Lake Erie. We break into a car, steal money from the stupid girl who left her purse in plain sight, go to Burger King. We grab our power where we can. I buy a small button for my jacket that reads "Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll." On the back, Jenny pens, "Summer of '88!"

One night that summer, I'm staying with my mom. She offers me dinner at Mama Santa's Pizza, my favorite since childhood. I'm looking forward to it. But when I come out to go, she says I can't wear just a black slip and ripped fishnets and eyeliner. She says she's embarrassed by how I look. She tells me that if I want to go, I must remove my makeup and change my clothes. I want the pizza, so I comply. 

Rob's been dead for a few weeks.

I write a series of suicide notes, eloquent and poetic as I can craft them. 

My high school classmate Christie Montrella disappears in October 1988. In northeastern Ohio, fall is brief, a moment between the dawn and the dark of the year. Saturday night, she doesn't return home from her shift at work. Sunday, her bloody purse is found by a driver on the highway. 

Monday morning, I find out she is missing through whispers in the hallway. She's not a girl I know. There are three pizza joints in town. I work at one of them, Geppetto's. She works at Master Pizza. We don't know each other even though we pass each other in the halls every day. 

There is a feeling in the halls, a vibe. It's part prickly, part anxiety, part excitement.None of my teachers mention what is happening. We collectively inhale and hold our breath, waiting for what happens next. 

Tuesday, her white Ked shoe turns up along the same stretch of highway. Things are going in a bad direction. The community prays she will be found alive. Her parents are on the news, pleading for her return. Her dad asks Christie to use the love of her mom, dad, and siblings to help bring her home. 

Dread builds. It's the last warm before winter. The flies are particularly bad. Teachers hang fly strips, and my boss has an exterminator come to the pizza shop to try and get rid of them. They buzz around the pizzas, dot the walls. 

Two of my coworkers help with the search efforts. I do not. In some people's helping, I sense a dark desire to be up close and personal with the monstrous. I don't want to be too close. 

Wednesday, I work 4-9. I drive my powder blue Plymouth Champ. On the radio, UB40 is singing Red Red Wine. I vomit in the dirt of the side parking lot before clocking in. My boss insists I smoosh the branded white golf cap over my hair. He can't do anything about several days of accumulated eyeliner. I never wash my face. That day at work is different from a hundred others. Pizzas come up for delivery, but my boss refuses to let me drive. He walks me to my car that evening after my shift.

Thursday afternoon. The school has no air conditioning, so it's blazing hot. With his ill-matching toupee, the school principal crackles over the PA system. The pep rally scheduled for the last period is canceled. 

Christie Montrella's body has been found. 

She is dead.

There will be a wake. There will be a funeral. We are all invited to attend both.

The bell rings, releasing us. 

Silence. 

Everyone is quiet as we get on buses, or walk to the parking lot. A hush. A collective exhale. 

The first after-school cigarette tastes good. I smoke as I drive to pick up Bob. We had planned to go to the Army/Navy Surplus store. I want to purchase my first canister of pepper spray. Bob is queer, but not out. He only told me when I guessed. 

Now that she's dead, buying pepper spray seems extreme, but I do not want her fate. My suicide notes attest otherwise, but I want to stay alive long enough to get the fuck out of Cleveland.

At home, it's on every news channel. We watch the footage of our classmate, age 16, being carried out of the woods next to I-271. It's not a real stretcher the paramedics are using. Her body, wrapped in sheets, jiggles as they carry it into the ambulance. 

When I get to school on Friday, news crews are everywhere, interviewing whoever they can. I duck my head and walk inside, grateful for the first time to be at school. I go to my shift at Geppetto's that night. When I leave at 2 AM, I walk alone to my car. 

Her coworker is arrested for her death. He pleads guilty. Master Pizza closes for a while, becomes known as Massacre Pizza. 

Sunday is the wake. I make Bob go with me. He makes dead girl jokes on the way to the funeral home. There is a long line of mourners, slowly moving toward a white casket.  I am scared and confused. I didn't expect this.

Christie's is the first dead body I ever see. I guess they wanted everyone to see what happened to her. I guess they didn't want to hide her away or cover up what had been done to her. 

She is dressed with a high collar. I know it conceals the stab wounds to her neck. She was left to rot in the woods for almost an entire week. Her face is covered with a thick layer of pancake makeup. She looks fake, not like a real person. Murder girl. 

Even though all signs say otherwise, I hope it wasn't too awful for her. I pray for this quiet girl. I say goodbye to my pizza sister. We walk outside.

While he joked before, Bob hugs me now, long and hard. He smells of leather, cigarettes, and gay boy cologne. We don't want to go home, so we go to Friendly's for ice cream. I don't eat mine and it melts. 

At home in my notebook I write, "Death is Near, Death is Upon Us" again and again. After her funeral, we don't speak of Christie Montrella again. The rest of the year passes, prom, graduation. What happened last fall was so long ago. There is college to consider, life after this horrible place.

I wish I had a loving adult guide. Instead, I have the Misfits, Joy Division, Husker Du. They show me a path for living in this world, teach me how to stay here. They take the terrible and transmute it into something alive. They are my true parents, them and the punks who raised me. Some of us made it. 

-Dr. Pavini Moray

Dr. Pavini Moray is a founder and author with more than 30 years of experience as an educator, activist, somatic coach, and serial entrepreneur. They support humans and organizations to evolve their communication and enjoy thriving relationships. Pavini's new book is "How to Hold Power: A Somatic Approach to Becoming a Leader People Love and Respect," They are a queer, trans, nonbinary human walking the glitter path of dancing bones, ridiculous delight, and old magick. You can learn more at www.pavinimoray.com