Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Portland Center Stage at The Armory, Portland - January 18, 2020

[from New York] Portland is gentrifying me. Or my life is gentrifying me. This was the second theAter event of the month. Fiddler on the Roof last week with TootsiePop and her wife and now this. But this one was the result of winning free tickets at a Mystery Box Theatre event – I felt like winning something was a sign of goodness to come. But what? A sign that me and my box would prosper in happiness and health. I advertised my second ticket on Craigslist personal ads and Reddit to no avail. Go on and think I’m kidding if it makes you feel better. This theater was in the Pearl District, my least favorite part of Portland… frats boys grown up into wealth and power and exhausting mediocrity. I had an average flight of multiple IPAs and sincerely disgusting wings at a nearby brewery. The couple next to me did not lighten my load. The guy asked me how the wings were – because he took pity on me, alone at the bar? Or because he and the wife were looking to me to relieve their boredom (yes I mean that)? The wife, with her excessively diamonded ring finger and her one streak of color in her hair (de riguer for Portlanders looking to communicate they may be White and middle-class but they’re hip yo), expressed her inability to look at the TV several times. She was right – it was UFC and the two women were bloodying each other. But I was annoyed that she needed to reinforce her delicate sensibilities again and again. Her next obsession was the brewery t-shirt – so great! Woman Who Drink Beer it said. We were all relieved when she finally got her hands on one. The theater was sort of exciting though – the intercom kept warning attendees our event would be starting soon. And there were multiple events! And mine was two floors below ground level. Somehow I scored a third row seat. I was just grateful I was that far back because the first two rows were part of the show – the audience in the ‘rock show’ … and, let me tell you, the discomfort of the ‘progressive’ Portland elite in those two front rows – namely, the square white males - was maybe the best part of the show.

So I was vaguely aware of this play by name. The little I read before I went was focused on how it’s too light hearted for a story about a transwoman. And my thought was that maybe trans people want to celebrate their lives sometimes. For all that, it wasn’t as cheery as the media made out – or maybe I got the Portland interpretation of it – but, come to find out, the play doesn’t reference the “angry inch” for nothing. The leads were both Black too – google tells me they’re usually White. Mostly, the show immediately got me to thinking about an interesting line of conversation BrightShards and I had about whether rock is inherently homophobic. My instinct was no – because, to me, the best parts of punk are a rejection of all social norms, including gender and sex. I was at the time, conveniently, reading “Please Kill Me,” a book I stole from WomanInCharge after she visited. It explicitly laid out the homosexual exploits of Lou Reed (the god of punk (take that Rockboy)), Iggy Pop, and, of course, David Bowie. And the play was referencing all of this. But, there’s no denying there’s a certain agro-ness to rock, punk, metal. I have a special genre for the worst of it that I use as an iTunes slur, ‘cock rock’: Danko Jones, par exemplar. But then, I retain the influences of growing up in an area that celebrated extreme machismo, the same area BrightShards grew up in, for the record. I still find long baggy shorts and knee-high white socks on a man: Hot. But then again, I have suspected queerness in every person I’ve dated. Because we’re all bisexual, right? If we’re right with the world? Unless you’re seriously homosexual. J I am energized by breaking with my first therapist ever – free to behave badly once again. I explained the problematic characteristics of the people I am attracted to, and she said they sounded pretty attractive to her too. I was like, right? To the point, the music in the play was average. The one song that moved me was when the lead tore off her wig and did an angry punk number – the only rational response to the world. The question that plagues me though is: Who is Tom Petty really?