The Honeythief

 

The year was 1986.  Having typed that, I immediately envision myself wearing an Abraham Lincoln get up and holding a book in the crutch of my arm tightly to my chest.  Some details are hazy, but at the time, I was really getting into music, but still mostly relying on Commercial Hit Radio for my music discoveries.  I was beginning to seek more into the nooks and crannies that year, yet some hit songs poked through.  Some of my friends and I all liked the moderate hit song “The Honeythief” by Scottish group Hipsway.  I liked the groovy guitar and it was fun to sing along with, despite the creepy Lolita-esque lyrics.  I wound up purchasing the 12” single, while my friend Matt bought the full album on cassette.  He liked it and loaned it to me, espousing the song “Long White Car.”  I agreed it was a good song and that the album was alright.  I honestly only remember “The Honeythief” at this point, which was they’re only hit US single.

 

The Portland hit radio station Z100 began advertising a concert for Hipsway in town, where their sponsorship provided really cheap tickets.  A bunch of us secured tickets and all piled into Matt’s father’s van (none of us kids could drive yet) and he drove us from the Oregon coast to Portland for a day of downtown hijinks and a late evening concert.  In retrospect, I do not know how our parents put up with this crap:  trucking us morons around for these long distance trips to concerts, yet I am thankful they did.  The concert was at The Starry Night club off of NW Burnside.  It is now The Roseland Theatre and remains essentially the same, except now there’s a different entrance full of insane security measures.  Then, one only needed to show a ticket (pre-barcode) to get in the door and walk up those stairs to the second floor into the smoky venue.  An old square venue where the all ages dancefloor fronted the stage, while above was a balcony for the 21+ crowd.  All being fairly new to the live music experience most of us bolted to the front of the stage eager to see the bands perform.  Bill split off to bum smokes.

 

The tenuous reason why I am relaying this story is why this strange top 40 sanctioned show still stands out against the hundreds of incredible bands I’ve seen over the years since.  The crowd was so incredibly diverse and The Starry Night was packed.  Despite being a Z100 event, the crowd was full of punks and goths – more in one place than I’ve ever seen since, and I’ve seen a lot of punk and goth shows, which have both been favorite sub-genres of mine.  Of course there were other teenage white generic nerds like us as well as poofed hair teen girls in their finest shiny blouses buttoned all the way up with big oval brooches.  There were older looking guys there who looked mean, like all record store employees at the time.  The sheer amount of smoke in the venue was astonishing.  The sweet smell of cloves was exotic and alluring.

 

My friend Ryan and I were at the front of center stage as the opening act, Hypertension, eased into position and the house lights turned off.  Hypertension at that time were an 80s cover band with some similarly styled originals, who seemed to be the house band for Z100 events (where was the Z100 mascot: The Jammin’ Salmon?).  I don’t remember much, except for the repeated in unison kicks the band would employ to emphasize the songs and their party vibe.  Each time the kicks would happen, I would lean back to avoid a kick to the face, and blinding lights above would like up the audience.  As I fell back from the kicks, I would look to my right and Ryan was also leaning back and looking back at me with his hands still clutching the edge of stage.  He had a wide grin on his face that was more of a mystified confusion than actual joy.  Ryan remembers the singer wearing uncomfortably tight acid wash jeans, and that seems right.

 

Unlike the highly scheduled and precise timing of so many concerts in these modern times, in the 80s and 90s concerts ran on their own schedule.  An endless gap between bands back then were absolutely exhausting.  At the stage, we could clearly see that everything was set up, yet the waiting would go on for what seemed like forever.  Even by the time I became more jaded and would seek out alcohol at the bar between sets, the gap was almost too much to endure.

Again, my memories are fuzzy regarding the actual show.  Hipsway played their set, surprisingly sans the 80s staple of a pair of soulful backing singers.  The quartet were dressed in suits and played their smooth pop and of course, “The Honeythief” drew a huge positive response from the crowd.  What I do remember is that the vocalist danced around in a fashion that had me mesmerized: like a marionette puppet whose puppeteer was having a seizure.  No that’s unfair, because his dance was smooth and it fit his olive green suit wearing chic.  More like an expertly wielded Jig Doll?  That’s seriously all that I remember of the performances.  I know that I enjoyed them and had a great time.  It’s amazing how my memories are more snapshots than actual reels of action.

Speaking of memories, I do not remember what happened to the rest of our gang.  I knew that Bill was running amok bumming smokes and trying to “scam chicks,” yet I do not remember if Ken and Matt were up front with us, or not.  I always suspected that Ken was in some side room with old fashioned 30s movie style mobsters sniffing blow off of a hooker’s bare stomach, but this cannot be confirmed.  Plus in the days and weeks after he could expertly mimic the Hipsway singer’s dance.  And Matt?  Who knows?  Probably ordering chili cheese fries from a kitchen that no one knew existed.  They were probably right there with Ryan and I, but not nearly as confounded by Hypertension as we were.

Once the show was over and the house lights sprang back to life, I remember standing in the middle of the dancefloor surrounded by all of the people filing their way to the exit stairwell.  We were keeping an eye out for Bill, who popped out of the crowd excitedly shouting at us about all the cool people he had met and the babes who gave him smokes.  This was when I really began to notice the diversity of the audience.  Being Portland, yes, the audience was mostly white, but not exclusively.  It was also gender diverse.  Not until the early 2000s did I see I see so many women at concerts.  The “alternative” 90s shows had become testosterone fueled hell pits. 

It didn’t fully dawn on me until much later, but this Hipsway concert was one of the last times that I attended a concert that drew such a wide swath of people of all kinds of backgrounds happily co-existing.  I’ve always wondered why that was.  I’m still not sure, but I think it may  be because of the changes in media options, or just an unusual anomaly.  We went from a society made up of broadcasting options.  That meant limited options.  So many of us had very few choices, if say we wanted to hear some new music.  We listened to one of the few radio stations that played new music, so we would put up with hearing numerous songs that we didn’t really care for in order to hear that one song that felt thrilling.  Today, obviously, we all choose our own playlists.  We don’t have to listen to stuff we don’t like just to get to the stuff we do.  We can listen to only our good stuff.  I’m not judging this.  I do this too.  It’s remarkable.  That fifteen year old kid would’ve never had a notion that one day he could listen to a streaming radio station (DKFM) for an hour and only hear one song that was just okay, while the rest are stunning!  Who wouldn’t choose that over listening to an hour full of commercials, boring ballads, and “Careless Whisper” by Wham! for the 70^th time in a day? 

What this has done though is it has limited our exposure to very specific people and things.  Not that all crowd diversity is gone, but over the past two decades, I can predict the make-up of the audience before attending a show.  One might experience more of that Hipsway diversity at these giant stadium concerts, but I am so far down my own rabbit hole that I didn’t consciously know a Taylor Swift song until 2023, plus I can no longer afford concerts.  Perhaps that alone is part of that Hipsway audience back in 1986, it was cheap entertainment.  It was a night out with something that we could all do.  Most of us likely learned about it from the same source.    

I’m no expert in this kind of thing, but as my old age nostalgia has ramped up lately and I ponder about times like this random show from the 80s and marvel at seeing a group of Japanese coeds excitedly leave that show together directly behind a few skate punks wearing DRI and Circle Jerks T-Shirts and a 30-something married couple holding hands (please forgive the assumptions).  Since about 1998, I’ve been almost guaranteed to see some guy at a concert who could be me.  It’s kind of creepy and never fails to make me question my life choices.

Please don't mistake this as a "back in my day things were better" tirade.  Again I'm not judging.  Personally, some things then felt better, and many things are better now.  Things are definitely different.  That cannot be denied.  Sometimes I wonder if our individualized isolationism is why we still struggle so much with understanding each other.  I think as humans we crave shared experiences, but not as much as we crave satisfying our own interests.  Over recent years I’ve witnessed a lot of excited conversations about certain TV shows on certain streaming services.  People who otherwise don’t interact.  I do not pay for streaming and I can tell that people are disappointed, but get excited to tell me about the show that is lighting up their days and nights.  Often times they offer me their login so I can watch said show and be available for a rundown.  The craving for that shared experience is palpable and yet we’re finding more and more ways to let it go.  I’ve done zero research and fully realize that I’m talking out of my ass, yet my experiences especially since social media became such a thing is that I will likely not attend a live concert ever again that will come anywhere close to the broad spectrum of people that I used to witness regularly years ago.  It’s nice to know now that when I see an artist perform that most of the people there are, as a whole, much more likely to be people I have a lot in common with.  However, it’s more forgettable.  Nearly forty years later I still remember Hypertension’s kicks and the smell of cloves and seeing a couple of black kids dancing uninhibited to a mostly unknown white band from far away. 

 

Hipsway "The Honeythief"

Curtains!

Breathing was difficult due to the fact that his face was pressed firmly into the side of the bathtub, while scalding hot water rushed through his lips and into his nose before trickling into the drain underneath his right ear. He was dizzy and felt paralyzed as his legs lay lifeless and crumpled underneath his body. He slowly moved his head to one side, because the flowing water coming down from the shower head high above was overwhelming his every attempted breath. His eyes clenched tight as he began to try and determine his whereabouts. That’s the moment when he felt the sharp stinging in both of his wrists. He carefully reached up to turn off the water using the old soap-stained faucet above his head. He realized that he had passed out after laying carefully down into the small white tub. Now he found himself fighting to open his eyes. The tub around him was stained red with blood, as was his chest. There on his back, with small drops of water taunting his eyes, he held his left hand up in the air. It hurt horribly. He examined the damage done. About an inch below the wrist were several small blackened marks with a circumference of red circles surrounding each scratch. Blood was still seeping out because of the water around him, but the coagulation had mostly closed the wounds. He laughed as he let the water and bloody mess drip onto his chest from his shaking arm before it dropped back down to his side. His arm felt too heavy to hold up. He once again closed his eyes. His face felt warm and tingling. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the loss of blood or from those pills he took before he had climbed into the shower. He smiled and was giddy from being lightheaded and the flushed feeling in his cheeks and he tried to go back to the warmth of the sleep he had just awoken from. His mind wandered to that evening a couple of weeks earlier when he had put a small cut in his throat in the shower. He watched his reflection bleed in the tiny circular shower mirror suctioned to the linoleum and found solace in the taste of his own blood. It was a small cut that only bled momentarily, but he enjoyed the sensation.

+++++

She couldn’t believe what she was doing. The car was burning hot from the defroster and heater blowing full bore for the entire trip – because of the cold and damp autumn evening. She was in a rattling and nearly broken down car loaded with her friends on her way to meet the guy she had been in touch with for almost two years through social media, email, and even good old fashioned letters, but whom she’d never met. She had always wondered if they would meet, but until recently they didn’t live in the same city. He had finally moved to the other side of town and she couldn’t put him out of her mind. He always seemed like a nice guy and she loved his writing style and the website he wrote for and encouraged others to write for. She always felt like he understood her feelings in a way she never could.

“I think this it!” Cindy shouted as she veered the car in the darkness toward a small apartment complex.

This snapped her out of her thoughts and intensified the pit that had been slowly growing in her gut since the moment this idea was forced upon her. Sometimes she hated it when her friends pushed her into action, instead of letting her be all talk and safe in her little womb. He would probably think she was a crazy stalker for dropping by unannounced like this.

“What was the number?” Cindy asked over her shoulder as she swung into an empty parking spot and slammed onto the brakes. The car whined and clanked when the front end scraped over the top of the small yellow cement block that protected the walkway.

She mumbled the apartment number to Cindy and announced that they really didn’t need to go through with this silly plan.

“Nonsense,” Rebecca responded with disgust. “We’ve come this far, you’re not backing out now”

The four of them sprinted through the heavy rainfall as they scanned the area for the correct place. Before she knew it, they were climbing three flights of stairs and Cindy was knocking on the door. All of them began giggling nervously and were shaking from the chill in the air.

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this!” Cindy blurted, suddenly losing her ambition.

There was no answer after 30 seconds or so. She took a deep breath to try and stave off some intense shivers that had her entire body rippling.

“I hear something in there, and it looks like a light is on in that window,” Mary smiled and pointed to their left. “Knock again!”

Cindy pounded on the door harder and several times.

The silence overwhelmed her, as they all held their collective breaths and listened closely for any sound from the other side of the door. A fog gathered above them in the stairwell as they all stood facing each other with curious looks on their faces. Time stood still. Finally, she croaked out that no one was going to answer and felt relief spread through her shoulders and down her back.

“Leave him a note,” Mary commanded.

“Yeah, let’s all leave him a note,” Cindy agreed. “I have some paper in my purse.”

All of them scrawled out quick silly notes in their bubbly scrawl, while she paused and watched them as all of the clumsy butterflies returned. What should she write? He would now know what they did. Whatever the case, she drew strength from the camaraderie of her friends and contemplated some words that she thought he might think were funny. She didn’t want to scare him away, because she had some genuine hopes for this guy, despite her terror at the thought of actually meeting him just moments prior. Again, she asked herself why she didn’t stay home instead of telling her friends about him. Then she wouldn’t be here now. What could she say on a piece of scrap paper that would convey her feelings to him in a way that he would completely understand where she was coming from? She shivered again and realized that she didn’t know what she wanted. Cindy gathered all of their messages and stuffed them into the jam a foot or so above the doorknob.

+++++

“Yo! Sup?” Jim shouted as he banged the door open and tripped over the decayed floor mat just inside. “Looks like you got some love letters out here.”

Jim’s ruckus at the front door startled him from a deep slumber. He was wrapped tightly under a blanket and curled in the fetal position on the couch with the TV showing the closing credits of the old B-movie Monster A Go-Go! which he had tuned to during the opening credits - at least his third unsuccessful attempt at watching this movie. He had been dreaming of warmth and sunshine. The kind of sunlight that he only had ever imagined could exist – a kind of warmth and glow that could burn away the darkness that was always enveloping him. In his dream, long shadows from several giant shade trees stretched across a bright green grass field as he strolled comfortably through the shadow lattice toward a bright blue ocean in place of the freezing grey water he grew up next to. He was groggy, but made an effort to lift himself up over the back of the old couch to see Jim and figure out what he was talking about. He could feel dried blood pulling at the skin and hair on his chest underneath his loose fitting concert T-shirt and squinted as Jim had turned all the lights on that he had turned off after his shower earlier.

Jim dropped a few softened sheets of torn scrap paper on top of him as he passed by on his way to his bedroom. He could see that the handwriting varied, yet all contained the recognizably bubbly handwriting of nearly all girls born after 1970.

“Shouldn’t you be out? It’s Friday night. I’m thinking of going to grab some brews with some dudes from work, you wanna join?” Jim asked as he ducked into his room.

He collected the notes together as he responded to Jim with uncertainty, but knowing Jim would not take no for an answer.