By the time I read the review in the 'Soho Weekly News" that said the best songs in 'Debt Begins at Twenty' were the ones I wrote, and how much fun the reviewer had watching the movie, things had long since stopped being fun for me.

I remember standing in a required outfit of red, white and blue on the football field of Dickson Junior High being forced to form a 76 with the rest of the senior class bodies for our high school yearbook. This was the first and last time most of this class would be special for any reason and we had nothing to do with it being the bicentennial.

There were only three people in that school who held any interest for me. Charlene Kupcinik whose young sexy uncle Vincent owned an expensive rock and roll clothing boutique downtown. She had short shaggy hair, the highest skinniest platforms, satin pants, glitter tops, chubby fur jackets and these were just her school clothes. I heard she arrived at divey clubs in limousines.

Don Bryson who wore fingerless leather gloves to school or a top hat, black cape, riding pants, long scarves and occasionally a lightening bolt or dots painted on his face. He once spontaneously and with great joy improvised a song in the middle of a chorus performance complete with dramatic faces and obscene gestures aimed at the principal.

And Billy McGann who had girlish hips, longish blond hair, dancer muscles, and played the drums. He was related to the notorious Knuckles and Stag McGann sexy and slightly criminal brothers who used and perhaps sold drugs. So Billy was the only possibility in the entire school to have sex with (Don had a mysterious divorcee with pierced nose, diamond ring, and a child) I decided on Billy after reading 'I, a Groupie'�, a fictitious account of sex, drugs, bondage and near suicide w/metal and glitter/glam groups.

I watched a blonde in a backless cleavage sequin green mermaid dress mesmerize Bryan Ferry onstage and get up and walk backstage without being stopped. This at the time seemed an attractive option to me, or at least an escape from the mundane choices I had as the daughter of a postal worker destined for vocational school.

So I became the girlfriend of a local rock star who actually traveled to other states and had records out and opened at big Pittsburgh shows like Lou Reed. For me and the other girls I knew with dreams this was as close as we thought we could get to the rock and roll scene, the one exception being Suzi Quatro.

After seeing a photo of Patti Smith in a Mademoiselle magazine my mother bought for me when I was anorexic. I woke up one night and starting hacking at my hair with pinking shears trying for her Keith Richards look. But instead I got a near crew cut with longer sprouts, the radiation fall out look later popular, but laughed at then.

I covered it with a scarf for three days and then removed it with great hope because right around the time Elvis died pictures and bands were entering my world that I knew were going to change it.

Women and men with hacked hair, some two or three tones. Women with fleshy thighs hanging out over garter belts and moth eaten sweaters. One of the bands was the Sex Pistols who picked Pittsburgh as the first stop on their tour. The Leona Theater where I had watched the Flintstones and Yogi Bear as a child. My mother stood in line downtown and bought my tickets before work. She said the clerk thought she was either dumb or pretty hip but for some reason I remember her thinking they were funny.

I was dumped by boyfriend who both she and I now thought was too old 28. And this was my scene not his.

I cut my hair even shorter, I cut off my skirts, I wore shirts made of fishnets, dresses made of slips. Went to the wedding of a high school friend in a black slip and handed her a spray painted black flower she was pregnant.

My favorite outfit a leopard skin half slip made into a one shoulder dress jagged hem punk Pebbles Flintstone. I tied bones in my hair.

I dyed it orange, pink, purple, yellow, polka dot, leopard and tiger skin. Walking to my job at Silhouette I was called 'beauty school dropout' by three little boys who had seen 'Grease'� and quickly identified me as the drop out failure.

I painted designs on my face. I worshipped the Slits their naked healthy bodies, different shapes and sizes all beautiful. I thought about going out in a loincloth covered in mud.

I shrieked and keeled around the house to "I-DEN-TI-TY is the crisis can't you see...when you look in the mirror do you smash it quick... did you do it before you read about it ?" the sax sounding like a prolonged scream Poly was crying out to all us misfits IDENTITY.

Identity. I was finding mine. I loved Polystyrene. Her kinky hair, her braces, her thighs, hearing she vomited after shows naked and empty.

These were my days when everything I had been told crumbled in the clubs mainly Phase III which had bands coming from everywhere and for some reason was in my godforsaken hometown of Swissvale.

The bands came from L.A., NYC, Cleveland, X, the Screamers, the Dils,Richard Hell who smelled from six feet away and who I adored. The Dead Boys with midget rat-like Stiv.

These were days when the girls I knew, and girls I was meeting felt everything we had been told was a lie, and what we had always hoped was true- was true. We were beautiful because we were outspoken. We knew things were wrong, we had something to say and we were going to get up on stage and say it.

The Puke started the Pittsburgh scene for me. Three guys blue haired Bill Bored dangling a cigarette butt for an earring, Barney Scum whining 'baby's on fire' backwards and Pat D. Hearse, the 'sex symbol' which wasn't saying much for this group only their grandmothers could love, and now us girls.

They threw things out of a shopping bag, shredded the bible, played one drum, the big one, two guitars, no bass. Fast and screaming, chanting syllables, they appeared on the local evening magazine t.v. show uniting misfits many of whom showed up at their house.

The Dykes formed using the Puke's equipment. Dorothy, Lorraine, Sesame and me. Our debut had to be a success because everyone in the Puke was pissed off (or impressed?) at us when practicing in their apartment above one of Pittsburgh's loudest gay bars the Holiday whose thumping bass shook the house from 4 PM to 2 AM, and a Chinese laundry with loud hissing machines.

Someone actually called the police on us to come and tell us to knock off the 'racket', and that we were awful.
A honor we felt, we were proud. We knew two songs which for me on drums consisted of counting to 8 and hitting them every few numbers.

I don't know what anyone else was doing but we played furiously until Sesame hit a stand up cymbal and we stopped playing while she shrieked 'My-Rectomy, Your-Rectomy, Her-Rectomy, Hys-ter-rectomy!'�

Our other song at that point was 'Two Fingers Wide' with a playground singsong chorus of:
'You're only 2 fingers wide, I can't feel you inside, I laugh and hurt your pride, It's not my fault you're only 2 fingers wide'

We did both songs twice at a benefit at Phase III and were thrilled to death at the applause and almost did them a third time. In the photos our faces are ear to ear grins in sharp contrast to the others stern glares.

We got to be in the movie by Stephanie Beroes 'Debt Begins at Twenty'� which was loosely about the Pittsburgh punk scene, and a love story about Sesame trying to seduce Bill Bored to steal the Cardboard's lyrics. (The Puke had long since broken up)She met him in the movie after we performed 'Bored'� our homage to Bill:

"I just sit here playing my drums
I can't sing so I just hum
I do strange things to my head
color it from blonde to red
I want Pittsburgh to be fun
if it doesn't happen soon
I might pull out a gun
cause I'm bored, bored, bored
Bill Bored"

The Cardboards, Shakes, and Dykes each did a few songs in clubs and people's living rooms, just like we always did. And answered a few hokey questions from the Proust questionnaire. Don't think many of the working class punks, myself included knew who Proust was.

Other bands especially one consisting of CMU students as a front for not having to work and disguise having rich parents by posing as 'illegal aliens' and 'greasy gas station attendants' in mechanics suits took over and tried to tell us poor and working class mill hunk kids about the 'right' things to sing about, about the 'proletariat' eroded the originality of the scene for me and took away most of the fun. My grandpap worked in a mill, I had no love for factories, living for the weekend, alcoholism, and missing limbs.

By the end of the movie, the Dykes were defunct helped by me writing 'Limp Dick Society'� which they thought was going too far.

Most of the boys had missed the real sarcasm of our songs. '2 fingers wide'in the end saying size wasn't important, 'Hysterectomy' about boys not taking responsibility for birth control, and 'I Love Me' about masturbation being better than settling for some jerk. And many did not laugh when we put their names into a hat to pull out to give a pair of underwear with a ruler on it as a 'prize' during filming. The 'winner' came up to sing with us. We had to rig it so Reid won.

Plans were in the works for an 'anti-female' band, but it never happened. I did do 'My boyfriend left me for another man' with the boyfriends and husband of some of the other Dykes. I was the only one without a boyfriend so logically the 'dyke' but I think some of the other woman were worried about getting labeled. We changed our names a couple of times before we broke up to Cringe and Underexposed, so people wouldn't stereotype us.

I later did a solo acoustic guitar act (which I couldn't play) and played once or twice with Michael Boat Boy on a plate. Harry the Wire got a show on WYEP where you could play live, especially if you were a girl.

Dub Sex (Dubious Sexuality) made their debut on the air. Lynne, Michael Boat, and me. We did 'Am I straight or am I gay?'� (bisexuality a hip trend on campus at the time), 'Phony Affection'�(aka My whole life is a Pantomime), and 'I'm living with Pigs'� (tall fat short and big Lynne's ode to rich students eating her food) amongst others Lynne and I were entering a bitter period.

A month later we went back on the WYEP show as OBNO AU GO GO . Ken, Orange Dave ( a rajneesh and Quaalude supplier), Bill Bored, Beth, and John Creighton, who arranged the songs with movements of his head. Ken and I played sax.

All the song lyrics, written by me, reflected my disillusionment and the dissolution of the original spirit of fun into competitiveness, rumor mongering, some of the liberal progressive man beating and cheating, lusting after two blonde leggy busty women, and otherwise mostly dating the ordinary, pretty, don't break the mold types. Just what you'd expect from people trying to change society and it's standards. (There were exceptions) And New Wave was ushering in a fresh batch of slender model subservient types.

The last song I did in Pittsburgh was copped from the back of Dexy's Midnight Runner's and was called 'Dirty Clothes Don't Hide Anything'� and chorused with a distinct organ riff form the band in question who were pretending to be poor:

'You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, when you've had everything it makes it easier to denounce"

That last thing that happened for me and punk in Pittsburgh was a retrospective on WYEP about Pgh punk. I was invited on at that point some of The Dykes did not even want their name mentioned as ever having been in the band.

Harry the Wire introduced me as 'Denise the Dyke' and asked me about the Dykes lyrics and I said something about the size of men's penises not mattering when they had fingers and tongues, and men not taking responsibility for pleasing women, and birth control.
Harry quickly said 'Okay, we'll be right back with more from Denise, but now we'll hear a song'� which was to be 'Hysterectomy' before the tape deck 'ate' half the tape after about 2 lines. And I was hustled out of the room with Lynne who had been there for moral support calling Harry a dick.

My favorite song I wrote in the Dykes was 'Paper Doll'�:

'You want me to be your little paper doll
dress me up take me out
prop me on the wall'

We each sang one verse slow singsong rhymey and the tiny Dorothy would blow a big shriek on her sax and bellow- getting her high soft voice into a vicious gravelly growl:

I REFUSE TO ACT THE PART ANYMORE

I had a cardboard doll on my lap at the drums and I would stand up and shred it to pieces. we would explode into delirious noise nobody together roaring through the lines until we got to the part about 'I CUT YOU OUT OF MY LIFE"
at that line and at that time I felt such a freedom from men, miles away from the inane party scene, incestuous in small cities.

And free from watching the whole thing drift from trying to tell the truth to being the rock dicks and stars that everyone claimed to hate just a few years earlier.

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