Rebel Girl, The Queen of My World

As a rapidly aging Gen-Xer it doesn't matter how hard I try to forget my age, the world seems set up to remind me. One of the most insidious ways this happens is social media posts or infotainment stories announcing the 25th or 30th anniversary of the release of a seminal piece of your childhood pop culture. When you're told that a record that helped to form part of your emerging personality in high school is turning 30 and the band are pushing their walkers aside to do a reunion tour it hits hard.

Having just turned 50 I had quite a few of these nostalgic experiences, much to my daughter's dismay. Music was one of the few things that still really connected us as she busily surged into her mid-20's. She would mention that she saw that some band I used to make her listen to when she was a kid was touring and I'd invariably reply with something like "I saw those guys play one of their very first shows at DC Space in... '92, I think. No, wait... I'm pretty sure it was '91 because it was my junior year. Shoot, I can't remember anymore."

She'd hit me with the kind of smile I used to give to my grandfather when he wiled away hours talking about his time working for the phone company, and I'd instantly know that I was boring her. But, then she'd casually mention how much she'd enjoy seeing that show and I'd buy tickets for us to go together. So in the end we both won.

But what really, really hurt was when some of these milestone anniversaries started cropping up for shit that came out when I was a stone cold adult. And thus I found myself sitting in my car waiting to take my daughter and her girlified to see the 20th anniversary tour of two bands I had listened to when she was a toddler.

She and her girlfriend bundled into my backseat each saying "Hi dad" and chuckling as usual. Ellie said it because I was her dad, Memphis said it because we had the same last name, Lucas, despite not being related. Being Mr. Lucas turned her calling me dad into an ongoing joke because Memphis had been disowned by her parents when she came out in college.

At first we chatted as I drove them to Merriweather, but eventually they settled first into a conversation between just the two of them and then finally into their phones. I bopped along to a playlist of the bands we were going to see that night while trying not to feel too much like an Uber driver.

Eventually Memphis broke the silence to say something along the lines of "Sorry Lisa is sick or whatever Luke." causing Ellie to whisper "Em!!!" to try and silently rebuke her for bringing up the reason our 4th ticket was going unused, namely that I had been stood up by the woman I was seeing.

Oh, and my name isn't Luke Lucas by the way. My parents sucked, but not that bad. Well kind of. When faced with the name Bertil McNeil Lucas III the best a guy could do in the 80's was to go by Bert, like my dad, which lead to being teased because of Sesame Street. So for a while I went by B.J which just caused a different type of teasing when I got older. So in high school I became Luke, and outside of teasingly calling me dad, that is what Memphis called when the transitioned from friends to a couple.

Her remark about Lisa being "sick or whatever" stung because it lead me to think that Ellie had shared what she had discovered about how I was stood up. Lisa had texted me a picture of a failed COVID test and saidSorry I won't be able to go tonight.

I forwarded it to Ellie and textedOh well, do you know anyone who wants the 4th ticket? but instead of texting back to let me know if she knew anyone, she called me to burst my bubble.

"Oh my god dad! That excuse is such bullshit!" I knew she didn't like Lisa, but I thought she might have been going a bit far.

"People get sick Elana." I replied using her own given name that she hated in an effort to drive my point home. But, I should have known better than to doubt the detective skills of a Gen-Z woman.

"Dad! Are you serious? This is like the third time this rag has done this to you." her use of her mother's favorite insult (a distilled version of "cunt rag") was obviously meant to driveher point home in return. "Did you even look at the metadata on the picture?" She asked, resting her case.

"No, why?"

"Because this picture is from May of 2021 Dad! She's not sick, she's being a petulant child because she didn't want to go on a double date with you and your dyke daughter!"

Finding out that she sent me an old picture smarted a bit. Lisa had sworn to me that she didn't have a problem with my daughter being gay, so I didn't think this was the actual reason. She had been canceling on me quite a bit recently, most of which I hadn't even told Ellie about.

It had only been a bit over a month since we started seeing each other but it seemed as if another of my relationships was coming to an end. Ellie's mom and I had split up shortly after Ellie turned 10, and in the intervening 15 years I had been in a few relationships but hadn't found any that really worked. If I'm being honest, I wasn't looking for another wife, just a companion... and maybe some sex. What? Even an old guy has needs.

As we walked into the venue Ellie jutted her chin at a blonde walking with two young women who were probably her kids and said "She's cute dad, and I don't see a ring."

"Oh god Ellie I hope you're talking about the age appropriate one... and I don't need help finding dates, thank you."

"A) of course I was talking about the age appropriate one, ew Dad. And B) Ah... yeah you do!"

I just rolled my eyes.

We split up so they could head for the merch line and I could hit the bathroom and get drinks. By the time I got to the seats they were already there looking at their Death Cab for Cutie shirts. Ellie was seated in the 4th seat in from the aisle and Memphis was next to her leaving me to figure out what the less awkward choice for me was.

Did I plop down in the aisle seat and leave a space between us and make it seem like I didn't want to sit right next to my daughter's girlfriend, or did sit next to her and and risk being even weirder? I opted for the aisle leaving me separated from the young ladies like a looser who was stood up.

The opener finished up a fantastic but mostly ignored set, and I chatted with the girls for a while before they ended up back in their phones again. As I sat there alone I resisted the urge to just pull my phone out, so instead I just scanned around crowd.

And that's when I spotted her.

One of the other things that sucks about getting older is that moment where you are 100% sure you know someone, but you can't figure out from when and where. About 5 rows in front of me were two middle aged women. The one of the left looked like just about every other Gen-X mom, but the one on the right - the one I swore I knew - looked hot, and maybe even a bit dangerous?

I've always like dangerous women.

She had mostly black hair but with shocks of gray at the temples that she didn't care to cover or hide as evidenced by her ponytail accentuating them. She wore either very little, or no make up,but still looked fantastic. She had a very tight black t-shirt on, and quite obviously no bra, which only stood to further show off the hard nipples caused by the mid-September evening chill. All this topped off some very tight black jeans, and - as I would eventually peep as she and her friend walked up the aisle past me - a pair of very well worn Doc Martins.

I couldn't tell if I kept looking at her because I was smitten or if I was just trying to place where I knew her from. She would turn and talk to her friend and I would feel like I was 97% of the way to figuring it out. But, I had lived in the DC Suburbs for my whole life. I had gone to college at the University of Maryland and had 5 different jobs both in the government and the private sector since graduating, so I could have known her from so many places.

"Why don't you go down and talk to her dad?" Ellie asked apparently seeing me repeatedly looking in that direction.

I just shrugged back at her, hoping she knew that I wasn't the "Don't I know you from somewhere?" pick up line kind of guy.

All through the Death Cab set she danced and sung at her friend and I kept glancing down hoping my memory would be jogged. After Death Cab finished I ran to get more drinks, only barely managing to make it back in time for the final set of the night from The Postal Service.

Once again the ladies a few rows in front of me sung and danced and I tried to steal glances in the dark to answer my riddle. I was sure it wasn't going to come to me, so I held my phone up like I was taking photos of the stage and tried to surreptitiously catch a few pics of them for later review.

As I snapped the pictures, the mystery woman grabbed the loops on either side of her jeans, and did a little butt shake to pull them up despite the fact that they were so tight they couldn't possibly be falling down.

Her butt looked good for her age. Hell, her butt looked good for any age.

Soon enough the show was over and I was driving the girls home. Luckily neither of them decided to pry anymore into my love life. They showered me with thanks as they climbed out of the car and I made Ellie promise to call her mom, like the old man I am.

When I got home I showered and headed to bed. I flipped through the pictures from the night as I laid there in the dark, kind of shocked by how many I had ended up taking of the mystery woman. I zoomed into look more closely at her face and was amazed again buy how good the zoom was on my new phone. Lisa was good for one thing, convincing me to pop the extra money on this new phone!

The more I thumbed through the pictures the more I started taking notice of other parts of her. The zoom allowed me to get a really great look at her perky tits and ever hard nipples as lit from the glow of the stage. I felt a bit of a stirring in my boxers and decided just to go with it. Before long I was full on jacking off to zoomed in pics of her face, tits, peekaboo belly and ass.

I ended up on the shot of her pulling up her jeans and lingered there, enjoying a pretty prominent panty line, more evident than I would have expected in black jeans and a dark background. Just as I was about to come I zoomed in so only her ass filled my screen and then bam: I shot my come on my belly, and sadly on my bed too.

Sleeping alone in a king sized bed means never having to lay in your own wet spot at least.

I texted Lisa the next day and saidI hope you're feeling better but then decided I'd just wait for her to respond. She never did, and so I guess we kind of ghosted each other. How very modern of us.

Over the next few weeks I jerked off to the pictures a few more times, but I still wasn't able to figure out if I actually knew her, and if so, from where.

As so often happens for me, it was music that served as the breakthrough for my memory. I couldn't remember the name of my boss at my first job, but when I heard a song I would often have vivid memories of hanging with friends listening to the record or taking a girl on a date to a show.

This particular epiphany was a bit more of a direct line to the memory though. I saw that another long dormant 90's band was reuniting for a show in DC and I snapped up tickets. As I ran on the treadmill that night after work I put on a playlist that contained two of the bands that were going to be on the bill, along with a bunch of other groups in the same oeuvre.

I listened to track after track from Velocity Girl, Veruca Salt, Tuscadero, Belly, and others. As my run was coming to an end the lightning struck the second I heard the opening notes of "Guitar Goddess" by Mount Pleasant.

That's who she was! She was Betty Black from Mount Pleasant! They were a DC area band who had some surprising success with their first record and got signed to Sub Pop. They seemed poised to blow up and even got to play on Letterman, but just as it looked like they were going to hit it big they quietly broke up in the summer of '96.

I had seen them a ton in '93 and '94 around DC, and had even been at the HFStival in '95 when the singer, Princess Pink famously got in a physical altercation with Courtney Love back stage.

Ugh, I had kind of forgotten about the name thing. I don't know if it was because of the movie Reservoir Dogs, but they did an alliteration plus color naming thing as the band gimmick. Robert The Red was the lead guitar player and wrote all the music. He had been in a bunch of other DC area bands off and on before he found the drummer, who went by Walter White years before that name got famous in another part of pop culture.

They recruited Princess Pink to be the main singer and rhythm guitar player, most likely because she was a knockout with an even better voice. All the area alternative boys lusted after her in her pink baby doll dresses, combat boots and choker necklaces. So much so that Courtney Love accused her of ripping off her look on local radio when promoting the show, which apparently lead to their fight.

Then there was Betty Black. In addition to writing most of the lyrics she was one of my very favorite species of 90's "Alternative Chicks": namely the kick ass bass player. She joined the likes of Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, Donna Dresch, Annie Holland, and Kerri Kenney among my very my favorite. Ever the contrarian (I'm a Pixies over Nirvana kind of guy) I always liked Betty Black the best though.

Damn it! Now I wished I had gone down and talked to her. Listen to Ellie Luke!

As the song played it got to the the part that instantly unlocked all my memories further, and went a long way to explaining my urge to jerkoff to her pictures. In addition to the name schtick the band employed another common trope of the time which lead me to include them on this playlist. They had gorgeous, bubble gum sweet melodies juxtaposed with confronting lyrics.

As Princess Pink and Betty Black harmonized you could assume they were singing about sugar and spice and everything nice, but only if you didn't speak English. Their lyrics were not only blunt, clever, and funny but often overtly sexual. I enjoyed many of their songs, but this one in particular.

I remembered the first time I saw them play it at the 9:30 Club in the summer of '93. The bass, drums, and lead guitar all stopped as Princess Pink stood licking the head of her guitar while slowly strumming. Then, Betty Black stepped forward and sweetly sang the start of the bridge:

Guitar Goddess wants you on your knees

Guitar Goddess likes to hear you plead

Guitar Goddess needs you to say "please"

Guitar Goddess has everything you need

and then the whole band came back in just as Betty screamed the final line of the bridge

Guitar Goddess likes that you're a sleaze

She was so fucking hot. The song was pretty great too.

The more I thought about her the more I realized why her tugging on her jeans resonated with me too. After Mount Pleasant broke up she started a punk band called Lunacist.

I had seen their very first show. That night she strutted onto stage sporting a shaved head while also topless with two black X's of electoral tape over her nipples. She was wearing post office uniform pants with a waste size that was just a bit smaller than her hips. They were cut off at her knee.

Not many people could make oversized gray polyester shorts with a black stripe down the side sexy, but she sure could.

As she sang the pants kept creeping lower showing off the waste band of her Jockey underwear. Every so often she would reach down and grab them and yank them up, doing the same little shimmy I had seen her do at the Death Cab show.

I wondered if she had a social media presence so I was about to Google her. Then I realized that I didn't know her real name. She had kept going by Betty Black in Lunacist but she must be going by her own name these days.

I ended up Googling "Mount Pleasant Band Betty Black Real Name" and I found an old article in the Washington Post about the band with the following line "The band's bassist Betty Black, born Elizabeth Martin, is a lifelong resident the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood of D.C. which is where the band get's its name."

Well Elizabeth Martin wasn't going to be an easy person to find, but I tried. I searched a few different ways using a combo of her name and band terms until I found a link to a nomination for Virginia Teacher of the Year 2017. The article talked about her huge impact on her students, including a few that she helped start a band called Daughters of Divorce.

I searched for them and found that they were still around and that they had an Instagram. So, I scrolled though their pictures, and sure enough I found one thanking "the best teacher ever" for donating some gear to them. They linked to her account, and so with one last click I got a pictorial recap of the last decade or so of her life.

Her bio said nothing of her time in bands but her pics had many little Easter eggs. She had one where was in a yoga pose wearing a cutoff Mount Pleasant tour shirt. I still had the same shirt somewhere. She also had shots on stage at the Black Cat with Lunacist from a reunion show a few years before that I somehow missed.

Most importantly, she had a pic from the show where I saw her a few weeks before. Without thinking too much, I decided to drop a comment on her picture.This was such a great show. I was seated a few rows behind you and I wanted to come say 'hi' but I didn't want to bother you. Right after hitting send I regretted it and almost deleted it.

As I lay in bed that night I decided that I should delete it after all, since I didn't want to come off like some kind of weirdo. But, when I went back to Instagram I saw that I had three DM's from her.

The first read:Hey, Do I know you?

Followed about a half hour later byNever mind. I'm guessing you know the band since I went creeping through your pics and saw one of you wearing an MP shirt.

That was quickly followed withWere you the guy on the end of the row with the two younger girls?

I couldn't believe she had noticed me at the show, but I was really floored that she had DMed me. The last one had come in about 20 minutes before, and I was thinking of what to reply, when I got another notification that she had commented on one of my photos. I clicked on it and saw that she had writtenHey, nice shirt!!! on a pic of me in the Mount Pleasant shirt from a hike 10 years before.

Was she still looking at my profile? Either way, I was determined to come up with a good reply to her DM. As I was still crafting it I got a notification that she followed my account. That really got my attention. I sat up and cracked my knuckles as I prepared to respond, but first I followed her back.

Hey, hi. Yes, that was me! That was my daughter and her GF I was with. I absolutely adore both your bands. I saw MP dozens of times all over the District, and was actually at the first ever Lunacist gig.

Ok. Probably pretty lame. But, as it turned out, effective.

OMG. You were at that show!?! Wait...

I didn't know how to respond to wait, but I delayed long enough that she beat me too it. About 5 minutes later I got another notification.

This you?

Which was followed by a photo of her on stage in nothing but her postal pants and electrical tape. I was confused for a second until she sent the photo again, this time with a red circle around the head of a guy in the front row.

Wanna talk about feeling old? I had to look at the pic a bit too long to determine that this particular 90's dude was not, in fact, me.

Sadly, no. But I was right down front that night too. I would have been wearing a baseball cap. I pretty much always did back then.