The Gospel of Mannequin Pussy at the Fremont Theatre
oh missy,
don’t you know i wore these boots for you?
Despite my upbringing in a household that encouraged extravagant dressing, I always have these doubts that I might be doing too much. I felt crazy handing my friend red duct tape, watching her cut out stars to place over my tits under the mesh shirt I was sporting. The bright red duct tape matched my crimson cowboy boots. Doing too much? Maybe. There was little hiding, but I didn’t need to for Mannequin Pussy.
I tried to jot down Mannequin Pussy’s setlist for their San Luis Obispo stop on Oct. 5, with my intent being to monitor how my emotions moved. If I could connect each song to a feeling, I figured it would be simple to relive the experience, over and over again. I got pretty far.
That Sunday night was the very last in Mannequin Pussy’s tour of two years, and their 155th show. The anticipation could be cut with a knife in the theatre, as the band members took their places, each of them wearing their own bold personality.
Starting the show with “Sometimes” was like opening a window that had been closed for too long. The introduction’s muted guitar and Missy’s soft singing initially paralyzed me, but the chorus brought my heart back to speed, bringing me to life with the performers.
Kaleen Reading went ham on the drums in a perfectly destructive way, Bear Regisford crunched a thick bass line and Maxine Steene, the newest edition to the band, ripped distorted, crazed chords. The venue floor was shaking.
“I Got Heaven” is strong and serious, maintaining a dreamy quality through the album’s sonic shifts. I love it with every bone in my body; however, when Missy introduced the next song as a “work in progress” that the band had written on the two-year tour, the track took me back to “Romantic” and “Patience.”
The unreleased song had the slightly fuzzy, distorted vocals and tone that I had known so well from their days as a smaller band.
Once Missy picked up the guitar, I knew I could kiss taking notes goodbye. She voiced my internal excitement as she declared we were going to have “some fun.” Quickly, my notes became a slurred mess of type, and lack thereof, as I moved from my spot at the back of the Fremont’s pit, towards the front.
As I moved to the middle, I found the rest of my friends jostling each other amidst their own small pit. The air was at least ten degrees hotter in the pit than at the outskirts of the crowd. I could hear everything clearly, but I wanted more. I decided to take my earplugs out and sacrifice some hearing damage for the special occasion.
Keeping track of songs was a lost cause. There was no room for my hands to even grab my notebook. I could feel the warmth starting to settle into my skin.
I watched the beautiful queer people, ferocious women, random loud dudes behind me and millennial adults sitting in the theater chairs; no one knew what they were about to feel.
I felt that anticipation four years ago in a cramped, dark venue in Oakland, where I saw Mannequin Pussy in the height of my moodiest teenage years. The sides of my head were shaved and purple, and I had just started getting into eyeliner.
My notes will tell you the exact second when “I Got Heaven” started playing. I felt blank, shoved in a pocket and busy. The pit overtook me, and I floated as the people around me lifted my red boots off the ground. I practically flew as we moshed against each other — punching, pushing, jumping, loving.
Sweat was seeping into the waist of my jeans, dampening my hair, dripping down the side of my face. The wavy synth guitar pierced my ears, and the skillful drums thumped so loudly my chest started vibrating. But nothing beat how I screamed and dived into the pit, dangerously unfocused on anything but the sounds.
The Mannequin Pussy ritual is one I recommend in a daily dose. Missy took a moment to ask, “Why are we all here?”
She spoke softly, beckoning us in closer. I was pressed against the barrier, hanging onto her every word. Her sentences were sickly sweet, resembling a fairytale character luring children into her lair, a place we gladly oblige.
So why were we at the Fremont Theatre that night, San Luis Obispo? The simple answer is rage. Rage can overwhelm; it is the poison that births monsters. It is in all of us if you look closely.
The band stood idly by, ready for the audience to release every ounce of anger. We all patiently watched Missy, waiting for her to urge us to release the rage in our stomachs. Her suggestion, no, command, was to scream as loud as fucking possible.
And so … scream we did. It stripped my throat, my head spun and my body was drenched in sweat that wasn’t all mine. I was the dirtiest and freest I had ever been.
When the show was over, I was yearning for more. I could tell others felt the same, as I found myself with my friends outside.
We stood outside the venue for so long that everyone was gone except for us. The theater lights were off, and I imagine the band was celebrating the end of their two-year tour somewhere in a bar nearby or on their bus.
This was my celebration: eating a plum from a bike basket. The sweat dried on my skin, making me shake. I was dying for water, but refused to leave the venue, like it might hold me safe forever on a Sunday.
I looked down at my red boots, now scuffed black with dirt. The next day was Monday. I had to go to my 9 a.m. class and act like I hadn’t been liberated the night before.
