Punk Rock Chicks

In the cold war era, when our biggest perceived threat was a Russian nuclear attack (after which we'd all revert to savagery and shamble about the hills on mutated appendages), nobody was very concerned with airport security. This was particularly true in Flint, MI. The airport there, which at the time was named merely Bishop Airport but has since become Bishop International Airport, had an observation deck which could be reached by ducking down a hallway and then climbing two flights of stone steps. There was a metal door, a glassed-in observation booth, and then past the booth another metal door which led to porch of sorts, tucked behind a wall and bordered by a steel railing. From there you could watch the jets whine and rumble down the runway and you could hear the desultory conversations between the semaphore men. You were hidden from view there, tucked behind that blank wall. If the observation deck was empty (as it was many nights) then the pursuit of your amorous designs was impeded only by your shyness or self-doubt. I had once come up on the deck to see a couple lying in the very farthest dark corner of the porch, his spasming back and her loosely draped legs making it clear that they'd abandoned themselves to their desire. But to encounter someone else on the observation deck was a rarity; most everyone watched the planes from the comfort of the glassed-in lounge.

I took girls there, punk rock girls in leather coats who wore safety pins in their ears and noses. They had colorful plumes of hair cascading over shaved napes and combat boots laced up on their calves and they mostly tasted of smoke and candy. They put their mix tapes into my cassette player as we rode to the airport and when we arrived at the observation deck they rarely bothered much with conversation. We kissed and groped. In the winter I let my icy hands roam free inside their leather coats. Nothing really important happened. Occasionally we'd actually watch the planes. You could see the pilots, erect and epauleted in the yellow cockpit, talking to one another or twiddling knobs. The punk rock chicks had a special hatred for anyone in uniform and the bolder ones would shout profanity into the deafening whine of the engine. This attitude struck me as brave and sad; most of the girls were, like me, from working-class houses and a uniform of almost any kind represented a step upward. But to these girls uniforms represented the abuse of power, nothing more.

After high school, however, their attitudes were modified somewhat. One of their boyfriends would enter the armed services -- out of economic necessity, via a court order, or with the desire to better himself -- and then these punk rock girls carried about with them a picture of some shaved Marine at attention before a powder-blue backdrop, squinting at the camera with a mixture of defiance and fear. When these boys came home on leave they were loved extravagantly by their punk rock girlfriends and once they'd ditched the uniform for blue jeans and combat boots, they looked like any other skinhead. By unspoken consent we all pretended their life in the army was only a dream. Nobody talked about it. And the punk rock girls loved them up on porches, in basements, and behind stacks of chairs at the hall shows. When leave was over the girls went to the airport again but this time they stood on the observation deck to watch an olive-drab figure cross the tarmac and disappear into the airplane. Perhaps they took a friend. Perhaps they shared a bottle with a friend as they waved the lumbering plane into the sky.