Overheard in Chicago #7: Summer Shows

partying after the show: me with rebecca and jen of tyler john tyler

I arrived at the Sic Alps show on Saturday night, overwhelmed by the stench of male B.O. and stale Old Style. I scanned the crowd with my eyes, looking for a glimpse of that girl presence that always makes me feel so comfortable at shows. I elbowed my way to the front, so that I could see above all the 6-foot-tall bodies, and spotted some of the only other girls I know from the rock music scene bouncing along to the riffs.

A while later, I turned to one of my guy friends and said, "Man, it's so weird that there's not very many girls in the music scene in Chicago." He answered me, "Believe me, we're happy to have you. Before all you girls came onto the scene, who were we supposed to fuck?" He later told me he was kidding, that he knew we all played music, but the comment left a bad taste in my mouth. Did our gender make it necessary for the dudes in the scene to think of us as "groupies," and not as fellow music-lovers?

--Emma