“It seems like your lyrics objectify women, portraying them in a rather male gaze-type fashion. I know this wasn’t the reason Mrs. Whitley brought you here, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t address what appears to be early stages of toxic masculinity in you two before this gets worse,” Ms. Hemway-Fischer elaborated.
Travis and I looked at each other as if to ask “what language is this lady speaking right now?” Neither of us had an answer.
Ms. Hemway-Fischer must have noticed our confused looks. “Here, I’ll read your lyrics back to you and let’s see if you can find the parts that may be problematic, okay?”
Neither of us responded as we maintained the same expression, but she started reading anyway:
Innocent virgin Traveling alone The last piece needed For tonight’s ritual She does not know How crucial she will be In the resurrection Of our dark deity We quickly gag her mouth Tie her hands and feet Force elixir down her throat Make her fall asleep
Ms. Hemway-Fischer paused and looked up at us. “Well?” she asked, “Which part of this seems problematic to you?”
Frankly, the worst part was hearing some school administrator read the metal lyrics I had just written back to me. Don’t get me wrong, I was proud of what I wrote, but it was the first time I had tried to write lyrics of my own and I was still a little shy about them. I probably would have waited to show anyone outside the band, but thanks to Mrs. Whitley that was no longer an option.
Travis took his best stab at answering the guidance counselor’s question: “Is it that not all the lyrics rhyme perfectly? We know, that was intentional. Most extreme metal lyrics don’t rhyme at all, but we threw in a few slant rhymes where it made sense.”
Ms. Hemway-Fischer tried to hide her impatience, but her poker face had a few weak spots. “No, that’s not what I mean. Let me keep reading this out loud. Try to pay attention to the parts of your song that portray women in a patriarchal manner.”
A what manner? She continued reading before I could ask what she meant:
Take her to the dungeon Prepare the altar Light the torches Carve the pentagram Chain the young maiden To the unholy symbol Chant the incantations As she begins to awake Rousing from her slumber She finds herself surrounded Hooded figures holding candles Murmuring in tongues
Ms. Hemway-Fischer looked up at us again. “Notice any part of these lyrics that maybe aren’t so kosher?” she asked.
“If this is about the lyrics not having a consistent number of syllables from stanza to stanza, don’t worry about that. It looks all janked up on paper, but it will make sense when we sing it over the instrumental,” Travis casually responded.
At this point I thought I was catching on to what our guidance counselor was implying, but I was more than happy to let Travis incorrectly guess, to her bemusement. It’s not like I wanted to drag this appointment on, but we were clearly not in very much trouble for the content of our lyrics, and the alternative was returning to Mrs. Whitley’s history class. If we were going to be grilled by an adult authority figure, we could at least make it a learning experience; we would have her elaborate on which parts really rustled her jimmies, that way we’d know how to write lyrics that were even more offensive to people in positions of power.
Ms. Hemway-Fischer’s look of impatience and frustration was becoming even more apparent. She tried to force a smile over it, “No, that’s not exactly what I’m getting at. Let’s try a few more stanzas. I’m sure you’ll get what I’m trying to say in this next part.”
I shot Travis a look as if to say “Nice work, man. Keep playing dumb, it’s working wonders,” but Travis’s expression when he stared back at me suggested he genuinely had no idea what our guidance counselor was trying to explain to him.
Ms. Hemway-Fischer continued to read:
She asks where she is But before she gets an answer One of the hooded figures Lifts a dagger to her throat Before she can scream Her jugular is severed Virginal blood Covers the altar Final sacrifice On a moonlit night Our work now complete Soon our dark lord will arise
Ms. Hemway-Fischer looked back up at us as she finished reading our lyrics. “Well,” she asked, “now do you see what I mean?”
Now it was my turn to play dumb. “Well, yeah, but I thought you said you weren’t concerned about the violent content of our lyrics.”
Ms. Hemway-Fischer’s poker face slipped entirely, but it didn’t give way to anger. Not anger at us, at least. Instead, she appeared to be more upset with her older colleagues like Mrs. Whitley, who were clearly teaching from an outdated version of the outrage manual. Now, Ms. Hemway-Fischer, as a recent graduate who was up to speed on all the current moral panics, would have to compensate by identifying and stopping students’ undesirable behavior before it was too late. We were eager to learn what this undesirable behavior was, but not because we wanted to stop doing it. This might be the most valuable lesson we’d receive at Felmore Middle School.
Ms. Hemway-Fischer looked directly at us and spelled it out: “Your song is about a gang of men who kidnap and murder a woman as part of some ritual virgin sacrifice.”
As she said this, I realized we never specified the sexes of any of the hooded figures in the lyrics. Sure, we had been imagining them as men, and our guidance counselor seemed to infer as much, but we never said so explicitly. I made a mental note to change the lyrics to make it clear the hooded figures were all men. We couldn’t have any accidental gender equality and risk not offending people.
“This woman has no autonomy of her own,” the guidance counselor continued, “She is merely an object in these hooded figures’ plot to summon some kind of supernatural entity.”
“They’re summoning a demon,” Travis replied, “And she’s actually the most important, most crucial object in their plot. We don’t go into the details of the entire ritual in this song, but the occult people in the robes need to sacrifice a new virgin on the night of a full moon for seven full moons in a row. If they go an entire full moon night without sacrificing a virgin before the sun comes up, they have to start over again from the beginning on the next full moon. The sacrifice in this song is the seventh one, so if they were to screw something up on this night, the six previous virgin sacrifices they had done would have been a waste. So the chick in this song is actually a pretty big deal.”
Travis was the perfect example of being just the right amount of dumb and the right amount of smart at the same, perfect time. He was completely missing the point our guidance counselor was trying to make, but made an excellent rebuttal to the point he thought she was making, prompting her to further elaborate. This continued for a few more minutes, allowing me to take ample notes on the best ways to write even more offensive lyrics, until Ms. Hemway-Fischer caught a glance at the clock.
“Oh, shoot. You guys are going to be late for your next class. It looks like we’re going to have to put this conversation on pause,” she said.
Crap. I was hoping we’d be able to keep her ranting all day so we could learn something useful for once instead of being stuck in English and pre-algebra. Oh well, at least we got an interesting diversion from our boring class routine.
“We can continue our chat this afternoon after classes let out. How about you guys meet me here in my office at 3:05, that should be enough time to get here from your last class of the day.”
Uh, oh. Were we in trouble now? Maybe our whole “play dumb” strategy had backfired (well, really it was just my strategy. Travis may have been the real deal).
“I just want to make sure you two fully understand my concerns with your lyrics, since I don’t think I’ve quite reached you yet. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble or anything. I’m the one who dropped the ball. I clearly haven’t explained this the right way, and it’s my job to make sure you’re not struggling with any toxic mentalities as developing young men.”
Oh, we weren’t in trouble? That’s funny, because I usually equate being held after class to being in trouble.
My head was swimming in questions as Travis and I left Ms. Hemway-Fischer’s office to head to English class. Was she going to drop the “nice” persona and just berate us for being a couple of sexist pigs? Is that what she meant by explaining it the “right way?” Did she know we were playing dumb and wasting her time? Is this her way of saying “two can play at that game?”
Although Travis may have just had a smart streak at the perfect time a few minutes prior, he had another smart streak just then, the absolute worst time: “What are we supposed to do about band rehearsal? We’re supposed to practice with Charlie directly after class.”
Crap! Not only were we now “not in trouble” for defending our offensive lyrics to our guidance counselor, we were also about to be in hot water with our pro wrestler-sized bandmate, whom everyone in school thought was a demon. I know I said agreeing to jam with him was one of the best decisions I had ever made, but that was when someone else was on his bad side, not me.
I never thought I’d write this, but I had to decide if I was going to disobey my middle school guidance counselor, or disobey my middle school janitor. And I wasn’t sure which was worse.