Demiromantic Chronicles: When a Hardcore Frontman Knew I Was On the Aro Spectrum 10 Years Before I Did

I fire up the wayback machine and tell a story from the third wave of NYHC, when a first-wave band came back on the scene and the singer picked up on something that took me over 20 years to realize.

If there’s anything in this life I can count on, it’s that intensely stupid things happen to me on a regular basis.

Nowhere has this been truer with my love life, whether I wanted the interaction with the man in question or did not.

I don’t get nice, easy shit like other women do. Oh, no. I’m not fucking here for your little normie stories about how you swiped your way through the men who don’t read dating profiles, you mucked through the verbal abuse and dick pics until you finally found a guy who was halfway normal, went on your coffee dates, and somehow you now live together. Or perhaps you met a friend’s friend and moved in together within a month, got engaged within a year.

I’m genuinely happy for you if you found a partner some way and things worked out, and that is great. Personally, I’ve just…gotten a lot of bullshit and endless stupidity that defies comprehension?

I have stories of false starts, one night stands, and these bits of courtship that never went anywhere. Harmless fun and grievous trauma in those stories. But I experienced a plethora of intensely stupid adventures mostly within the confines of the tough and insular subculture from which I came. Some of which I can fondly look back on, and others make me wonder how I haven’t completely lost my faith in humanity when I put those vinyls back on the turntable in my mind.

And it was two different men in the same band who inadvertently showed me something about myself that took ME almost two decades to realize.

I’m not naming the band to protect the not-so-innocent. They weren’t as big as Agnostic Front in the photo or other household names, though. Lol to the sweet summer child I met at Midnight Hour who asked me if AF was my band. Oh god, he was probably born when I was at CBGB’s every other night until they closed.

It started when I picked up a random EP on a whim at Generation Records one day.

The turn of the millennium really was this strange frontier. It sounds obvious when I type it out or say it out loud, that it was a cross between how things still worked in the 20th century but also a glimpse at what would come.

But really, that’s how it was. Society, but especially subculture outside the mainstream that firmly refused to adopt newfangled ways of buying music like iTunes compared to the security of owning a CD, clung to old social mores like cellophane while the rest of the world was attempting to go forward. This divide was palpably felt in the subcultural world.

I’d often wile away afternoons in NYC’s then-thriving alternative quarter. A short hike from the action on the Lower East Side and St. Marks Place, Generation Records in the West Village was the quintessential underground music culture destination. It was a hub for buying, selling, and trading albums in addition to buying your tickets for big 3-day shows like Superbowl of Hardcore, with flyers for local basement shows out front.

Miraculously, Generation survived when so many old guard standbys didn’t. If rapacious corporate takeovers of Manhattan real estate and owner deaths didn’t murder beloved venues and small shops overnight, COVID or times a-changing did. Somehow, Generation held up all this time.

I have many fond memories of discovering all kinds of obscure bands when I’d browse the used punk CDs and just pick up some random comp that was $2. Sometimes I picked one just because the cover looked cool; we’ve all done it. I’d flick through the jewel cases and would sometimes see local bands I knew. I’d come back at a later date and gleefully find EPs and full albums from bands I discovered through those comps on previous trips, if not through people I hung out with in real life or on PunkConnect.

So, I found this first-wave NYHC band’s EP in the used CD bin for $5. I’d vaguely heard their name before, figured it was worth a listen.

I took that EP home and was floored at how incredible it was. Not just the songs themselves, but the quality of the recording. Unsurprising since the EP was produced by one of the big cheese engineers in hardcore and metal recording (some of you old scenesters may know who I’m talking about).

For younger readers, “EP” means “extended play”. EPs had more songs than a single, which was usually just one or two songs that often included a remix or two of the song that everyone would come to associate with that band. So you needed at least five songs or so to merit an EP, but not enough material to be considered a full album. Scrappy DIY bands in punk and hardcore frequently put out EPs because as the nature of indie music goes, you couldn’t afford to put out a full album if you wanted it professionally recorded and mixed. With real liner notes, photography, and the works. Before songs were written to have 10–15 second snippets meant to be seen on TikTok in the hopes millions of people would catch onto it and discover bands that way, putting an album together was a huge deal for both the artist and fans. It was a process to listen to that record or CD, take in the art and style, and engage with what was in the liner. Liners could be bare bones, some had lyrics printed, others used the liners to tell stories and get creative with it.

While the liner of this particular EP was of the bare bones variety, the songs definitely weren’t.

They spoke of the harsh upbringings many people in the scene experienced: growing up in abusive homes, seeing your friends die young because of addiction, yearning for chances to start over, and trying to stay positive with your newfound family in the scene through it all.

When I revisited this EP to remember how I felt at the different chapters of my life that this band was present, one of the songs was about regret and starting over. It sure hits different 20 years after I found that EP when I was 19, especially since I sought a new start across the country from my origins a year prior to the time of writing.

Life went on and it remained a treasured EP in my vast collection of local punk and hardcore albums, EPs, and singles of various levels of renown.

Then the band got back together.

About seven years later, I inadvertently found myself hanging around those guys frequently.

What’s funny is that I don’t think I ever mentioned to them how much I adored that EP. I guess it was because even though I’d been out of the last band I was in for two years at that point, I wanted to be seen as an equal and not a squeeing fangirl.

I think this was wise, given what was about to go down.

So let’s call the guys in the band Jay, Dan, and Mike. That’s obviously not their real names, but those are the names of virtually every guy I ever played in a band with, shared a stage with, or ran into at shows umpteenth times. Jay the singer, Dan the guitarist, Mike the drummer, and they had a revolving door of bassists so I honestly don’t even remember the missing fourth member of that lineup.

Jay was in prison for some time. I forgot what he was in for. Probably drugs? America is the most carceral state in the world and if he was some rich boy from Long Island, he probably would’ve gone to a dry-out facility on the north shore then reemerged in a few months. But being a poor guy from Queens, he just went to the state pen.

Some bands die, or temporarily halt, when the frontman or other key founding member has one of those larger-than-life personalities but they get deposed in some way. Usually courtesy of drugs, illness, jail, or death. While I knew many a band that ended because life just ran its course on them or an irreplaceable member died, this one got back together with most of the original line-up.

I never predicted that this band I just listened to every morning en route to my crappy minimum wage job, later school when I went back, was going to be in my social circle frequently. But that’s just how the life went at the time. Whoever you saw around at shows all the time, and were constantly playing shows? That’s just who you eventually hung with all the time outside of shows and in what was then-burgeoning online life like MySpace.

I built some great friendships that way. Two of which are still in my life. The others, I’ll say hi to if I’m visiting the homeland but we aren’t that close. Some of them, I moved on from if they didn’t move on from me or were lost to addiction, gentrification, abandoning the scene entirely, starting families, and other tides of life.

But here I was, now regularly hanging with this band from the first wave of NYHC that didn’t get the recognition they deserved, but were finding fans in the new blood that now populated the scene.

Jay was an acerbic straight shooter with a ribald sense of humor. Mike was a sweetheart, though he had this creepy friend who was really into me. He actually predated this band’s reunion, as he was one of those weirdos who’d harass my entire band to get a word in with me and I’d have to get my 6'7" singer to make him fuck off. Mike would desperately try to wing-man him. Even when I ran away screaming.

Dan seemed like a nice and level-headed fellow, not as in your face as his bandmates but affable to everyone. Being the only uptown guy in the band while I was in The Bronx, it was inevitable that he’d accompany me on our journeys back up north until he had to get off the subway first. I appreciated that, it meant enduring fewer creeps for at least part of the ride.

We’d chat at shows and online during the week about bands, politics, and life stuff (which I was dealing with plenty of at the time). I was 26, Dan was 45. Honestly, it seemed like a genuine intergenerational friendship like the kind I’d observed my entire time in the scene. Plenty of bands had players with that kind of age difference.

But if you got this far into this piece, you can probably assume Dan did not see it that way. And you’d be right.

It was just another Saturday night that I was at a local show at some random bar in Queens. They played with a couple other local punk and hardcore bands and it was a fun night until I was alone with Dan at the bar. I remember passionately talking about the headlining band, who were first-wave like them and just had a reunion, but it was cool they were playing this dingy shithole instead of getting top billing at the few good clubs left in the city.

Suddenly, Dan blurted, “Come home with me. I just to take you home with me so bad.”

I stood there like I was staring at a car wreck. It was so completely out of the left field, just out of fucking nowhere. I just yelled “What?!” in total disbelief.

Not for nothing, Dan was a pretty good-looking guy for his age. I loved our long talks about music, society, and local politics. Nothing about the way he’d acted around me struck me as predatory or unseemly, when I had experienced plenty of that from older men in the scene. So it’s not like Dan couldn’t get a date on his own merits, or just get laid. He was in a band, for crying out loud!

And now that I’m also older and wiser, having had many sexual adventures both amazing and hilariously bad, I get that men often come out strangely when shooting their shot.

Straight men reading this, hopefully you won’t screw this up like Dan did because he just went from 0 to 10 in a matter of 6–8 months when I enjoyed our friendship and never gave any signals I was romantically or sexually available to him.

Shellshocked, I told Dan that I liked him as a friend but didn’t want to sleep with him. He swigged his drink as the defeat rose in his eyes. “A man’s gotta try. How did you never guess that I like you?”

Because I’m a fucking oblivious dweeb, Dan. All of my people-reading and investigative skills I’ve cultivated as a business consultant, writer, and game dev over the years go completely out the window. He has to TELL ME he likes me and wants to date, or give other cues he’s interested.

I’ll give him credit for at least bluntly saying he wanted to sleep with me.

Then I’ll never forget the day I was in some hole in the wall bar in Brooklyn before the borough completely gentrified to fuck, and Jay pulled me aside.

It was about a month after I rebuffed Dan’s advances at that show.

He completely stopped talking to me. He never even apologized for that random outburst.

It was just so awkward that I didn’t even demand an apology, or an explanation, like I maybe should’ve. But I’m not going to blame myself here. Dude was incredibly forward, I wasn’t into him that way, and rather than just take the L, he completely threw out our friendship.

Dan never even said hi to me at shows ever again, or if we saw each other around the alternative quarter. Looking back on this, that’s just an incredibly immature way for a man closer to 50 than 20 to act and it shouldn’t be excused. And no, I’m not going to be “just grateful it didn’t get violent”.

But now we’re going to pivot the focus to the singer, Jay.

I didn’t let Dan’s weirdness stop me from going to shows they happened to play, I was always there for the other bands, my friends, and the rest of our community. I was at a show they happened to be playing, where Dan ignored me while Jay and Mike were happy to see me. They played their set, the next band played theirs, then as the headliner was setting up, Jay suddenly cornered me at the bar.

“I gotta ask you something, Rachel.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s your deal? You married, you seeing anyone?”

Oh Christ. Dan blatantly asked me to go home with him. So because I said no, Jay’s going to try his luck too? Or is this for Mike’s weird friend who’s been trying to sleep with me since I still had a band? Goddamn it, why can’t I just get this kind of blatant talk from the few men I actually went harder for than a Municipal Waste song?!

So, this entire piece was the long version of the anecdote I briefly mentioned in closure upon coming out on the aspec! (Some old school Warzone got love in its predecessor too, about always knowing you were different but never being able to pinpoint how.)

I told Jay that I was single, but not looking to be in a relationship with anyone right then. I didn’t want to get into the gritty details, like that I definitely felt SOME desire for a partner, but not enough to sleep with his guitarist who was apparently down bad to be my boyfriend.

Jay raised his eyebrow and replied, “Whole bunch of guys curious about how they never seen you come into shows with anyone, they only see you LEAVE with a guy. Lot of guys want to know what’s up with this mysterious chick from The Bronx they’ve seen around forever.”

And a little over 10 years later, I came out as being on the aromantic spectrum!

But seriously, Jay asked out of honest curiosity. He didn’t even bring up Dan, who was apparently still butthurt over my turning him down. I thought I gave him a good enough answer.

I don’t know or care how many men he gossiped with, or why I was supposedly an interesting subject. God, no one fucking gossips like a bunch of guys in the hardcore scene. You think cheerleaders and high school mean girls rule that roost? NO. YOU HAVEN’T HUNG AROUND HARDCORE BANDS ENOUGH.

But all the same, even cishet people who want romantic relationships can be on the aspec. We violate gender norms, I definitely always have.

Even in rebel culture spaces, there’s going to be culture shock. And sometimes, subcultures can still reflect misogyny, social conservatism, and the like. I definitely experienced and observed plenty of tough guy shit and slut-shaming in those circles.

I always felt it was a much bigger deal to enter a relationship than have a one-night stand. Apparently, I shocked many first-wave men to the core with this belief.

But somehow, Jay picked up that I was different and he didn’t hassle me about it. He didn’t try to twist it to hit on me, then slut-shame me when I said no, although he didn’t say anything to my face about turning down his bro, like “Why didn’t you give him a chance?” that I sometimes got from guys I turned down. He also didn’t use that cringe “You’re not like other girls!” line that usually predicates using a woman to emotionally jerk off.

A hardcore singer who dropped out of high school and spent time in the big house figured out I was demiromantic over 10 years before I did. Goes to show that the human experience is vast and the power of observation isn’t solely granted to the educated gentry.

Looking back on turning down my chances at relationships, including Dan, I have no regrets.

The chud-cels rage about how women over 30, let alone over 35, have “hit the wall” or “lost their value” or whatever other misogynistic bullshit they tell themselves. But in being secure in who and also what I am at 37, I looked back at what I see were my three chances to have a serious boyfriend, possibly husband, before I was 30.

I have no regrets for turning all of them down! None!

The incel chuds would think I’m full of regret for not locking it down while I was younger, and a total mess. I slept with two out of those three men, the third being Dan. I felt zero emotional connection and I honestly don’t think ANY of them would’ve made good partners. Dan was only deceptively nice, I felt he was being immature by icing me out after I declined him.

But since this retrospective is through an aspec lens, specifically a demiromantic lens:

I didn’t feel emotional connection or romantic attraction to any of them. That’s it.

I don’t see how that’s so complicated or merited years of speculation from the most gossipy men in the scene who saw me freely hook up, yet didn’t pine to make one of them my boyfriend. (Well, there WAS one, but when I saw it couldn’t happen, I took the L and moved on.) When Jay said I was “different” and “mysterious”, I thought that was just more tripe that older men used to try to have sex with us. But it turned out he was actually onto something.

While I need to be friends or sex partners with a man first, which I was one of those things with those three men, it doesn’t mean emotional connection will happen. I can’t force it.

They were down bad for me, but I didn’t want them that way. How is that so hard to comprehend?!

Why would I want to sign up for spending my life with a guy I feel no romantic attraction towards, just to make him happy while I would rather get a pap smear from Edward Scissorhands than spend time with him?

I got mixed messages and bullshit from the men I wanted to be with, but felt nothing for the men who were dying to be with me. The media would tell you I’m the one at fault here, or that I’m chasing and choosing the wrong men, when I see it as the way the chips fell. Because please, you don’t think men choose the wrong women? That they go with Ms. Right Now instead of a woman they’re genuinely excited to spend their lives with, just because they don’t want to be alone? Like they haven’t picked women who are more aesthetically pleasing to show off to their bros, but don’t fulfill them emotionally and sexually?

For crying out loud, I’ve now had that shit happen in both the hardcore scene and the reptile hobby. Leave me alone, unhappily married men. Break up/get a divorce if you’re so miserable with her, or find ways to make your differences work. Work on your shit and leave me and other women out of it regardless.

I last felt that rare emotional connection over five years ago, with a man I met under THE stupidest circumstances that I never saw coming in a million light years. (VHS Tape Guy, if you read my other Ace Space pieces.) He was the diametric opposite of the tough and emotionally stunted men I’d known my entire life in the mosh pits and grimy streets of NYC, and probably someone I never would’ve allowed in my bed at a point in history when more “normal” men did not get with alternative women unless it was sex work.

But I felt that connection after just one night, whereas I never felt it with Dan despite being friends for at least half a year and seeing each other in person frequently at shows.

While he iced me out completely after I turned him down, I’m just glad he didn’t make me babysit his stupid boner feelings like I had to when I moved to LA and someone I thought was a friend made me incredibly uncomfortable to the point I stopped wanting to hang out.

I finally gained clarity when I came out last year, and will continue to parse out the demiromantic experience here at The Ace Space.

Will I feel that connection, and romantic attraction, ever again? Will it just be fucking mutual this time and not be some one-sided casual sex thing or finding out he has a girlfriend? With 40 being just two and half years away, I don’t know. Really losing hope there.

But I’m not desperate or full of regret. I know what I am now. I wasn’t simply being “too choosy” in turning down this horny older guy who didn’t see me as a friend after all, while his singer actually figured out what the aro spectrum was before millions of other people did!

And I never thought in a thousand goddamn years that when I picked up a CD at Generation one day when I was 19, two of the band members were going to be part of my romantic history in some way well into my late thirties.

So I’m just going to embrace the stupid things that keep happening.