MY CELLMATE’S A KILLER, THEY MAKE ME DO PUSHUPS IN DRAG
(CW: slurs (f and c), homophobia, violence, implied rape)
“They say Detroit is one of the toughest cities in the world. But today, Detroit, the girls have been tougher than the boys…and I know that I’m pretty, but I ain’t that fuckin’ pretty. Boys, let me hear what you got! One more time, boys, let me hear what the fuck you got! Alright, are you a bunch of animals? It’s time we start acting like animals. Boys, this song is just for you! But I want you to do one thing for me…I want you to take your fucking shirts off–just the boys!–get your shirts off and swing it over your fuckin’ head! I don’t care if you a size 32 or a size 48 or a size 64! Holy shit, look at all those shirts. Pull out, pull out with those bullshit cameras. Pull out! Look at all the fuckin’ shirts! I think we ‘bout to turn this motherfucker ‘round!”
Gerard introducing “You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison,” Projekt Revolution 2008.
“You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison” is about exactly what it sounds like. And it sounds a little like a “don’t drop the soap” joke or something equally in poor taste–I would argue, in many senses, it is–so it would be fairly easy (and I have done so before) to write it off immediately as Problematic. And it is! This is a fucked up, campy, tongue-in-cheek song about being raped in prison. As Gerard so eloquently put it, “This song got us arrested in France, ‘cause it’s about getting fucked in the ass!” Despite the sardonic tone and over-the-top stage antics coupled with its performance, however, I would argue that “Prison,” rather than simply making light of the patriarchal violence it references, is exemplary of how closely gender/sexual transgression and violence are conceptually bound in MCR’s discography, and tells something deeper about the everyday violence heteropatriarchy wields against those of us who don’t conform to it.
In My Chemical Romance songs, there is no same-sex desire or gender transgression without mutilation or murder crowded right up next to it. In“Mama,” the Patient laments “what the war did to my legs and to my tongue,” and in the next line wails, “You should’ve raised a baby girl! I could have been a better son!” Maleness and the incorrect performance thereof are thus linked to the disfigurement in the line preceding–if only the narrator had done better at being a man, or had not been one at all! In “To The End,” (based on Faulkner’s gruesome “A Rose For Emily”) the “groom” described is “not around/he’s always looking at men/Down by the pool, he doesn’t have many friends/As they are/Face down and bloated/Snap a shot with the lens.” Same-sex desire and death are in the same breath. “Bury Me In Black,” a demo B-side from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, scathing, cries, “I wanna see what your insides look like/I bet you’re not fuckin’ pretty on the inside!” and analogizes beauty to drug addiction and its accompanying body-horrors:
Just give us war-worn lipstick, blood, and purifying flame
I sleep in empty pools and vacant alleyways
And what I’m going through, shot lipgloss through my veins
And in “Give ‘Em Hell, Kid,” Gerard screams:
Well I’m a total wreck and almost every day
Like the firing squad or the mess you made
Well don’t I look pretty walking down the street
In the best damn dress I own?
Consider, then, this interview where Gerard describes a day during his time at SVA when he, well, walked down the street in his best damn dress:
Interviewer: In ‘You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison’ the main character is made to do pushups in drag. If you were forced to so something in drag, what would you choose to do?
Frank: I liked the “if you were forced, what would you choose to do.”
Gerard: It’s like the drag fairy comes by and says, “what would you like to do?” Umm yeah, karate.
Gerard: Really. I would do what I did when I dressed in drag this one time before. I went to school in drag, in art school and my day was completely different because everybody thought I was a chick.
Frank: He looked like Christina Ricci.
Gerard: You should see me as a chick. I went as a girl, as like an experiment and it worked really well and everyone was really nice to me, but I couldn’t talk obviously… You know train conductors were really cool to me on my commute.
Frank: I would date Gerard.
Gerard: HA! I looked hot as a chick.
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