Marilyn Manson, Middle School Dances, and Small Town Fear

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #180. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Ruminations on the power of the riff.

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When I was in middle school, my parents would let me listen to any music I wanted, with the exception of Marilyn Manson. In the mid-to-late 1990s, there were few artists who were more controversial than the mega-selling shock rocker and his pseudo-Satanic schtick was nightmare fuel for anyone with impressionable pre-teen kids. I didn’t think his music was especially good, but it was loud, rebellious and all of the things that an angry kid searching for a boundary-pushing outlet would be drawn toward. Plus, the fact that his CDs were off-limits in our house just made him all the more compelling.

At the time, we lived in a small town in a rural part of the upper Midwest, where I could not have felt more alienated from the kids around me. I was a military brat from an agnostic household who’d seen a little bit of the world, and most of the people in our town were at least somewhat religious, and born and raised in the middle of nowhere. Manson was a voice for kids who felt like they were on the outside of their surroundings, and anyone that made people I viewed as closed-minded squirm seemed like an ally in my book, even if I was also slightly scared of him.

As a coping mechanism, I developed a deeply self-deprecating and obnoxious sense of humor. In class, I’d talk back to teachers just to see what I could get away with, which for better or worse (mostly worse), was one of the few ways I found I could get positive reinforcement from my peers. When I’d go to school dances, I’d usually ask the DJ to play something louder and edgier than the R&B and pop country that was the standard fare for such occasions, usually something like Marilyn Manson or similarly edgy, just to see if they’d do it. These DJs definitely didn’t have any Manson on them, nor should they have had much patience with me either.

I don’t remember much about going to those middle school dances; more than anything, they were just an excuse to hang out with your friends, and most of them are distant, faded memories. Except for one that has stuck with me for uncomfortable reasons that I’ve never been able to fully reconcile in my mind. Nothing traumatic happened to me directly and I don’t remember anyone talking much about it after the fact. I also doubt that anyone else who was there remembers much about it today. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

The dances at my middle school were typically supervised by volunteer chaperones who kept the kids from getting unruly. At this one particular dance, a rumor went around that one chaperone had some sort of sexual misconduct in their recent past. I don’t know where this rumor came from, I don’t remember the exact details of the accusation, and I wasn’t immediately sure if I believed it. Kids are notoriously cruel, and I knew firsthand how it felt to be slandered with harsh words, for no other reason than being new and slightly different. However, it didn’t take long before we were given good reason to be suspicious of this guy. Nor did it take long before I felt like I was losing my mind for being the only kid to do something about it.

Before the dance officially started, but after kids had started to show up, the chaperones organized a game that was similar to Duck Duck Goose. Everyone was told to sit in a circle with their heads down and eyes closed while the chaperone walked around the circle and touched a random player “on the bottom” (this is their choice of words, verbatim) to tag them as “it.” This was unusual for several reasons, all which are obvious in retrospect, and should have been obvious to every adult involved in organizing this event.

First, this was the only time I remember being asked to play a game before a dance started. Second, middle school kids are too old for any variation of Duck Duck Goose. Third, even if it was an age-appropriate activity to keep a roomful of kids busy while things were getting set up, there is no functional reason why any participant – let alone an adult – should have needed to touch another player “on their bottom” when the customary tap on the head or shoulders would have worked just fine. It would also be odd for a kid to make up a story about a random adult committing sex crimes without cause; kids pick targets they perceive as weak, and there wouldn’t have been any reason to fabricate an allegation against this particular guy.

Based on the details that I can recall, everything points to the rumor mill having been onto something there. I have no idea if this man was actually a sex offender, but where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. I can’t remember if I left and went home after hearing the rules of the game, but I do remember refusing to play, without saying exactly why I didn’t want to join in. No one else did the same and I couldn’t understand how I was the only kid who thought we should have sat this one out. It seemed clear that something was wrong. Why did no one else see it?

Years later, the world would learn that Marilyn Manson, the artist that I loved most to dare DJs to play (because I was an idiot), is very likely a serial sexual predator, with a list of harrowing accusations against him that spans decades. It turns out my parents were right to ban his CDs from our house. Yet the reason why he was broadly feared by polite society when I was growing up was because his outlandish persona made people uncomfortable, not because the general public knew to suspect him of sexual abuse. I’ve heard the main riff from “The Beautiful People” played at football games, a clear sign his music has gone from shock rock to classic rock, having lost its perceived edge with age. Maybe if it was a Halloween dance, it wouldn’t necessarily have sounded that shocking, or that far out of place.

The scariest thing about Marilyn Manson had nothing to do with his art and everything to do with what he appears to be off-stage, which is a (distressingly) much more common and actually dangerous brand of monster than a theatrical anti-Christ rock star. Small town and suburban culture is often suspicious of anyone different from the norm, but doesn’t always realize that the people who are real threats sometimes look exactly like the norm. I’ll never know for certain if my school invited an actual predator into the building, but I do know what my gut tells me, and my gut is rarely wrong.

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Ben Sailer is a writer based out of Fargo, ND, where he survives the cold with his wife and dog. His writing also regularly appears in New Noise Magazine.