When carousing on a Tuesday night in Kalamazoo, Michigan, some stroller-abouts might have trouble finding something “relatable.” More so if if they happen to be a straight, white, male.

You get weird looks in the bars, surrounded by hordes of glassy-eyes ogling your Levi’s and plaid, and all the restaurants have funny names for the drinks like “Rainbow Hobgobbler,” or “Jackie Gleeson’s Log Cabin Party.”  By golly it even seems like the way I wear the bristly spider hairs on my face becomes subject to public criticism; especially on Tuesdays.

It happens everyday. Taking over the music scene, too. Gays, lesbians, transexuals, transgender, all the Alphabet Soup Party members burst out the perfectly matched shutters, periwinkle closets, and checkerboarded picnic tables of the Vine Street Neighborhood, screaming and hollering indecipherable rants on “acceptance,” “tolerance,” “community,” and “identity” into the atmosphere, inevitably linking up to the hive minded stage over at the 411 Club also known as Metro.

Spinning off of these choruses and chasms is what can be considered “queer-core,”  what show-booker and house-venue operator Rory Svekric describes as a genre that askews “ ‘heteronormatively’ written” songs “that need to be fudged a little to be relatable.” They may or may not contain members of the overwhelming  majority that is the LGBTQA as well. That’s why she booked the Bloomington, Indiana queer-core pop-punk trio High Dive for her show tomorrow at Milhouse–and maybe for lead singer Toby Foster’s playful lisp, or the quick bursts of energy that surround their two-and-half minutes diddys about isolation, love, and suicide as angst ridden teens and twenty-somethings. Kissing boys is a major theme as well.

Who can possibly find themselves in these songs?

High Dive will be playing alongside the ever-changing power-pop-punk group Our Lady from Springfield, IL, and home-grown emo-indie acts Witch Fingers and George Costanza, the second of which may quite possibly be the most emo band name I’ve ever heard. Both of the home town groups share a spastic spittle ridden silliness in their sound, that in some way shape or form may be appealing those gruff young kids that have the same spastic spittle ridden silliness called angst.

Tomorrow night, Milhouse. 8:30 p.m. Donations for the touring bands would be more than tolerated.

Respect the house, respect the bands, respect the perspectives.

If anyone has comments, questions, or concerns, it is encouraged that they comment below, or email the writer at espontaneo.clark@gmail.com