Bela Lugosi's Boner

Perhaps in the spirit of Halloween, perhaps in the spirit of total fabulousness:

I don't claim to be in the closet about my goth leanings, although sometimes I pretend to be. Being dirty, punk, slightly too lazy to do much of anything standing under the umbrella of 'household chores', and being an ASL interpreter have all been frail excuses I've used for predominantly wearing black most of my life. The truth of the matter is that the gender that goes on within goth scenes/communities consistently blows my fucking mind and leaves me wiping drool from the corner of my lips across my sleeve*.


(pause)


Kalamazoo, MI, 1990-something. I am working at the Comet Cafe; Citizen Fish is playing there that particular night. I am taking my turn working the door as people pack into the narrow rectangle of a cafe, when a ghost-couple glides in through the door holding money. I look up and my jaw drops slightly at the sight: Their faces as smooth and as pale as dramatic eggshells; expressions so slight I do a double take to see if even their mouths move while they talk. The girl floats past me and into the crowd; the boy turns to face me. He is wearing some kind of makeshift cat suit: a stitching of black stretchy canvas material suctioned to his body. His tiny hips are accentuated with some sort of dangling metal; his chalk hands peeked through the black lace of fingerless gloves. His eyes glint out a hostage-helpme green, and from the corners of them, black eyeliner draws itself out and across his face in perfect curves that sprawl and expertly spill just shy of his jawline. Through a charcoal bow of a mouth, he asks me how much. He blinks delicate, mascara'ed eyelashes as he counts his money, places it into my hand, and steps back. "Thank you", he says. There is one half of a white parenthesis smile on his lips as he turns, and is instantly absorbed by the crowd.

(pause)



To the goth gender-bangers that have inspired me,

Thank you. May I never find my way out of your eyeliner mazes.

A quickened, less lonely heart to you,


--k.


*= Lipstick smudges confidently hidden by the black of the material, of course.




THE PICTURE: Okay, okay,...so it is obscenely high-end goth. However, one *must* note the lad-ly looking, stiletto'ed charmer on the left. And by 'note', here, I mean truly study the amazing gender of.

For more of the photos, see:

this site

Ascots as Charming Tools of Slight Restraint

I used to think the reason I dragged half of my friends growing up into my den to watch My Own Private Idaho was because of the sex scenes. Being a blossoming art fag, I appreciated the stills they used to represent the sexual exploits of the movie's characters. Years later, when I would push people to watch 20 Centimetros, I thought it was the costumery and musical-meets-alleyway quality of its composition. Of course, it was obvious that part of the attraction was the validation of my own desires and realities: the ability to execute seamless hiding places outside at night, flamboyance, cavalierness, learning a construction of 'woman', and being a male hustler. But that wasn't even it. It wasn't until all these years later that I realized it was also the pass-out-dream-induced relation to reality that pulled me so obsessively towards these two films. Mike (My Own Private Idaho), Marieta (20 centimetros), and I all are queers with a particular relationship to narcolepsy. Who would have known?*

(pause)

In any case, above, you will see my red-legging'ed left leg that ends in a leg warmer curled up on my comforter. It is fall at last. [And yes, this is false advertising. I still have no mattress to speak of after 'the incident'.]



Be well. Be warm. Be loving enough to invite those in who matter~


k



Current soundtrack: The xx: XX. It is something between a dream, and being consentually trapped inside an aquarium of warmed gel infused with light roughly the same color as the ring in the attached photo.

*= Most of my co-workers, a decent number of my bus drivers, the housemates that would find me asleep with a burrito in bed, and any person who put two-and-two together to realize I would only hang out in strangely brief intervals.