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