The Goth Who was Never Very Goth

(a guest post by ScaryDad )

Disintegration came out the summer before I started high school. My memory is probably incomplete but I really don’t remember having any Goths at school before that. We had the punks and the metal heads for sure, and I used to like to sort of think of myself as the latter, but there were no Goths. Then that magical album came out and almost overnight there was a fracturing of social circles and a new kind of outcast was born.

God, how I wanted to be one of them, and damn if I never was.

See, I have been a fan of paranormal and horror stuff since I was a little kid. Even when I was too scared to consume it I was still curious. Myths, legends, folklore, monsters, etc… These were all that I loved. By the time I made it to ninth grade I had already read most Stephen King and was dividing my time between Anne Rice novels, comics, and whatever crap they were making me read in school. It was only a matter of time before I began wearing a little silver cross, and later, after I had discovered Sandman, an ankh.

But that would be a tiny detail that could be easily and was most often missed. I would see kids dressed in black from head to toe wandering around the school looking like ghosts and I envied their style…

Except that I could never cop that style. I could never reasonably expect to be a successful Goth and I knew it then as I know it now: Goth gear is not suited to South Texas weather. Black on black is pure murder when it’s 115 degrees outside with 100% relative humidity; especially when that shit happens in September.

Now, to be fair, I have owned my fair share of black clothing. The problem is that most of the time I’ve decided to wear it when it’s hot I either come to my senses and change or go about my day sincerely regretting my decision. Goth kids in my town have to really mean it.

So, the years went by and I ended up identifying more with the metal heads than the Goths because I would rather wear shorts than sweat a lot. And yet, my metal-head friends used to give me shit about some of the stuff I loved. They would say things like, “Dude, what’s with all the Cure shit? You wanna be some kind of Goth or something?”

The answer was actually, honestly, “Yes.” I would have liked to have been. But I would just say, “It’s too damn hot to be a Goth. Let’s go swimming.”

I guess some things are just never meant to be.