The goths are mysterious and ethereal and moody but also bold and bawdy and hilarious. They are impractical, some more than others, though none of them would ever spend their last few dollars on cleaning supplies or milk or parking tickets if it meant going without black eyeliner. The goths don’t have pets anymore, though one of them once had a lizard and one had a little brown rat named Albertine.
The goths live on the second floor of a three-story Victorian house in San Francisco, on a tiny street between Haight and Castro where there is never anywhere to park. When I visit the goths I leave my car double-parked in the street. I try to remember to listen in case someone is honking to get out, but that almost never happens.
The goths date men with fake English accents and elaborate grooming rituals. The goths listen to Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Damned, always the Damned. The goths all like me and they sometimes call to invite me over or to see if I want to go out somewhere, or when they need a favor from somebody with a car. The goths are magic to me and sometimes I wonder why I’m not one too. It’s more than my flat blonde hair and decidedly un-pale complexion, it’s clearly not who I am. But I am drawn to them like a moth to a spooky big-haired flame.
Their hair! Big, black, crimpy, mangy, perfect. They go through cans of Aqua Net, swapping misty tales of the day they first discovered Extra Super Hold in the unscented formula, allowing them to break any scent-imposed limit on just how much you can use. They know all the good cheap cosmetics to buy, burning the ends of Maybelline pencils with a match, pressing a mat of cotton into a Japanese white powder block. They smell like cloves and orchids and smoke and prickly things.
It seems that they should be excused from the ordinary problems of human life, but they are not. There is a day when I am asked if I can give one of them a ride to the abortion clinic. The appointment is at a decidedly un-goth hour of the morning and I double-park the car outside and come upstairs. The pregnant goth wears a white t-shirt and black jeans and none of her usual finery. She has no makeup on but is still very pale. We have to wait for her boyfriend to finish buttoning up his spats.
There is a long interval between dropping her off at the clinic and picking her up, so he and I go to a café across town, one that he likes. I have already decided I hate him and his stupid accent but the feeling is reinforced as he spends the hour chatting with acquaintances, making small talk, surveying the social scene. I eat a stale muffin and finally it is time to leave. We pick her up and I drop them off and then drive back home, listening to whatever bad song is on the radio, wondering what I am doing with my life.
