A Hot Topic: If I was Goth

the death of a rose.

I wish I were goth. Fuck this colorful life I live. These days, everybody wants to be a vampire. And I say, why not me? My skin is almost see-through this winter so why can’t I be the next Wiccan black sorcerer? Why aren’t more people goth? When I become fully goth, I want to be one of those Japanese slut goths- none of this pussy white people goth shit. Go Harajuku or go home. But first I’ll start from square one. The first thing I will do is finish every single Twilight book. After I have juxtaposed and pasted Robert Pattinson’s face over my notebooks, I will cut my hair into some sort of festive Pokemon hairstyle, all choppy and jagged. I will apply a thick layer of white powder to my transparent face. I will apply black lipstick leftover from my Halloween costume from 2nd-5th grade- I was a witch. Then I will buy some butterfly wings and spray paint them black. I will wear those along with an Emily Strange t-shirt adorned with a graphic of a girl named Emily Strange and a black cat that is also probably named Emily Strange. I will have to buy this shirt online or order it from a website called www.the-black-angel.com. I will also purchase a pair of trash bag pants with a bunch of sinister spikes, heavy mopish chains, and oversized silver studs. These pants will often get caught on everyday stuff- doorways, fire hydrants, hooks- these pants are a major pain in the ass and make me feel 20 pounds heavier, but with so many zippered cargo pockets I will throw away my Invader Zim purse and continue wearing them for their utilitarian purposes. Menial tasks such as going to the bathroom and riding my bike will become almost impossible. Perhaps I will have to invest in a catheter. I will wear long toe socks printed with small white skulls- spooky!

pioneer square zombies, not really goth-a close call.

My shoes are shiny black platform boots with Lucite spikes jutting out the heels. It takes me about ten minutes to put my shoes on every morning; I have to lace two sets of laces, zip a zipper, and then fasten four large buckles. When it gets cold, I will drape my black and purple velvet cape over my Emily Strange t-shirt. I also have the option of sliding my hands into my sheer fishnet gloves and for added warmth. I will survive the winter. For my upcoming birthday I will ask my Republican parents for Wiccan potions and Pagan wall tapestries for my dorm room. Hopefully I will also get an Alien Sex Fiend or Christian Death album. My new goth friends and I will hang out on dirty coughed-up couches at a popular pizza joint or we will sit on brass sculptures of deer and wolves near the Pioneer Square Courthouse. We will discuss Scott Dyleski, how Bauhaus is counterfeit, and the 1980’s film The Hunger. My friends have a lot of pimples, which they try and mask with piercings, black lipstick, and stretched out Thai Hill tribal earlobes. My favorite color is black, I have a tattoo of a sexy girl in a black corset inked on the nape of my neck, I own every Tim Burton movie: I am goth. But I wont be goth for long. Being goth is too fucking expensive! Just covering the goth basics is like taking a second mortgage out on a dilapidated one bedroom home next door to some kook who owns three seething rottweillers with a broken Little Tyke play structure and a crab grass army plagueing the front yard. Goths have four times the amount of accessories than normal white bread people and eventually my funds will run low- I’ll have to retire immediately from the costly gothic subculture. I’ll unlace, unbuckle, and unzip my boots, unzip, unchain, and unhook my pants, untie my cape, and wash my face and become human again. In two months, my hair will be long and brown once more and I will return to the colorful hipster vibes of Beat Happening and Black Moth Super Rainbow. I will sit at my desk cubicle covered in polaroids and Kurt Vonnegut books while fiddling with my hip lo-fi Nikon camera- my gothic past stowed tightly in a small shoebox in the depths of my closet.

Fondly, Lauren