Today I was stopped at a traffic light in downtown Palm Springs when a vehicle pulled up next to me. The driver made a halfhearted and awkward attempt to parallel park. She eventually gave up, leaving the car jacked against the curb like a knife sticking out of a ribcage.
This girl got out of the car, growled with feigned ferocity, then slammed the door shut. The skinny boy in the passenger seat mimicked her, snarl and all.
Oh. My. Goth.
They were a couple of goth kids and — I know how much they would hate me for saying this — they were totally adorable. They had it all: The slightly bored and glum look. Leather arm cuffs and torn fishnets. Wispy black hair, teased and sprayed into sculptural swans. Thick black eyeliner, like piped frosting on a morbid cupcake.
It was as if I’d ordered them right out of the Hot Topic catalog.
If only they’d had a Walkman and a couple of Cure tapes, they could have been dressed like me for Halloween. Or, you know, any Tuesday of my sophomore year in high school.
I loved them. I wanted to adopt them. It’s easy to pull off boho or surfer or preppy chic in the California desert. But dedicating yourself to a face full of powdery pancake makeup when it’s 110 degrees and your hair gel is melting into your eyes? Well, that requires enormous devotion to self-expression, and I gotta admire that.
As for me, I’m not so goth these days. (Or what are the kids calling it now? Emo?)
For instance, my fun thing for the day was curling up with my guilty pleasure/Sookie Stackhouse book.
Yeah, it’s vampires, but it’s a far cry from when I used to dress in black, growl at the world and scare all the old people at the mall. Sometimes I really do miss that corseted, blood-red-fingernailed, melancholy part of me.
Turns out I’m not too far gone, though. As my lil’ goths crossed the road in front of my car, I gave them a snarl of solidarity. Keep on despairin’ in the free world!
