My friend cut himself badly while cutting out screen for new windows the other day.
He thought to himself just afterwards: Wow, I remember cutting myself for sheer shock-fun-pain-release as a teen. Blood used to be something else for him. I once knew a number of people like that. I hope they’re all putting their own windows and places together today. They had some extreme edge-of-life things going on back then.
It reminded me of the nights we used to go dancing in San Francisco at Roderick’s Chamber (a VERY long time ago), a goth club held in a huge venue with lots of dancing space with people to go wild in.
I was so into it for the look, as well as music: We’d all get into our mesh shirts, spider-web corsets and black gowns and velvet stretch leggings and put on our Doc Martins or pointy black boots and take a good hour or three to paint our faces with ghost-white and eyeliner and click on pounds of heavy silver crosses and jewelry or leather stud-work, and create big hair that was not only monumentally scary, but simply monumental.
For a mouse-person with a tame and slightly sad past such as mine, it was a great change from the hiding masquerade of everyday life.
To someone who has never seen goth/industrial dancing in the past, (and I might add, OF the past, because it’s no longer what it was), suffice it to say there was a lot of movement around the floor (no one just bounced in place) and arm movement. It was more like watching a hundred fencing duels from the 1700s mixed with a medieval or minuet move here and there, and then combined with witch-like horror gestures, belly-dancing exotic moves, or modern thrashing-fisted jubilance. The industrial tunes brought out more flailing and stomping. Every dancer had their particular style, which you could spot from across the room instantly — but they had some things in common, one of which was the flowing — or in high-energy tunes, thrashing — hand and arm gestures that made large fluid arcs or waving shapes in the air, often complimented by a whirl or pirouhouette or a half-turn.
It was a feminine thing to do a full turn usually, unless in a frenzied high energy tune, and although it wasn’t a girl, I all too well remember the giant 6 foot something Queen of a guy who did his windmill whirl into my space one evening. I think we were really thrashing out to something like “Dominion” by Sisters of Mercy, and remember the pounds of jewelry and spikes? He spun round with a wild fling and I saw his fast glittering wrist flash before he clocked me squarely on the nose.
The room squished suddenly flat and left me all alone for a second in an unfamiliarly overtaking quiet wave of pain, and then it all expanded back like a sponge and the noise returned and he was standing over me all apologies, asking if I was alright. Yes yes, I’m fine, I said, not really knowing if I was at all. He danced off and I felt to see if my nose was broken?, no. And then I felt it underneath. Blood!
COOL!!!! was my first thought. I had never BLED!! before! (unless you count skinning a knee).
(You must understand I didn’t have a normal childhood. I had had no siblings. I had never been in a fist fight. I had never been allowed to get injured by anything, anywhere, because my upbringing had always inhibited my opportunities for such events… I had rarely been allowed to catch anything, go anywhere, or really do that much. )
And I suddenly felt, bleeding down the front of my lace and corset-tied bodice, as masculine as hell.
WHOOhOOOOO!!!.
Fight club adrenaline!
I was ALIVE!! and I wanted to go bash into someone else!!!
YAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!
I did wonder how to stop it after that surge wore off. I would have kept dancing, but I was worried about how my makeup looked. (I knew goths who would never even eat in public for ruining the makeup, besides cultivating the vampire-mystique. Makeup had to be perfect.) I had been such a good girl all my life and so disconnected, I hadn’t the slightest clue what to do with it to make it stop. My girly embarrassment returned, though I still felt elated. I really am turning goth liking my blood, I thought, how comic I am.
Heading for the bathroom, in the hallway outside I looked around, and I spotted a seriously mohawked, spiked-up punk.
Ah! I thought. An expert!
Sure enough, he told me how to stop a nosebleed, Thanks, no problem.
After that I began to get the urge to put in more piercings and wear some sharp objects and spikes. I did. I began to look more dangerous and wicked. Not much by most standards of the subculture. I truly am not punk. But it was attractive to feel more and more of an edge, and blood was part of that….and no, I never became obsessed with cutting myself. I had other releases. Dancing was the best, and I danced with more and more abandon after that. I changed my name after that. I had a better feeling about things. A feeling that I could be larger and darker and more strong and pain and blood would not matter. The past would not matter.
Today I just wanted to thank the prettiest queen on the floor for making me feel so very macho and shattering a long feeling of on-the-shelf-ness, instead of my nose.
Entries (RSS)