When summer arrives so suddenly I always fondly remember my brief stint as a goth. I was 13. It was March. I had just run away from home. I was listening to Sisters of Mercy on an old ghetto blaster under a bridge and I figured I had about 6 hours left on the batteries. A group of older kids dressed in black wandered up and opened a bottle of lemon gin. They gave me a swig. We started talking. I was cold. One of them gave me his long black coat. It smelled like cat piss. I went with them to a trailer and we smoked Rothmans until the ghetto blaster died. That was the start of it.
The end of it came when my parents let me back in the house and agreed to pay for tennis lessons. I ran into my friends on my way to the court one Saturday morning in 7-11. They were buying licorice. I was buying Gatorade. I was in white shorts and had a blue mountain bike. They hissed at me and one girl actually moved her bangs aside to get a good look. Then they melted. It was really hot. My backhand has never been as good as it was that summer and I dropped the ghetto blaster off a six-story building, a la Letterman. It still had the Sisters of Mercy tape in it.
May 26th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I haven’t even read this article yet, but I want to say how much I love the crayon box! BRILLIANT and hilarious! HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!