Hershey's Special, Dark Nuggets

Alright, I lied. The New England Darksidewalker's Ball was nowhere near as close to my high school prom fantasy as I'd anticipated in a previous entry. As a matter of fact, it was, as I had feared, "An Adventure" (TM) - and we all know how I feel about adventures. Not to worry, though. The upshot of all of this is that I have an extra special tale of woe and general New England unpleasantness (stay tuned for the upcoming entry "Why The Pilgrims Died" which details my theory on how a giant frozen shit-comet fell out of the sky, creating New England and causing the pilgrims to go extinct) to regale my loyal readers with.

It's true, my prep routine for the Goth Prom was every bit as detail intensive as I'd originally planned. The problem therein being that I finished my dress some time that morning - without the proper seamstress instruments (ironing boards are for pussies, real seamstresses iron right down on the hardwood floors, right?). Indeed, it was a gothic ballgown - one fit for attending the Goth Prom - and it was indeed a swath of red with tiny black detail. However, the other thing it unexpectedly was, was bubbled and wrinkled. Right around the chest and neckline. I'd half hoped in my deluded attempt to complete it, that the tension from containing my sizeable ta-tas sans brazier would have been enough to press out the bumps on initial inspection once I put it on. Unfortunately, as I discovered, polyester imitation chinese brocade does not lay well on its own if incorrectly fused with fuseable interfacing (maybe iron boards aren't for pussies). But then again, it seemed only poetic for me to have put over $300 of skilled labor into roughly $30 worth of materials - perhaps in time, over the course of enough of these sewing debaucles, I will finally learn my lesson and realize that there is, indeed, no miracle microwave that makes shit taste like chocolate, nor any amount of my skilled labor that will go into making cheap-ass materials look and act less cheap. Thanks to the general soup sandwich that was my dress, I did not have the time to make the casket-arrangement corsages as I had planned, nor for that matter, give any thought to the rest of my outfit or look for the Goth Prom, thus resulting in my updo looking more like a dyslexic baker's attempt at a challah and less inspired by the lovely Dita.

I also ran out of eyeliner.

I don't know what good goth ever has to say that, but this omen seemed to set the tone for the evening I was about to experience. Getting back to the subject of soup sandwiches, however, the award for the Best Soup Sandwich of the Evening went to my poor friend Steve, who busted ass on one of the many patches of black ice peppering my overall icy driveway while carrying two large white hot chocolates and a couple of breakfast sandwiches, thus creating a true-to-life soup + sandwich = soup sandwich combination (the evidence of which was captured by the large patch of white froth in front of my doorstep for all to see). The key was the white froth on the black-clad goth.

At this point I am incapable of rendering in words the abject foulness that is my driveway - it is indeed a driveway birthed from satan's ass, especially when it comes to New England wintertime maintenance, for it is long, wide, snakes around the side of my house, and is sandwiched between buildings in a manner just so such that the sun NEVER hits the main portion of the driveway, thus rendering it an icy mess after snow storms regardless of how many times it's been shoveled (I personally shoveled it 3 times prior to Steve's arrival, not counting the parking space I pickaxed into the driveway for him). The topper is that it is also uneven after many years of wear, thus resulting in shallow, visually unnoticeable indentations that collect pools of water which subsequently turn into elusive black ice, all over the driveway. There's enough salt on the ground to make Carthage jealous, and people still bust ass on the thing - it's yet another "charm" of wintertime in New England (I'll reference this later in my Pilgrim-comet theory, trust me). I don't know how my landlords have lived here all these years without popping a hip or something.

In any case, things were off to a somewhat rocky start, and given the general icy condition of not only the driveway, but the entirety of Arlington, including sidewalks and roads, I decided it would just be better to drive us the three and a half blocks to the Goth Prom and risk doing donuts all night long on an empty tank trying to find parking on Mass Ave. Now no good deed ever goes unpunished, so of course, tonight was one of the many nights I found myself parked in by my neighbors' guests who don't seem to realize that Subaru's All Wheel Drive does not mean I can drive over their car. Thus, I soon found myself asking my neighbor politely if he could move the car, dressed like Count Dragula's tranny bride, with no eyeliner. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have bullshitted with him for the two minutes after his friend moved the car since my guests were in a rush, but it was probably better than telling him that next time, there might be a potato crammed in the tailpipe. I also haven't been parked in since, so perhaps diplomacy was the better option despite my initial reaction to seeing the car.

The rock star parking in front of the VFW hall was by far the first [and only] thing to have gone right that night, and thankfully so, for I certainly did not want to run out of gas while attempting to find parking, nor make my friends even more late for their vending engagement. For the record, I didn't tell anyone about the gas (or lack thereof), figuring I'd make it the 3 blocks home and get gas in the morning. Cruxshadows pumping out my piddly car sound system, makeup smearing and careening down the street while trying to drive in stilettos, I needed a drink to forget my current predicament. Or three. Or more.

Thankfully, drinks at the VFW hall were cheap and strong - both a necessity when encountering the lively cast of characters I saw at the Goth Prom that night. It was no lie - indeed everyone had on their finest of goth attire and tried their best... it may ultimately have been the drinks that got them in the end. Or at least exposed their delusional tendencies as Creatures of the Night. Let's have a round of introductions shall we?

Bubba-Boots: I don't know what kind of beat he was hearing, but it wasn't what the DJ was playing. Bubba-Boots, in his black parade formals, put the fear of god into anyone wearing open-toed shoes (or really, anything that didn't have steel-toes) that evening, as he stomped the dance floor as loud as possible in his elevator platform boots in his own special arrhythmic fashion to keep the "beat." Have any of you ever driven behind a big red truck on the highway before? One that you can hear approaching long before it passes you and long after it does? It's jacked up so far that the driver, unless he's Paul-freakin-Bunyan, needs a stepladder in order to get in, and beer cans sometimes fall out when he opens the door? Usually it has a Maine license plate? That's a Bubba-truck. And these elevator boots were the goth-footwear equivalent of the Bubba-truck. Hence Bubba-Boots, in all their jacked-suspension glory - for all the heavy hauling that those toothpick-thin goths are prone to do. Makes a person wonder if it would have been appropriate to ask "does it have a Hemi?"

Gotharmony: Okay, she wasn't preggers so maybe Gothilexi. Whatever. Have any of you ever grabbed a handrail on the subway or some other filthy public venue (no, let me finish, this has nothing to do with Mary J. Rottencrotch), only to find that you've grabbed a handful of booger, or some other kind of perceived, unidentified handrail-pollutant? Or perhaps you've just shaken hands with a friend, only to have them tell you afterwards that they've been scratching their unmentionables? Whatever the situation, there's that immediate urge to wipe it off on something. This is what occurred all night long with Gotharmony/Gothilexi and the extremely blonde energy exuding from her pores.
I could write volumes on Gotharmony alone, but it wouldn't do her justice. At the tender age of 25, she attended the Darksidewalker's ball with her mother and camera in tow. I'm attempting to remember more details about her outfit here, but the torpedo-fuel cocktails had addled my brain and make memory somewhat difficult; no matter - the two details I remember well are the stuffed animal black cat mini-backpack, and the black garter belt special. Now, mind you, if I had a garter belt that nice, I'd want to show it off as well (I really do miss my garter belt - I guess I shouldn't have lent it to someone not insignificantly larger than me, as it now falls down past my hips like bad pants), but I don't know that I'd go as far as to wear it on the outside over my skirt. Damn that was a nice garter belt, though.
I'd been partially wondering all night exactly what the deal with the straps and the hiked up skirt was, ever since Tom pointed out to me early on in the evening the young lady in the middle of the dance floor very enthusiastically spazzing out. It wasn't really until Steve made the proper introductions that I got a close look and realized how uncomfortable the whole getup must have been. Ahh, the things goths do for... vanity. Truly, I have to thank Steve for that - I suppose there's some kind of undeniable allure of a grumpy man in a purple velvet shirt selling bones and green metal that draws close so many young... ladies, that he just had to, uh... share the wealth with me, as it were. Yeah. I think the conversation kinda went something like this (though the hummingbird-like pace made it somewhat of a blur):
Gotharmony: Hi! Will you be my friend?
Steve: Uh... sure.
Gotharmony: Oh yay!!! Can I take your picture?
Steve: Uh... okay.
Gotharmony: Yay! Let me go get my mom! I'll be right back!

*the paparazzi thereupon descends*

Steve: Oh! Kim, have you met my lovely friend?
Me: Uh, no... pleased to meet you!
Gotharmony: Wow! I like your outfit! Where'd you get it?
My helpful friend: Oh, she probably made it, right?
Gotharmony: Wow! Really?!! That's so awesome *bounce bounce* you should totally be like on Project Runway or something! So, do you like, make clothes for a living?
Me: Oh, thanks, but uh, no. No... don't do it anymore. Not at all. Used to do it a lot in college, but no, I got a real job. Don't make clothes at all.
Gotharmony: So you don't have a store?
Me: No! No... no store. Just a normal person now. Just an engineer.

Which brings me immediately to...

GothaMomma: GothaMomma was Gotharmony's mother with the camera and a fierce penchant for Victorian goods. I have never seen that many feathers on a person outside of a renfaire or a Chick-Fil-A advertisement.

GothaMomma: Oh! You made that?! You are so talented!
Gotharmony: I know mom! I told her she should be on Project Runway or something!
Me: Heh, nah... uh, I like your skirt by the way. I've always wanted a nice full poofy skirt like that but I never wanted to buy that much fabric.
GothaMomma: Oh thank you so much! You know, when you can't get one skirt that full, two skirts are better than one!
Me: Indeed. Oh hey look, I see my boyfriend over there by the bar waving at me (I'll note at this point that Tom had been MIA for over half an hour). I should go see what he wants, but it was nice meeting you two! Bye!

*Oh hey! Look, there's Steve selling more of his amazing artwork, you should ask him about his hydra sculpture...*

Yeah. That was an experience. Not necessarily because she went gothing with her mother... I guess I was that way with the Phantom of the Opera in San Francisco when I was 15, but at least I kept my undies inside my clothes. And at this point, knowing my mother's penchant for taking terrible photographs, I'd know better than to inflict her on anyone I wanted to impress. Sometimes I think about whether or not I'd go gothing with my kids. I think the answer might be "yes, as long as I still look all right in a 25-inch corset after my child-bearing years are through," but then again I realize that since I'm a goth biker, my kids are gonna be cheerleaders so the point is pretty much moot. Either that, or if karma has its way, I'll be expecting a bumper crop of tards for all that I've talked about them over the years. No matter - go GothaMomma and Gotharmony. Keep on wipin', Steve.

Fantastic 4[0]: Way across the room on the other side of the dance floor, I made my first encounter of the evening with Fantastic 4[0]. I imagine Fantastic 4[0] had been keeping quiet the entire evening, spending most of his time and money at the VFW hall bar. However, the switch in DJs partway through the night seemed to bring out the Riverdancer in him, for it was at about this time that everyone on the dance floor began to notice him flailing wildly like an epileptic, careening from side to side. Personal space was of no consequence to Fantastic 4[0], as he effortlessly cleaved through multiple circles of dancing chatting goths mere inches away from receiving an elbow to the face. Now, Fantastic 4[0] wore a black T-shirt with the number 4 enclosed within a circle, representing the logo of the Fantastic 4, perhaps in his own deluded attempts to relive the 80's, but his greasy thinning combover belied his true geriatric nature. Balding notwithstanding... I can't imagine they danced like that even in the 80's, since a lot more people aren't blind from getting elbows to the eye.

Deet-dee-deeta Von Teese: Deet-dee-deeta V. was apparently "The Other Asian Chick" at the Goth Prom that night. I find it hard to believe that there's another asian goth in red with a hefty pair out there that also happens to have a penchant for tall skinny long haired men in black, and yet there she was, jockeying hard for my poor friend vending his art. Alas, she didn't seem to be the type to wipe off on someone else nearly as easily as Gotharmony and her GothaMomma, and much to my chagrin, Tom was nowhere to be found to aid in Le Grand CockBlock Maneuver of 2007. Then again, I'm not entirely sure Steve would have appreciated a good firm palm to the bottom from my boyfriend accompanied with an enthusiastic "hey thweetie, there you are!" Nor, I imagine, would Tom have done such a thing unless he'd known just how direly uncomfortable the situation was otherwise. But you never know. There's nothing like a good mood-killing save to test the limits of a friendship. Better that than the limits of the human body, I suppose.

Prince Charming: Finally, we have My Confused Tranny. He wasn't nearly as handsome as I'd originally made him out to be, and he didn't actually return my garter belt. In fact, he was actually pretty hideous, as I pointed out to Steve at the very end of the night, fully knowing that he'd read my previous Goth Prom post. He kind of gave off an Artos 2.0 vibe; more fey and less bear. Prince Charming was wearing a purple sparkly wig in a bob cut to the length of his beefy neck. He was wearing a strappy black top stretched across his broad shoulders, and while I'd like to write more about him, I'm afraid I didn't dare look down to examine his outfit any further at the risk of getting an eyeful of meaty haunch or thigh. You never know with goth club trannies - the last one I saw looked completely normal on top and was wearing nothing but a vinyl french maid apron down below which failed to close all the way around to cover the rear of his thong. Prince Charming, however, was definitely confused. I assume that he, like many others, had deeply imbibed in the torpedo-fuel cocktails mixed by the ol' vet bartender, and was teetering from table to table looking for... his date perhaps? A last minute hoo-hoo before they kicked all the goths out? I dunno, that was his business. I'm totally cool with the fact that someday my prince will come, as long as I'm far far away when it happens.

Thankfully, as it turns out, we were all planning to be far far away by the time the night was out. Steve, his lovely lady Michela, Tom, and I, despite being drunk, were all quite ready to leave by the time the lights came on and everyone Nightchylde turned ugly. Unfortunately, this was not to be the end of my Goth Prom Fairytale. No, in fact, it was but the beginning, for we somehow managed to lose Steve in the shuffle to pack up the artwork and displays - don't ask me how we misplaced a drunk 6 foot tall goth in a purple velvet shirt, but after 15 minutes of confused searching, Tom and I finally found him after cruising three blocks back towards the house where he'd parked his wagon, cursing and futilely revving the engine. I would make some crack about Goths on Ice, but the image alone really speaks for itself. After determining that his car was indeed throughly stuck on Satan's Ass Parkway (aka the driveway), blocking in the neighbors (hah, poetic justice indeed), it was decided that we would use my vehicle for transporting the bundles of artwork home from the VFW hall. Scooping Steve into my car, and leaving Tom to deal with the stuck wagon we drove back to the hall and began the frustrating haul which would eventually take 3 carloads and one icy passenger's trek home. In retrospect, it could have been a whole lot worse - 1 carload and 10 icy treks for several passengers (2 wearing stilettos). Remember what I said about the gas earlier? I'm not sure if my passengers noticed it or not, but I was hitting neutral and rolling down the hills in order to conserve the last precious drops of gas in order to avoid an embarrassing breakdown halfway home on Mass Ave, which in some way would have only made the night complete.

Upon arriving back at the house with the final payload, we found one very chilly and agitated Tom, who had been waiting patiently in my porch for my return; for in my haste to help with the artwork evacuation, I had unwittingly forgotten to hand him the house key and had all but abandoned him to the wolves.

At last having secured the artwork into the trunk of the icebound wagon, and piled my houseguests safely into my warm first-floor apartment, I took on the final task of depositing my car in a safe place. For you see, while Steve's wagon was indeed blocking in the neighbors, it was also blocking me out of my normal parking space. Thus, I stashed my gasless vehicle in the Catholic school parking lot just around the corner and began my chilly walk home. Anyone remember the scene in Kill Bill after The Bride takes out the Crazy 88 in the House of Blue Leaves? Where the hostess attempts to pick her way through the carnage and dismembered limbs and slips in her little white heels on the bloody glass dance floor? My long walk home along the icy unshoveled sidewalks in my neighborhood gave me new insight into how she must've felt. It was a long bloody walk home.

At last, chilled to the bone with a new found appreciation for the deftness of yakuza club hostesses, I returned home at last to my sleepy guests and ailing boyfriend. It turns out that the reason my date had been going MIA throughout the Goth Prom was not, in fact, to avoid exuberent gothic blonde energy, but rather due to his problematic stomach, which he blamed on the baked potato pizza he'd ingested earlier. Of course, as any manly man would, he did not bring this issue up, despite the fact that we were only 3 blocks away from home - content to suffer in his own gothly grimacing manner; however, he did gladly accept my concern and tender ministrations, to which he responded with a series of loud aromatic farts before retiring to bed. My reward, for a long evening of tard farming. But I'm sure that my guests are counting their blessings that my car didn't turn into a pumpkin whilst rolling down Mass Ave, so I suppose in retrospect, things could have gone that much worse. At last, it seems, the remainder of my high-school Goth Prom fantasies have been dispelled.

Further bulletins as events warrant.