Yes. At the Uniontown Mall. So let me take advantage of this brief lull in work to relate to you this completely pointless--yet, perhaps, sociologically interesting--li'l tale of subcultural expansion here in the Heart of Nowhere.
After I finished up my class at the UPS Hub in New Stanton today, I rolled on up to the Uniontown Mall briefly to pick up a CD I've been wanting to grab for a while (one the Platters' greatest hits, in case you're wondering), so I'd have something to listen to at the newspaper tonight. As I was walking down the hall toward the FYE Record-O-Mart in my fibromyalgic shuffle, what do I spot ahead of me in front of the Waldenbooks? A refugee from Ceremony! Seriously...this girl looked like she was sixteen--at most--and wasn't clad in the usual straps-and-buckles, pseudo-black-metal/pop-punk grunge regalia that most teenyboppers sport these days and think is goth. No, she was actually wearing a shredded-up dress, stripey stockings, had her hair up in yarn-woven Switchblade-Symphony ponytails...the works. She actually looked like someone I would've expected to see flippin' and floppin' around outside the cage up at Laga back in the good ol' days of 1998. She actually reminded me a LOT of Chibi, the singer for The Birthday Massacre--in both facial features and couture.
Well...she apparently spotted me coming and must've thought, "Whoah, who is that mature, black-clad stud in the ratty old t-shirt and the crumpled black suit jacket and the cockeyed sunglasses a-creepin' toward me like unto a vision of Andrew Eldritch in his dotage?" Because--lord have mercy--li'l sister said something to the girl she was standing with (a thoroughly average black-metaller) and actually started walking toward me, swaying her skinny hips and trying soooooooooo hard to be coquettish. I had to struggle not to laugh. It was like watching a character from Teen Girl Squad attempting to be alluring. Not slutty, just patently uninspiring.
Now, whereas I was strangely flattered that apparently the one serious goth chick in Uniontown would cast her devious stares in my direction, I just kind of cocked a quizzical eye at her over the rim of my sunglasses, shrugged, and went into Waldenbooks to talk to Steve, the manager there, who is also a fellow horror afficionado. Steve actually said, "Hey, Pegritz, I think you got an admirer."
At which point I did laugh. "Yeah, dude, but I'm literally old enough to be her dad." In fact, I probably have sperm cells older than that chickie. "Anyways, Steve, YOU are old enough to be her grandfather!"
"She comes in here every now and again looking for Anne Rice books," Steve answered, not surprising me one friggin' bit. "I've seen her around before. You don't already know her?"
"Hell, no....I don't just go talking to random women who look they can get me sent to jail if I just buy 'em a fucking pretzel."
"Well...I thought maybe you knew her from Penn State. She looks like someone who'd be one of your students."
"Heh. Yeah. You'd think. I don't think she's out of Junior High yet, much less ready for college."
"Give her a few years, by which time they ought to have that English program in place out there and you can seduce her to the Dark Side by feeding her good horror literature."
"Well, why the fuck don't you feed her some good stuff, too, Steve?" I asked. "Christ, you're the manager of the only real bookstore in town! Next time she wiggles her skinny ass in here looking for Anne Shithead Rice, why don't you point her out to some Tom Piccirilli or Clive Barker or some fuckin' oldskool Stephen King?"
"Dude, I've probably mentioned stuff to her before, but I doubt she'd pay any attention to me. You're the guy with the MA in horror lit, and besides, I bet if you told her to read The Devil Wears Prada she'd do it--she's staring lasers at you, man. I can't believe your ass hasn't caught fire yet!"
Hmmmm....Surprisingly enough, that got me thinking. Not about far-too-young, far-too-skinny girls staring at my crooked ass--not that I wasn't hellishly flattered by such, though of course I don't even vaguely understand it. But Steve's words got me to thinking about the fact that I am poised to influence, and perhaps make a difference in, the local goth community...incredibly small though it be. See, when I was growing up in Uniontown, I didn't have ANYone of a more black-clad persuasion to point out to me what was good spooky literature and music, and what was bad...therefore, I read prettymuch anything that even vaguely looked creepy or listened to any band that possibly had a weird-sounding name. Even then, I was a lot more perceptive than most, so I prettymuch figured out what sucked and what didn't on my own, so by the time I finally found myself engaged with an actual contingent of Gothicism I more or less knew my way around and could relate with the smarter, more mature elements of said scene. I notice a lot of the younger kids who come to Ceremony anymore are so wrapped up in the Hot Topic mindset, the easily-available commercialized version of "goth," that they barely even know who Clive Barker, John Carpenter, or Skinny Puppy even freakin' is, and because there's such an aesthetic divide between them and older folks there's always antagonism there--which is why, anymore, I just stay in the bar, drink myself fucking sick, and only venture out onto the dancefloor to arthritically shake my moneymaker to songs generally recorded before 1999.
That shouldn't be. If there are actually a few kids on the gothity persuasion here in Uniontown, why not at least make contact with some of them and try to give them a little guidance? Tell them about the good writing and music and stuff that they can get access to--not through Hot Topic, but through Amazon.com and other online resources....Let 'em know that stuff's out there so they can check it out for themselves. Best of all, if some of these kids end up coming to Penn State, then I am in a unique position there to encourage them to actually DO SOMETHING with their predilections. Hell, when I started college, I mostly wanted to be a horror writer--now I have an MA in horror lit and am actually poised to start teaching people about this crap as part of the campus' new four-year English program! I might be able to actually do some good here, and influence the upcoming generations of black-clad weirdos so that maybe, just maybe, Anne Rice and Good Charlotte won't be their only idea of what the subculture holds, and maybe I can rattle some sense into their heads so that they don't waste their time just drawing goofy looks from the rednecks at the Mall and actually contributesomething to the aesthetic they've chosen. Considering that this is Fayette Freakin' County, I very well could be the ONLY person in this county willing--or in any way prepared--to do so.
Anyway, when I left the bookstore, I was going to walk up to the chickie and say, "Hey, I'm Pegritz. Get in there and pick up China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, read it by next Wednesday and be prepared to answer some questions about it. Oh, and sorry--I'm prettymuch taken." But she was gone. Ohwell. Maybe next time.
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