I didn't choose the Goth Life.

The Goth Life Chose me.... With a note on Freaks.

I was grinding it out on the roofs of Australia. Lugging slate and folding copper.

Sometimes working old Castle like houses, whos ancient owners could afford to repair.

My life had become a twisted grind of roof work, overlooking the city.

I shared a studio apartment with two friends in the last Beatnik suburb in Sydney.

It was called Glebe, we were there for its last days.

It was a classic NZ immigrant apartment. Three mattresses on the floor.
Weights bench. Surfboards, Blender for protein shakes.

Bodybuilder magazines everywhere and a system for when one of us had a girl over.
This system was for the other two guys to ashamedly go out and stay out till midnight watching movies and drinking tea in a cafe because I was the only one of us that seemed to have any romance in my rad life.

Great system.

Work was roofs of different houses, different mansions, Amazing lunches, smoko after smoko, cigarette and coffee after cigarette and coffee.

I either smoked Ganesh Beedies, a bizzare indian cig, that were 2$ a pack or Drum Rolling tobacco mixed 50/50 with Gudang Guram Clove cigarette tobacco.

The Australian social scene of the late 90s was so incredibly redneck, if you weren’t at the pub pounding booze, bashing people, and screaming, you may as well be wearing a dress.

Now I was a hard partier and good fighter and could pound booze and scream and fight like the best of them. I had my time in demolition work and logging to draw from. I had forsaken vegetarianism, pacifism, soy and drugs and now that my balls were growing back I found that I could yell and get angry at things.

A few late night street fights and punch-ups at the pubs had brought me right back to fitting in with the Auzzie Munters.

But I actually didn't like hurting people and being hurt. I liked “intellectual stuff.” I was still learning more about what this stuff was… and I was on a mission to get some.

I had fallen into the blue-collar scene at 22, first with the calm gradient of being a painter… which I found was the bottom of the blue collar toughness ladder…

This is not a complete list but I’m writing it out as…

BOTTOM.

Painter / interior decorator.

Landscape Gardener

Warehouse guy.

Plumber.

Electrician.

Builder.

Truck driver.

Roofer.

Demolition.

Logging.

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I had started in Logging, in my fathers company… at 17, I only lasted a few months, then moved to Demolition.

From there fruit picking and from there beatnik destitution.

I came back on the ladder at Painter… and due to my past in Demo and Logging I was able to bluf my way into Roofing… third from the top.

Because I had spent all the years that I could have been getting trained and educated into the upper class of high-brow intelligentsia, doing the crazy shit I talk about in my other stories… by the time I finally got my shit together my job options are basically worksite guy or warehouse guy or leaf blower guy.

What am I going to put on my resume? From 17 - 21, I was trying to be some kind of cross between Jim Morrison (without the Band ) and Neal Cassady ( without the Bus).

Ill pause here for you to look up Neal Cassady. If you have to look up Jim Morrison just please stop reading and go back to Tic Tec or twatter or whatever is.

I knew that shit wouldn’t fly so I bulked up and got good at working in the sun.

So … GOTH….

I was introduced to the Goth scene by a super vampire-looking Goth who was a DJ Goth Scene leader type, who I happened to get chatting with one day in a comic store. He was happy enough to talk to me even though I was wearing a hard hat, reeked and was covered in slate dust

I explained that I was actually a kind of a Goth inside and was super into heavy metal and Dungeons and Dragons.

He didn’t even laugh. He just said, “You're coming out with me tonight to the Electric Hellfire Club.”

He dressed me up in entry-level Goth gear and took me to this club where people were having pegs put on painful parts of them, and getting whipped and spanked on stage and …well you get the idea. Fucking madness.

I maintained my cool… I was the Post-Grunge Drifter… but I was really trying to clean up and get away from crazy shit… because I know where it leads.

Every time it’s the same …

Midgets, Marmalade, and a lubed up and lit road flare up your ass… every time… without fail.

After a few shows, he saw I was unphased… and said “ What do you think?”

I cooly said “It’s cool… but I’m not really interested in watching people dressed as nuns hurt each other with mouse traps… I was hoping of more like a cool Goth club with people talking about poetry and shit… and maybe dancing…”

He laughed and said “AHHHH, I was just fucking with you, man. This club is for fucking losers. I was just testing you.”

The good old Auzzie Jokers.

No matter the social scene, they will play merciless and painful tricks on each other. It means they like you. If they call you a cunt you're their mate. If they call you a mate they think you're a cunt. I was still pretty fresh from New Zealand… and not yet a pranked-out husk, desperate to flee the insane island.

That came later.

So with the help of ... let’s call him Goth Scene Leader ( GSL ) I invented a new persona for myself.

It was the Heavy Metal Warrior Protector of the Goths.

They didn’t need protecting from shit really as the scene was closed and policed itself.. and they were all basically nihilists and didn’t give a shit about being harassed or beaten up… but anyway… I had to make myself make sense.

I loved the goth scene but the whole thing was just a little too effeminate for me, being a blue-collar roofer guy … yet I found that with my long hair and my Marlon Brando Wild One Leather Jacket, rings, boots, black nail polish, eyeliner, Thor’s hammer on a silver necklace and a big copper wallet chain, the Goth girls sometimes preferred me over the thin wispy guys of the scene.

So that was my life. Roofer during the day and gothic scene guy during the night

Like some kind of tradesman vampire

The Goth cynicism and dissatisfaction with absolutely everything matched my attitude at the time, so we all got on great. There were three clubs that were not really clubs but just “Nights” that were just set up on a Wednesday and Friday and Sunday at a dive bar.

They would spend hours decorating the place into a Goth Halloween wonderland.

The club nights were called VORTEX, CONTROL, and RITUAL.

In a glory of Goth scene, self mock the attendees called these SHITUAL, WHORETEX, and CUNTTROLL.

Everyone made out that the whole scene was lame and sucked, and that they were about to quit the scene and put on a pair of shorts or a dress and go to the beach. But no one ever did. We loved it. We sat at our black plastic-covered candle-lit tables singing along to Blue Monday and drank 2$ red wines. I loved everything about it.

I felt truly loved and accepted by a group of humans for the first time in my life.

I felt safe and I felt at home.

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Anyway…

I loved the candles, the make-up, the music, the gossip, and Depeche Mode on repeat... But most of all … I loved the freaks. The freaks made it amazing.

THE FREAKS.

I’ve always loved freaks. As you may be able to tell from my stories… I’ve watched every freak movie ever made and in my youth would fantasize about running away and being a Carnie. I of course did a lot of running away… but there were no real carnies in New Zealand or Australia.

Being a Carne was a dream I did fulfill and will write about one day.

I’m a wannabe freak… but sadly my innate charm and rugged good looks always prevented me from achieving true twisted freakdom. I had a few runs at it… I gave it a shot… but even in my most insane, dreadlocked, tripping balls with no shirt or shoes, tie-dyed pants, howling at the moon phase… there would always be a bunch of guys and gals… looking at me … thinking… wow… he’s actually pretty cool.

Well, here it worked in reverse. If you were a Freak you were actually really cool.

Super legit freaks.

Now I realize it, the Goth Scene was a sanctuary for them. There is no where else in Australia where you would be accepted.

Event the gay scene in Australia was super judgemental and clickey back then. A wealthy fashiony scene based around some of the most expensive suburbs in central Sydney.

Let me tell you about three of the best freaks.

Zilla.

I think he just wandered into the club one day as he probably went to it when it was a regular bar. Most people who went to the bar on other days and forgot which nights were the Goth nights would see the goths at the door and just Nope on down the road.

Not Zilla, he must have just paid his five bucks and rolled in.

50+ years old. Old brown woolen suit covered in animal hair. Very short. Tight brown curls in a hairstyle like a helmet. Somehow his name was Zilla because no matter what, he would always talk about a dog he once had called Godzilla. When you asked, “Oh did you like that movie?” He would say “I haven’t seen it”

When he entered the club people would cheer “ZILLLAAA!” And he would sit down randomly with anyone and nod along to the music. No one knew anything about him. Every single new person after a few nights ( including me ) would say “Sooooooo what’s with the old weird dude in the brown suit? ”

To which the reply would be “Oh that’s Zilla, he’s cool man, he’s old school. Go ask him about his dog”

Bonkers. Raging Goth club, and no one over 27.

Old Zilla is in the middle in a brown suit.

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One armed Jess.

Literally would introduce herself as One-armed Jess. Good looking Goth Gal. With a nubbin arm, the arm nubbin actually looked a bit scarred and chewed. Off about 5 inches before the elbow. Hung her little black purse off the nubbin. How did she lose her arm? A shark bit it off when she was 10.

No shit. For actual reals, a shark bit it right off. So Auzzie.

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The Ball.

Literally would introduce herself as The Ball. Why was she called The Ball? Because she was about 5 foot high and about 4 foot wide. Looked like a ball. Wore homemade dresses of either black or red and princess tiaras, also homemade. No neck, short black hair. Seemed friendly enough but I wouldn’t really know as I totally couldn’t handle it because I was as shallow as fuck.

So I made sure I kept my distance.

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There were other mid-level freaks… A huge Goth bodybuilder guy… a 27 year old gal that looked and dressed like a little girl from a horror film, and general tattoos and face piercings before they were mainstream.

But these were my freaks… and I dated in the scene and rocked out and felt like I belonged.

Many years later meeting up with some people from the scene … a bit older, less serious, and more able to communicate, I described to them how the scene seemed to me and how it actually was a mental refuge from the brutality of roofing work and the harshness of Auzzie blokes.

Back in the day it was forbidden to say Goth or talk about the scene, no one was to break the illusion. But in our mid-thirties, we didn’t give a shit anymore…

They told me that my nickname was Roofer Guy. Someone had seen me in the daytime without my Goth uniform on, working in my hard hat and lugging stuff around in the sun and had stared at me till they figured out that I was a crazy double-life living mother fucker.

The only jobs you were allowed, in order to class to be a legit goth back then were:

Bookstore, liquor store, student, musician, or similar.

So they all thought I was a freak because I worked in the Sun all day on a job site.

Now I’m middle-aged and still SO Goth I fart dead bats, even though I lost the battle to comfortable clothes around 32 and traded in the leather and chains for hemp hippy shirts and camouflage-patterned baggy sweatpants.

Because as we say in the scene …

If you were Goth, you never really were Goth.

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