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Okay, I'm calling this bluff. LeonardGoth and AvrilGoth are the same person - a hoax perpetrated by a bald 46-year-old accountant in Boise.
He's sitting in front of his computer screen right now, tickled by his own cleverness. He's garbed only in a stained t-shirt, hasn't washed his dishes nor done his laundry in six months, and his skin has a vaguely yellowed pallor not unlike the opened packet of baking soda in his refrigerator (longago left by his now ex-wife). He'll go back to work as soon as his eyebrows grow back.
His bungalow is perched on a hill, so from his bedroom window he can see the small cityscape of Boise. His fingers smell vaguely of coffee, although he never drinks the stuff. He doesn't laugh so much as emit a high-pitched wheeze. He owns three cats.
He first heard about this "goth" movement from reading a magazine in a doctor's office. The girls in the pictures wore black lipstick and fishnet stockings, just the way he liked it. The article promised that all goth girls dressed like that. He knew, in his heart, that he WAS a goth girl.
He found a black wig in the garage, a leftover from some long faded hallowe'en party. But the fishnet stockings were a much harder task. It took him weeks before he finally gathered up the nerve to venture out of his home to the local Sears. He purchased a couple of neckties, a three-pack of extra-large Y-fronts, six pairs of white tube socks, and fertilizer spikes from the home hardware section. Amidst all that quality Sears merchandise, what eagle-eyed cashier could ever notice a single pack of Haynes fishnet stockings?
He approached the checkout, the goods cradled in his arms like a shrink-wrapped baby. In an effort to not make eye contact he lowered his head. He could smell his own fear. It wafted up from the neckline of his Trailblazers t-shirt in waves, mixing with yesterday's sweat and the tomato soup still matted in his chest hair from the previous evening. At first he was repulsed, but that soon passed. He breathed in the sweet comingling of odors, realizing, finally, that the fear was a flavor, and it tasted like life itself.
He wanted more.
Once safely ensconced in his Boise bungalow, the lights dimmed and curtains drawn, he set about his transformation. The black wig was slightly too small for his bulbous pate, but he found it stayed in place with a quick smear of vaseline. He'd be needing the vaseline later anyway.
He was glad he'd had the foresight to buy the extra large fishnets, for even they were a struggle to squeeze into. He used a black beach towel as a dress, laced up his hiking boots, and then started on his makeup. He traced the black non-permanent felt marker along his thin lips. Then did likewise under his sagging eyes. He stepped back to regard himself in the full-length mirror. He almost lost his breath. He was beautiful. A beautiful, big-boned, hairy goth girl with a mug like a decaying ling cod.
His glance slyly shifted over to the blue light emenating from his monitor screen. He sat down in front of his computer, picked up his dog-eared copy of "2001 Baby Names", and randomly flipped to the "G" section.
"I am a goth girl," he thought to himself. "And tonight I shall introduce the world to..." His finger led his eye down the page, past name after name. Gianna, Gilda, Gillian. And then he stopped. He smiled. Gina. He mouthed the syllables like he was receiving his first kiss. He was Gina. It felt so right. He reached once again for that smear of vaseline.
The next morning he awoke in a pile of damp towels on his kitchen floor. It only took a moment - a minor acknowledgement of both a throbbing headache and a dislodged sacro-iliac joint - before the exhilaration of the previous evening came rushing back to him. He had spent the night in a chatroom. Was it just the one night? Mere hours? Days? He didn't know. And he certainly didn't care.
He had been Gina the Goth Girl. Time itself had been transcended. He'd never before felt as free, as unburdened, as completely and utterly himself as he had while keying in conversation in that chatroom. And Gina had been so popular. Boys and girls immediately embraced her. It was like Gina could do no wrong. Her cynicism came across like it was steeped in wisdom, her anger like it was earned through untold tragedy. And even though nobody could see her, they just seemed to know she was beautiful.
He picked himself up with an arthritic enthusiasm, grabbed the wig that lay belly-up on the floor like a disemboweled birman, and practically minced over to the computer. He stopped, momentarily puzzled. There was a message on his e-mail. With the exception of the expected fall-out from surfing free porn sites, his last personal message had been three years ago when he received a cold, official notification of divorce from his then wife. Ever since, any new message he immediately deleted, which is what he was preparing to do yet again. But then the title of the transmission caught his eye.
It said "Dear Gina."
The message itself was insubstantial in terms of word count. It said, simply, "your cool. c ya at noon."
He backed away from the monitor screen in blanching terror. What had he done? Or, more to the point, what had Gina done? His hermit's existence had gone untrespassed for more than three years, and now, in the space of one night (or two, or... whatever) he'd not only befriended someone but actually agreed to meet them somewhere. He stood on the verge of panic, his knees shaking, his vision vignetted as if he was peering out from the darkest cave. He tried to control himself. He clenched his eyes and concentrated on a single point, something far removed, a simple grounding phrase. "You're is the contraction for you are", he thought to himself, thinking he'd found a calming mantra. "Your a possessive pronoun denoting second person ownership". And then his eyes snapped open in abject fear. Good Christ, he's supposed to meet someone who doesn't even know that.
He could feel the panic fill his body in the way oxygen filled his lungs. It seeped in like a needed friend. It was something concrete he could hold onto. And paradoxically, the act of embracing his panic seemed to calm him down. He realized he still held the key to his own fate. He didn't have to show up for his date. He didn't even know the location of the intended meeting place. He was, for all intents and purposes, free and clear.
He sat back down at the computer. As he moved his cursor towards the trash icon he noticed the seconds counting out the time at the corner of his monitor screen. It was 12:04. He glanced back at the message. "c ya at noon."
The muscular knock at the door reverberated around the room, but by that time he'd already quite substantially crapped himself.
ortunately, he was still cloaked in the black towel. He inched to the bathroom, his hand knotting the fabric closed between his legs in an effort to prevent spillage. He climbed into the tub and let the towel drop heavily to the beige enamel. He wiped himself off with its dry end and, as the second round of knocks began at his front door, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
Completely naked except for the fishnets and the hiking boots, his flabby gut hanging so low it obscured his diminutive maleness which, nestled as it was in a thick nest of black hair, had the appearance of a bonsai project at the best of times. He resembled nothing so much as a post-op transexual sasquatch that had been stuffed full of twinkies and locked in a dark closet.
He dashed to his bedroom, riffled through piles of clothes and unkempt drawers, and finally pulled on a threadbare pair of army pants. In the tradition of all army pants they were too short, exposing a pale shinful of fishnet. He didn't notice. He pulled a baggy WSU sweatshirt over his head and went back out to the living room.
The knocking seemed to have stopped. Maybe the invaders had left. He skulked over to the window, slowly and shakily pulled aside the curtain for a peek, and then froze in place.
He was staring face to face with a teenage girl, mere inches and a single pane of glass the only distance between them. As their eyes met her sullen face brightened slightly, a black-lipped smile cracked her ashen countenance.
"Gina!" She squealed. "Open the fuckin' door ya fuckin' skank! It's me, Lenny!"
He jumped back from the window and stood in the middle of the room, staring at the ratty curtain as it lightly waved to a close. His first impulse was to hide, but then he remembered he was an adult; he could simply answer the door and ask the invader to leave. He would simply deny the existence of Gina.
He moved toward the front door, but then caught his reflection in a wall mirror. His pasty face was still festooned with black ink. The image of his darkened eyes and ebony lips underneath his sickly pale dome, sparsely forested as it was with a single wispy patch of hair just below and to the right of dead center, shocked him into the realization that he looked like a freak. A dangerous freak. With a teenage girl at his door.
The panic was returning. The knocking at the door had started again. He didn't have time to wash his face. He couldn't hide. He was ready to phone the cops himself. And then, he had a flash of inspiration, a plan that might work: he could remain incognito.
He grabbed the wig, quickly affixed it to his head, and grabbed the door handle with a confidence that was alien to him. He swung the door open.
They stood facing each other for an instant of silence. He was perhaps a little surprised at her appearance. Dressed entirely in black, except for a white shirt with the words "Avril Vagina Sucks" handscrawled in ink across the chest, she didn't look all that unlike himself. She was even slightly chunky, a babyfat double chin oozing out from around a dog collar necklace and odd pockets of stomach flab bulging the clothing immediately north and south of her studded belt. He felt comforted.
"Christ, Gina," said Lenny. "How fuckin' old are you?"
"Twenty-eight," he lied.
"HOLY FUCK!" she squealed. "That's fuckin' awesome! You won't even get carded! Let's go."
She started to leave, then turned back and noticed that he hadn't moved. He seemed rooted in place. She regarded him with a smirk. He was easily the biggest, ugliest girl she had ever seen. She marched over, reached past him and pulled the door handle. The door closed with a decisive CHUNK.
His face went slack. Imperceptibly he clenched his lower bowels. "You just locked me out," he said in a voice an octave higher than usual. "And I don't have my keys."
"Fuck your keys" she said. "Let's go!"
And as she marched down his walkway, he surprised even himself by timidly following.
They were barely one hundred yards down the street before he recognized the first passerby. It was Mrs. Shelby from two houses down. She'd once been a frequent visitor to his house, back in the days when his wife would host neighborhood potlucks. It had been over three years though.
He kept his eyes straight ahead, rounded his shoulders to appear smaller, even swung his hips slightly as they passed. He didn't know if Mrs. Shelby looked or not. He didn't want to know. All he wanted was to keep walking, to get as far away as possible. And it looked like they might do it.
"Old bitch," said Lenny, just loud enough.
"Excuse me?" Mrs Shelby turned around to challenge the young girl. "What did you just say?"
He tried to keep walking, but Lenny stopped him and then whirled around to face the woman. "You heard me, you old bitch-ass gutter skank."
"You need to have some respect, young lady." Mrs. Shelby's dentures clacked as she spoke, and her head shook in tight spasms like the inside of her skull was swarming with bees. She tried to raise her cane like a poker but lacked the arm strength.
"Com'on, Gina" Lenny pulled at his sleeve. "Tell her!"
"What?" He spoke the word like a linebacker needing a play repeated: loud, gutteral, and manly. Mrs. Shelby's face dropped in confusion.
"Tell her!" repeated Lenny. "Like you told those assholes on line last night. Give it to her!"
He could see a look of familiarity flash in Mrs. Shelby's eyes, like she'd just realized a connection she couldn't quite make. He knew it was only a matter of seconds. He closed his eyes, and tried to hide inside his own brain. The further down he pushed himself, the more he could feel her pushing back. It was Gina, taking over his body, casting him aside and trying to attain her freedom. He heard the words take form, but didn't even realize he was the human saying them.
"You rat bastard motherfucking old diaper slut. You think you know cause you're old. You don't know shit. You're just old. So why don't you just FUCKING DIE, ya monkey's purple ass."
There was a second of shocked silence all around. Mrs. Shelby peered in shock and disgust, then raised a quavering hand and pointed at him.
"I know you," she said.
As they ran down the block Mrs. Shelby's dentures dangled from his outstretched tongue like fuzzy, plaque-encrusted dice from a lowrider's rearview mirror. With every stride they clacked against his chin in counterrhythm to the undulations of his belly.
"This way, Gina," said Lenny as she suddenly veered from the sidewalk and plunged down a small embankment. He followed her across the field and into a bluff of trees. It wasn't until they stopped by the edge of the small bog that he realized how exhausted the run had made him.
His leg muscles were twitching from the exertion, so he first knelt, then fell to a sitting position. Within seconds he was splayed out supine, his enormous head pillowed by a knobbly root. His cold scalp started to sweat. His heart pounded audibly, a dramatic drum roll muffled by the quivering flesh of his man-tits. He stared straight up, through the canopy of leaves and branches to the blue sky above, flecked by the black stars of his dizziness. "It'll be all right," he thought to himself. "Just let it pass and go right on home. Just let it pass." His system was slowly regaining equilibrium, allowing him to become aware of the wet and uncomfortable forest floor under him. He felt like he could breathe again.
"You killed that bitch," said Lenny.
He suddenly became aware of the stillness around him, the way the rest of Boise didn't intrude into this bluff of trees. It felt momentarily cocoon-like, and he was thankful not only for this sanctuary but also for the example it set. He calmly stood up, towering over Lenny, and inhaled a pine-scented lungfull of air.
"I mean, you killed her," repeated Lenny.
He started to say something, then realized his tongue was still extended and Mrs. Shelby's dentures were pressed against his lips in a skeletal kiss. He used both hands to pry them apart. As his tongue retracted back into his mouth it felt swollen and dry, as unwelcome as sawdust in a sausage casing. He rolled it against his palate, ran it along the backside of his teeth, gave it a quick exercise regime before speaking.
"That bitch died ten years ago," he said finally. And as if to punctuate his disdain he clamped Mrs. Shelby's dentures onto his left nipple. There was no pain; that nipple had previously lost all feeling after a chest-shaving incident when he was still in his teens. The dentures hung from his sweater-clad breast like dull, cumbersome nipple jewellery.
"Wow," said Lenny. "That's fuckin' hardcore."
They stared at each other for a second, a mutual respect silently acknowledged. They wordlessly seemed to agree it was time to move on. Lenny took the lead. He stayed close to her, no longer merely a passenger to her adventure. As they emerged from the bluff into a subdivision, Lenny steered them through a backyard. They walked in silence, along sidewalks and bike paths and roads. As they finally strolled up a driveway, he realized she had been following a deliberate route.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Here," she said, reaching for a front door handle. "This is my mom's house"
She pushed him inside and slammed the door shut.
"Is that you, Lenny?" yelled a voice from some distant room.
"Who else, bee-yotch?" Lenny barked the words like she was disciplining a deaf schnauzer. She gestured for him to follow her up the stairs.
Her room boasted a similar aesthetic to his bungalow. It was dark and dirty, lit only by a monitor screen perched on a desk. The bed was unmade, old clothes were strewn around like the dead on a battlefield, and an odor of wet goat hung at chest height like a fog. The walls were adorned with posters and cut-out magazine photographs. Almost all of them, he noticed, featured what seemed to be a pop band called Korn. Most of the others were drawings of unicorns.
"What d'ya wanna listen to?" asked Lenny as she thumbed through a stack of CDs. He actually found himself considering a reply, but before he could speak their stinky idyll was interrupted.
"Lenny," said the voice. "Do you want something to eat?"
"Aw fuck!" Lenny clenched her fists in frustration, then hammered one of those chubby fists against a CD stack. She swung around in her seat and stared at him. He somehow recognized her subsequent shrug as a gesture of apology.
"Let's go eat," she said as she hopped towards the door.
He hadn't eaten anything other than Cheezies and marshmallow bananas for approximately six weeks, so his initial reaction to Lenny's command was to follow her eagerly out of the bedroom. However, as they descended the stairs and neared the kitchen his tenuous sense of reality started to wage war with his primal urge to eat. The dentures, still clamped onto his nipple, reminded him that his physical transformation into Gina had so far not been an entirely successful deception. He was, after all, a large, fat, 46-year-old man in a cheap Hallowe'en wig, and there was a distinct possibility that Lenny's mother may possess the observational powers required to see through his disguise.
By the time they entered the kitchen, he had decided that quick and sudden violence might be the wisest course of action.
The kitchen positively gleamed, every appliance resplendent in brushed steel and the glossy black cabinetry trimmed in hospital white. Lenny's mother was hidden behind the open door of the hulking refrigerator. He scanned the room for a knife or mallet, but every countertop was spotlessly clear of utensils. Clear, in fact, of any reminder that humans may have once used this room for cooking. Or anything.
"I made hoagies," said Lenny's mother as she closed the fridge door. "They're in the dining room because...oh..." Her voice sunk an octave when she set eyes on her daughter's companion. "I see you brought a friend."
"Oh like it's a big deal to make an extra hoagie," said Lenny.
The mother continued to stare. He stared back. She was equal in height to Lenny, though possibly twice her girth, and clad in a tentlike smock that hid a designer label somewhere beneath its folds. Her swollen fingers were immaculately manicured, the nails painted in a sparkly stripe design that matched perfectly the streaks in her hairstyle.
"Do you go to school with Lenny?" she asked finally.
"No, mom," Lenny moaned. "Gina's just a friend. Not everybody I know's in school, y'know. Bee-yotch."
A look of frustration passed over Lenny's mother's face. She didn't like that language, but she knew her disapproval would only encourage Lenny to use it more.
"If you'd like to stay for lunch, Gina, there are hoagies on the table." Lenny's mother pointed towards an archway. Lenny immediately started to push him forward.
"Why is lunch in the dining room, anyway?" Lenny whined. The mother's answer was too late to stop them from entering.
"Because your father is home," said Lenny's mother.
Teetering in the entrance to the dining room, he caught his first view of Lenny's dad. He was sitting by himself at the head of an enormous oak table, patiently facing a stack of halved hoagies laid out on a plate like they were an art exhibit. Dangling off the chairback behind him was a tweed sportscoat, its familiar pattern tinged by a faint aqua color, which gently clashed with his taupe shirt and "Scenes of Americana" tie. Lenny's dad was impossibly skinny. His skin stretched taut across a skull-like face, of which the central focus was a pockmarked, hawkish nose large enough to visually infer that the man's head was too small for his body. The same could not be inferred about his ears. They protruded from the sides of his head like satellite dishes. His army-style buzz cut did nothing to alleviate the impression.
"And who is this?" He said, a softness of tone in his demand.
"Grab a hoagie, Gina," said Lenny as she pulled out the chair furthest away from her father.
"Gina, is it?" Her father was standing now, then stepping closer. He held out his hand and said "I'm Lenny's stepdad. You can call me Russell. Or maybe Russ."
Russell's hand snaked around his waist and pulled him over to the chair next to the head of the table. "Sit next to me, Gina."
Russell stared at him with a look that simultaneously made him feel uncomfortable and exhilarated. His eyes remained riveted on his sizable man-tits throughout the meal, and the dollop of mayonnaise he spilled on his shirt only exacerbated Russell's intensity. He tried to finish the hoagie as quickly as he could, stuffing the bulk of it in his mouth in a single bite. Russell's attention shifted to his mouthful of hoagie; his eyes darkened like he'd been overtaken by a malignant presence.
"You like that hoagie, do you?" said Russell. His voice was low and his breathing was shallow. "You like that mouthful of hoagie?"
"Dad, don't…" said Lenny quietly.
"Lenny, go to your room. Gina and I have something to discuss." Lenny's hesitation seemed to bring out a brutal anger in Russell. His face flushed crimson; his eyes bulged out of their sockets. "NOW!" he yelled, rising to his feet.
As Lenny scampered out of the room, Russell's angry gaze shifted to Lenny's mother, who cowered in her chair. "You're gonna sit there and learn something," Russell said to her. She nodded submissively.
"Now, Gina, you want hoagie? I got hoagie," he said, and he pulled at the leather of his belt.
And now the landscape blurred past as he stared in slience out the fingerprint-clouded window of Russell's Towncar. After that hoagie lunch, Russell had chivalrously asked Gina if he needed a ride home. He had accepted immediately, feeling a desperate need to escape the spine-jarring sobs of Lenny's mother. She'd cried so long and hard at the dining room table, saturating the bread of her hoagie with so many tears that the crust had started to sweat. He didn't even wait to say goodbye to Lenny. She could have seen him out if she wanted, he reasoned, but she was too busy upstairs alternating between screaming obscenities and smashing glass.
This time in Russell's car seemed like a haven in a storm. He cradled his black wig in his lap like it was a recently deceased pet. There was no need to reset it atop his bald dome. During "lunch", Russell had woven his fingers into the wiry black hair in an effort to more precisely rein his target and the wig subsequently pulled off, exposing Gina's true identity for the edification of all. It was the only moment during the meal when Lenny's mother's sobs had stopped, allbeit only to swiftly resume with a brain-rattling increase in volume. Oddly enough, if Russell felt any surprise he kept it contained, not even missing a thrust as he casually tossed the hairpiece onto the dinner table.
As the Towncar pulled onto his street he noticed the police tape stretched across the sidewalk where he'd last seen Mrs. Shelby. Her dentures still hung off his nipple, and he thought it might be prudent to hold on to them for a while longer. Long enough, at least, to hammer them into a fine powder and flush them down the toilet.
The car pulled up alongside his bungalow, and he remembered that he was locked out.
"I'm locked out," he said to Russell.
Russell smiled. His bottom lip seemed to quiver ever so slightly. And his eyes glinted with moisture.
"I understand, Gina," he said finally. "I don't want to go home either."
And with that Russell aimed the Towncar due east, his free hand lovingly clasped inside Gina's massive, manly mitt.
And as they drove out of state, he thought to himself "I am Gina.
I am a goth girl."
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