Goths I Have Been & Known-- Part 2 of 4 (My 20s)

By the time I was 22 and living in Ohio with Gerick, my tastes were expanding again. I was surrounded by rural and small town Ohioans on the border of Appalachians. And I had a boyfriend who was happy to support my branching out and trying weird ideas. I was studying magick and paganism and joined a few groups (that crashed and burned spectacularly) and participated in some open pagan festivals. I became a Witchy or Hippie Goth. Gerick was exposed to this type of thing for the first time and came up with his own version, allowing his curly hair to start growing longer– a change I endorsed heartily!

We perused the then common to find New Age shops as well, and we tended to be attracted to the darker aesthetic, but we never practiced “Black” or “Evil” magick, as we were into Mother Earth and the suffering of the world at the hands of humanity, etc. We were white witches in black garb. That threw off a lot of ignorant types from the south or the hillbilly rednecks of Ohio. (I’ve since read things online by one person that claimed we were Satanists or something! Which makes me laugh. I’ve met real Satanists and they were all pretty pathetic, actually. They seemed sillier to me than Goth did by far.) We were “Peace & Love You Fucktards!” all the way, and I can understand why that may seem confusing! LOL! Enya was my favorite music at that time, and I still love her.

To this day, I still have quite a bit of Hippie Goth clothes. They’re comfortable– and that matters more and more as I age, I admit it! A part of me will likely be Hippie-Witchy Goth to the day I die.

But alone it wasn’t enough. By the early to mid-90s, I was really into Vampires and live roleplay of The Masquerade, and movies came out that just stole my Gothic soul in 1992, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and in 1994: The Crow & Interview With the Vampire. OH MY GODS how I LOVED LOVED LOVED those movies! Seriously, I played them over and over and over again. I still love those movies, even though they seem more tyrotine to me now. But oh! The styles and concepts! The tragic romantic MOOD! And I added a new look for many years…

In ’93 or so, I discovered an Ohio band called Lestat that was really cool. They made only a handful of albums (on cassette tape, remember those?) and we tried to find the obscure band in SO many stores! We also fell in love with the female bands, Shakespeare’s Sister and Concrete Blonde– not just the music, but often the creative videos as well.

The thing about being a Vampire Goth is that to pull it off, you pretty much have to be YOUNG and WILLOWY thin. I was both for my entire youth and young adulthood and worked this look with all my might. (As did Gerick.) I didn’t wear it every day, but I had started going clubbing with Gerick and going to special book stores and pagan stores and music stores…! And yes, I had (and still have) a collection of Anne Rice books as well as ALL the Whitewolf 90s first addition roleplaying books and many of their associated add on books. My most expensive hobby in my 20s was Goth clothes and darkly romantic books and RPG stuff. Gerick was more into the music (he’s very much an audiophile) and so our music collection piled up. (In the divorce, I got many of the original CDs which were still in this collection. We had to have a special dividing meeting to split the music up. It may seem silly in this day where you can hear anything on the internet, but those CDs are very much a part of my past– and they don’t take up that much space, unlike my extensive book collection. But that’s another topic for another time!)

This was also when we were the most active in the “Abductee Community Scene” headed by Budd Hopkins. The relation to Goth there would be a rebellion against a true abiding horror of the dark. Panic and PTSD could very easily reduce one into a whimpering victim eternally curled in the fetal position. Going Goth was a rebellion to that on top of everything else it represented. Claim the night and stop feeling like prey! That was my goal.

In my mid to late 20s (which was during the mid to late ’90s) I expanded my Vampire Goth stuff into more general Romanticism. I began to be in love with the concept of love– and Gerick and I experimented with some interesting, um, activities! Things I would never consider today… but back then I was all for exploration and expansion.

And yes, I was “emotional, creative, and dreamy”– and the music selections described were well known to me.

This was also the time when I founded my own neo-pagan Circle, and started an entire Trad (or Tradition with rules and specific kinds of rituals) from scratch. I had tried joining others, and the ideas held such promise– but contention won out time and again. So I started my own reluctantly as it seemed the only way to find the kind of group I wanted to belong to. I loved teaching, but not leading, so I truly hoped to teach someone ELSE to take over! There was some drama, inevitably perhaps, but the group lasted for 10 years, the last 4 and a half without me around except by phone and email. That’s pretty impressive for someone the age I was when I began it. It was also quite the learning experience.

Meanwhile, in my group a couple more Type 4s joined. Cat, who I live with now, was and is what’s known as:

Sorry about the over-size of this pic. You can’t read it smaller due to the dark background. Cat has always been into multiple fandoms, including Cthulhu and Doctor Who and on and on. Me too– but she pursues all the cards, and stories, and TV shows and movies and paraphenalia far more than I do. She has TONS of crazy shit in her personal collection that’s accumulated over the decades. It’s part of the problem we’re having with moving– her stuff, most of which is very cool and has true collector’s value, but takes up too much space.

The member who was the most devoted to a “Goth Look” was Rowan, who was a mixture of Geek Goth and Romantic Goth. As a Type 4 with a 3 Wing, she knew how to really work the look, and her wardrobe was the envy of many people. She looked amazing, even as overweight as she was… definitely decorated our Circle just being there!

I found it interesting that though Goth was no longer talked about much, its influence was everywhere. I studied personality types during my 20s and became very good at discerning Enneagrammatic types especially. I soon found that nearly every Type 4 was a Goth of one form or another. We all like to express ourselves in how we present, and we all like fantasy and taking a notion and running with it artistically in some way. We love stories, and we love to pretend we’re in a story, more than ANYthing else in the world.

Spotting the Goth fashion victims is a quick identifier. Although many other types (like 3s, 6s, and 7s) will dabble in Goth, you can tell the “lifers” are ALL Type 4s.