Unmask! Unmask!

(February 18, 2002)

"Why, do you want a KISS?" the boy asked, trying very hard to hide incredulity. It is as I expected-- he's dressed the part of detached cool, but it's not in his heart, though he's trying. You see, when you've come to the Milky Way in full-on Goth gear, complete with lace-up vinyl gloves and silver glitter in your French braid, it's important to remain, above all, cool, when a stranger walks up to you and asks you for a clove cigarette and some lipstick.

"No, I don't want you to kiss me. Just put it on me," I said, presenting my lips. He held my chin in one vinyl-clad hand and dotted black lipstick onto my mouth. I could tell from the feel that he was getting it all outside the lines. Also, that it was cheap black lipstick; coulda been lipwear by Crayola. And, he took a long time. I needed a smoke break in the middle. But finally he was done, and my lips were more or less Man Ray black.

"Look Hub, I'm Goth too now," waving the skinny brown cigarette and pursing in his direction, where he'd been leaning against a post and watching the whole thing.

"Those things smell like ass." He meant the cigarette, not my lips. Which now smelled like wax. "You like that kind of thing, don't you." It was not a question. Hub knows I've always dug men in make-up. When Hub and I met, in high school, it was the eighties, and Boy George, Adam Ant, and Duran Duran walked with gods as far as I was concerned. Am concerned.

This Goth boy, just a teenager actually, turned out to be a classmate of Izzy's, and his name is Basim, "rhymes with Possum," he suggested. But hereafter he is to be called Azrael Abyss, Prince of Sorrow. That clove cigarette, it lasted longer than the lipstick, which I talked/drank/kissed off in no time.

"Are you happy?" Cynthia asked him many hours later, at T Max's place. We were all grouped on and around T Max's bed. Which is not how it sounds; T Max, for some reason, keeps his bed in the front room that would normally be a living room. Though there's a perfectly usable back bedroom. There is no sofa, just the bed. His antacids and magazines and condoms and candles and clock are all in a tumble on the shelves around the bed. The clock said 4:04. The same backwards and forwards. "It's like a number...." but I could not remember the word for when a word is the same backwards and forwards. I tried out anagram. Then acronym. Finally, the guy with the tongue ring came up with it.

Palindrome. Yeah, it's like a number-palindrome. But by then it was 4:06. "We'll have to wait until 5:05 now," I advised.

So "Are you happy?" she asked him. Cynthia, a gifted and disarming individual, has an almost surgical conversational style. Study. Cleanse the area. Cut. I watched Basim's eyes to see if I could find him in there. I was 18 once. I know what you think you can hide with heavy black make-up. "You are vain," she told him. "I AM vain," he answered. "But why would you jump to that conclusion? You've only known me for two days." But something in his eyes looked like...I dunno. Maybe like wariness? Or surprise. Seems she knew him already better than he knew himself.

Or maybe it was my imagination.

But probably not.