Secret Knots Update
(Start of “Unspeakable”.)
Last thing we need now is a great leader, by Penn Jillette
My voting station was in the gymnasium of one of Vancouver’s oldest elementary schools, only a couple of blocks from my house. To get there, we had to walk through the thin strip of nameless industrial area that jackets the foot of Clark Drive, all auto-body shops and unidentifiable offices, where low rent prostitutes cluster on the corners at night. The way over was unremarkable, a short, pleasant walk of a couple of blocks, David and I discussing the Canadian women who fought for their right to vote back early in the 1900’s. The way back, however, is worth a story.
We’ve already crossed Clark, we’re not even a full block away from my house, when a speeding red “sportscar” hits the breaks next to us so hard the tires smoke, and the driver, a young, thin man of about twenty-eight yells intensely out the window at us, “GOTH IS GREAT! ROCK THE VAMPIRE REVOLUTION! I’M WITH YOU! FUCK EVERYTHING BUT BLACK! RAAAUUUGH!”.
Now, David and I, dressed as we are in perfectly ordinary clothing, are baffled. We stop, look at each other, decide simultaneously that he’s off his rocker, and look back at him.
“Excuse me,” I say as he stopped shouting to take a breath, “but we’re not even dressed a little like goths.” Disgusted that I managed to get a word in edgewise, he replies, just as loudly, practically frothing, “FINE, FAGGOTS, WHATEVER.” “Anyway,” I say, “their band practice is a block up. You’ve got the wrong street.”
He then growled at us, spat out the window, then drove off as fast as his car could actually go.
…
A few moments later, I turned to David, “Were we just goth-bashed?”
“I think so.”
“Wow. What a freak.”
“Yeah.”