Take the Cannoli (22 page)

Authors: Sarah Vowell

BOOK: Take the Cannoli

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The club we go to is called Roderick's Chamber, cheerfully named for a character in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Everywhere: blackness, leather, lace, frowns.

The first thing I notice about goth's public face is that, while the women are almost uniformly stunning, the men look, to a man, pretty stupid. There's a lot of jewelry and goofy cloaks and silly tights. And fellas, a word about jackboots: Ick. Indra tells me that if I want to check out a subculture with a hunkier class of men, I should look into swing dancing. “
Oh. Daddy. Oh,
” she says. What is she? Some kind of traitor? Maybe she's alluding to a more profound point. The character and charm of the women here emanates from the way they playfully stick it to the idea that women are supposed to be sunny and upbeat. But the
men, adopting the accoutrements of medieval knights and Nazis, come across as little boys; they might as well be running around the dance floor shooting cap pistols at one another's G.I. Joes. “That's why my husband isn't goth,” adds Monique.

The thing I love most about the goth club is how passive it is. Hardly anyone talks to anyone else. It is free of the normal social pressures to smile and interact and appear content. There's none of that getting-to-know-you pickup crap. In fact, the mood is antithetical to pickups; it's more like stay away. No one cares if you dance. No one cares if you don't. As someone who often dreads strangers, the antisocial nature of this social situation makes me feel communal and part of somethingâone of us. Like, hey, I hate talking to you too! The mutual disgust is completely liberating.

The whole point of coming here is to stare and be stared at. Someone walking in off the street might think, What's the fun in that? And the answer is, all the interaction, all the fun, all the real moments happen at home, when you're getting dressed, talking about how you'll look with your friends. The club is about being seenâwhich is so inferior.

At least my goths don't seem to mind being seen with me, though that may be more of a testament to their sartorial wizardry than to any assimilation skills on my part. Even I can see who the sore thumb is here. Like a scene straight out of
The Munsters,
all goth contempt is beamed onto the dance floor, where a happy blond Fawn Hall looka-like in acid-washed jeans is smiling the night away, oblivious. Compared
to her, at least outwardly, I am as goth as a Cure album dipped in blood.

I'm a completely new person until I look at my watch right before midnight and realize I'm missing
Nightline.
I'm having a good time, but I don't really need elaborate costumes and nightclubs for an evening of gloom and doom: I'm perfectly capable of having a dark old time in my black pajamas watching the news. After the mandatory two hours, I hug my goths goodbye. They give me the kind of smiles professors reserve for their favorite students on graduation day, like they're proud of me for pulling this off, but they're just as puffed up about having done so much with so little. There should be diplomas for keeping that much eye makeup in place.

I hail a cab. Usually, I am a cab driver's dreamâpolite, small, non-threatening. Perhaps that is why cab drivers always talk to me. But tonight, I am Becky. I am goth. Not a word from the driver. Bless him, he keeps staring at me and my eye makeup in the rearview mirror, watching his back. She is menacing, he's thinking. I can tell. His fear pays off. I tip him extravagantly. So extravagantly that I blow my cover. He turns and gives me a look that says, “Thanks, Hon.”

T
hese pieces first appeared, often in different form, in the following: “Shooting Dad,” “Music Lessons,” “The End Is Near, Nearer, Nearest,” “Take the Cannoli,” “Michigan and Wacker,” “What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill,” “Thanks for the Memorex,” “Drive Through Please,” “Dark Circles,” and “American Goth” on
This American Life
on Public Radio International; “These Little Town Blues” and “Chelsea Girl” in
GQ
; “Ixnay on the My Way” in
Salon
; “Your Dream, My Nightmare” in
Request.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M
ost of these pieces were shaped, contorted, pummeled, and harangued into viability by my hilarious and heroic editor, friend, and driving teacher Ira Glass of
This American Life,
along with producers Julie Snyder, Nancy Up-dike, and Alix Spiegel, and fellow lifer Paul Tough (Canadian). I'm also grateful for the editorial stylings of Cynthia Joyce at
Salon,
Jim Nelson at
GQ,
and Susan Hamre at
Request.
Many ideas and anecdotes herein were lifted from my former
San Francisco Weekly
column, edited by Bill Wyman. And considering there's no excuse for my pilfering of the previously private lives of my father, Pat Vowell, my mother, Janie Vowell, and my sister, Amy Brooker, they've been good sports. For their assistance and insights, I am indebted to Dave Eggers, Marion Ettlinger, Jim Fitzgerald, John Flansburgh, Nicole Francis, Marcy Freedman, Barrett Golding, Robin Goldwasser, David Gomez of the New Echota Historic Site, the goths (Mary Mitchell, Terrance Graven, Monique Motil, Elizabeth Reardon, and Indra Lowenstein), Nicole Graev, Nick Hornby, my guardian angels Greil and Jenny Marcus, Tony Millionaire, my late uncle John A. Parson,
Nightline,
David Sedaris, my agent Wendy Weil and her assistant Emily Forland, Ren Weschler and Sara Weschler. Honorable mention to David Rakoff, who over the course of this book endured my whining, Disney World, and my whining at Disney World. Finally, the scrupulous Geoffrey Kloske at Simon & Schuster was committed, can-do, and usually right.

Sarah Vowell is the author of
The Wordy Shipmates, Assassination Vacation, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli
, and
Radio On
. A contributing editor for public radio's
This American Life
, she lives in New York City.

A
LSO BY
S
ARAH
V
OWELL

Radio On: A Listener's Diary The Partly Cloudy Patriot

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Assassination Vacation

Worldy Shipmates

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