Warning: Explicit Content
The Concord Manipulation
I had a very strong identity before I met this guy, but I believe he finds alot of joy in manipulating others cause I just cannot figure out why I even agreed to move with him, was I that damn desperate? He did have a tendency telling me that he is the best I could ever get, that any other relationships I had after him would be much more terrible, did I really believe that? I know that I was still insecure about my looks and achieving happiness in a future relationship being who I am and all. We had nothing, and I mean nothing in common, and still somehow he manipulated me into staying even after we broke up. Eventually he manipulated me into letting a friend of his move in, that friend was very successful in making me think he was on my side.I was happy hanging out with my friends in that area, I was happy going to the Goth/fetish event Purgatory in Charlotte, hell, I was happy at work until the last month I was in the area. Even when Savvas came down to visit with his boyfriend at the time, Cody, and another friend, they really wanted to kill him, Cody wanted to know when he could stab the guy with a pencil, the manipulator was such in insufferable know it all and would deny anything he disagreed with even when you laid out all the conclusive information in-front of him, he even tried to tell a friend of mine who was a physics major that my friend was wrong about physics.
Towards the end this guy had me thinking that transition might not perhaps be the right way for me, so after not being able to afford hormones due to all my income from my full time job going into rent, I just stopped cold turkey, and after a month I was in the bathtub with a razor crying on the phone to Savvas, after that, after about 8 fucking months I decided that it was time to get out. I wonder, I fucking wonder, what would have happened if I actually put the word out to the people I eventually came to know in Concord and Charlotte NC about needing to get out of that place, where would I be today, better, or worse?
Plus I know that I was not very good then, but the guy was terrible in bed, I felt more love when I esocrted than from being in bed with this guy.
Sub-sandwiches
Concord used to have the biggest mall in NC, it was the only place that I looked for a job and on that first day of looking for a job I was hired at the food court, tried getting a job at Ho Topic but the guy was an asshole. I had no idea that entire food courts were owned by one of two companies, this was HMS Host. At first they put me in a BBQ place, where my job was to scoop things onto trays, realizing that I was too smart and weird for that position the managers put me into the sub sandwich shop called Dive-In. This place was located in a corner and received very little foot traffic, it was not odd to have only 5 customers on a weekday, while that might sound boring, and it was at times, especially if you were by yourself, it was ruled by Goth kids and since the place had a dinning room we were aloud to play any music we wanted as long as it was not noticeably inappropriate.When I first walked into the place there was one other person working that day, her name was Becca, she was on her knees cleaning something, I noticed the music and said "You're playing The Cruxshadows" she immediate stopped, looked up and said "Oh my god, you know who they are, and you can say their name right! Did they send me somebody smart this time?" we were instant friends. If I was out somewhere we were most likely hanging out. Becca was the first one to take me to see Ego Likeness and The Cruxshadows live, we drove all the way to Raleigh and had a heck of a time, and got to see people from back in Winston-salem.
After two weeks the manager of the sandwich got so frustrated with the upper management that she quit, too bad cause she was such a sweetheart who realyl cared about her workers. After that we only had a manager for December, but that guy was such an egotistical power-crazed ass who cared more about making the employees feel like shit than making the place run smoothly, he could not understand that the only reason they made him a manager there was because it just looked bad not to have one, that place ran smoothly with no problems and upper management left us alone cause we were trusted to do things right, then this guy almost ruins it, we complained so much that upper management forced the ass to quit.
I got employee of the month the first month I was there by just doing what I was supposed to do. I understood why when an employee insisted that she get permission from upper management before cutting tomatoes. Soon enough we got the place to hire a bunch of Goth kids and geeks and it was great until the last two months when everyone was quiting and having me work from 8am to 6pm 6 days a week, I ended up feeling stretched with a short fuse and, I believe, on the verge of insanity.
Purgatory
So not long after I move there and have myself a job, I am really wanting to go to Purgatory, Savvas and I checked out the Charlotte scene the previous year but were never able to make it back for a Purgatory event. The boyfriend did not want me to go of course, said that i'd most certainly get beaten up if I got otu like that, the way he said it was not out of some misguided concern, he personally did not like it, but I was already dolled up so I sucked in my breath and walked out, andI am glad I did cause I arrived for Purgatory's Halloween zombie theme show.Before the end of 2005 Purgatory was in a relatively small space for as many people they brought in, which, to me, has always been amazing for a Goth/fetish event. Always at about 11:30pm it became hard to move around on the dance floor it was so packed. The thing I remember most about that first night, was a zombie stage show, Purgatory always had theater going on at different times during the event always based on the night's theme. So two lovers come out on stage and start making out in the makeshift cemetery, then two females zombies sneak up behind them, one zombie pushed the guy on a slab of fake concrete to the left while the girl was shoved down on her back on the slab to the right of the stage, then the zombie starts pulling his dick off and doing obscene things with it on stage, they made it look pretty real. The other zombie pulled out the girl's uterus and eventually her intestines and dancing around with them making blood spray all over the crowed, it was quite a show. The first few times at Purgatory I knew that noone would really notice me, by this time I knew these club politics worked, but I looked very out there which is something the young in this scene tend to appreciate, hell everyone appreciates it, if not in the same way, I could also dance, so I knew it was only a matter of time before I was approached, and I was buy a girl who recognized me from the Goth club Winston-Salem had, she introduced me to a few people and it started from there. Nowadays it just seems like the fact that it seems like I belong and enjoy myself so much is what attracts and oh yes I have certainly learned to enjoy a Goth/industrial, the fact that a place to go even exists makes me joyous nowadays, it's truly the only music I can dance to where my all is focused and i'm suddenly lost in frenzy and dance floor etiquette.
The thing to understand about the scene in Charlotte at that time is that it was much more cyber/candy Goth than anything else unlike the Winston/Greensboro area who all came across as very old-school in looks and feeling, unlike Winston/Greensboro the Charlotte scene felt much less like a community to me and personally I prefer a place where everyone knows your name and any new person is welcomed into the fold quickly, not to say that there were never any bad apples or that Charlotte did not have it's own groups within the scene like the followers of Astrid Haven or a particular drag family. Sure enough, no matter where the Goth scene is, gender variants of all kinds were very popular. In the Charlotte scene I most likely could have went further but there were some, lets just say, hated me making them questions why they were attracted to me, but I certainly attracted alot of people who happened to find out about me.
Finally
I had enough of Concord, the job was taking it's toll on me, I never had extra money, I lived with two assholes who made home life horrible and I was contemplating suicide so it was time to leave. I was able to make a deal to get out of my rental contract and of course my ex said that my life would be hell without him, yeah he was so very wrong.Next is probably the most event filled two years of my life, so i'll post that withing the next few days.
Just a taste of Purgatory
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