I'LL GET YOU A SATANIC MECHANIC

   Mom was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, and when she rebelled and left home, it was to join a religious cult for nine years. Religion was in her blood, but she had learned to be wary of organized religion because they wanted to grab you and keep you. She wanted spirituality without confinement, which made her avoid the community aspects of organized religion. She would go to church on Sunday, but she would go to a different church every week so they couldn’t get ahold of her, sometimes driving an hour into the next county to attend a service just that once. Sometimes she would goad me into attending with her, which I didn’t really mind except for getting up early. Christian church services usually have a “meet and greet” moment in the middle of the sermon, when churchgoers are encouraged to shake hands with their neighbors and say “peace be with you”. It was kind of nice, and implied that these were your friends and neighbors whether you knew them or not. When I was with mom on these Sunday trips, it was weird pretending to be neighborly when I knew I would never see these people again. Most Pastors would also say something along the lines of “Do we have any new faces in the crowd this Sunday?” and mom would stay my hand.  

   After Mel and Jess gave me a Robert Smith haircut it became easier to befriend other kids with stupid haircuts, and we would go to goth night at Visage, and all-ages nightclub on Orange Blossom Trail, over near the strip clubs.  Also on Orange Blossom Trail was a circus-themed strip club in a building that looked like a naughty package of Animal Crackers, and an unbelievable structure called The Booby Trap, which was two geodesic domes painted like naked breasts with nipples on top. Florida law required that you couldn’t serve alcohol and provide nude entertainment under the same roof, so The Booby Trap separated these activities into the two breast-shaped buildings. 

   Goth was a good scene for kids with physical or psychological defects. All the makeup and outfits could hide a loser’s acne inside a porcupine shell of spikes, pancake makeup, and black clothes. We started dying our hair black and wearing combat boots, and spent hours trying to figure out what to put in our hair to make it stand up. One night I had impressive hair verticality thanks to an experiment with egg whites, but it backfired when the nighttime bugs kept getting attracted to it and getting stuck.

   One Visage girl called herself Rain, spoke with a British accent, and said she had run away from home. I asked where home was and she was evasive. She indoctrinated me into participatory screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and we went with a big group that liked to dress up and act out the movie. It was a sea of black clothes and spiky hair, with some folks very committed to nailing specific character’s outfits and the coordinated interaction between film and crowd. Too much stuff to learn for me but still a good scene. At Denny’s afterwards Rain’s friend elbowed her and said “Are you ever gonna drop that fake accent? It’s getting annoying!” and I was blown away that she possibly was living a double life. Was she just a hamburger-eating suburban kid, on the honor roll with regular parents? I couldn't tell if I was disappointed or intrigued.

   Rain called me, doing the accent on the phone, and asked if I wanted to go to “youth group.” I didn’t know what that was, but a girl wanted to pick me up in a car which was unprecedented. She showed up in a car already full of black-clad kids smoking cloves and blasting Bela Lugosi’s Dead, and I ran out to squeeze in the car. I learned we were going to church and was disappointed. “Why?” I moaned. One guy, taking a deep drag two inches from my face, deadpanned “Yeah, we need to make sure Satan is represented.”

   We got to the church, uncontorted our bodies out of the Toyota Corolla, crushed out our clove cigarettes, and filed in the side door. There were snacks and sodas and a whole world of pastel-clad Future Business Leaders of America who tried to not look at us and act friendly at the same time. They all looked like they were hatched from a golf course pro shop, but to them we probably looked like we were hatched from Satan’s asshole.    

   We sat down in a row of folding chairs and one of the pastel guys sang about “the blood of the lamb” while playing a bunch of major chords on an acoustic guitar. Seemed pretty satanic to me. Then the youth pastor got up there, said he was happy to see some new faces, and refused to be intimidated by us no matter how much we sat there seething. He eased in, but he got us holding hands with our eyes closed, and went into some Baptist fire and brimstone stuff about shedding our serpent’s skin and being reborn. I got a little carried away and started crying with my eyes closed, and I realized the guy next to me holding my hand was crying too. When the youth pastor challenged us to stand up and be saved, me and this guy both stood up. The rest of our group assumed we were mocking the festivities and stood up too. The youth pastor was pleased and tried to chat us up afterward, and I walked out scratching my head.