The best Goth Girl books reviewed: undead and uninhibited

Welcome to the New Year of 2008! Or maybe it is 2006! I get confused on this. Sometimes Linda tells me these numbers, and I say, “So then the Mars Mission has left?” and she says no. Or I just burst out laughing because according to her we are living in the future. Between laughter I ask her where the flying cars are and how the moon base is doing. Luckily, whatever fantastical future year this is, books are still around (as is manga!). So, whatever year it is for you, Happy NEW YEAR.

Cheryl brought over a book I bought myself, Nemi (Volume 1) (v. 1). I do not remember how I know of this book, or why I bought it, as it is a hardcover book of a Swedish comic which has been translated into English but the book is in FULL colour. This is the joy of memory damage, every purchase is a surprise gift. Nice purple cover too!

The book Nemi (Volume 1) (v. 1) makes me laugh out loud, and often (to enlarge strips just click on them, then hit back arrow of browser to return). Linda says she likes it because she hasn’t heard me laugh so much in years. Nemi is a goth in her 20’s who has poor impulse control and an usual mind. She, along with her friend (with dyed blue hair) experience life, guys, sex, drink, and whatever Nemi thinks up to say. What is strange is that I have said some of those things (like telling children that grade school grades don’t count so just have fun, and eat lots of sugar before the teeth fall out!), and thought other of Nemi lines, so it is like a snapshot of my early 20’s. The author is a hot goth (picture in foreword) and the translation from Swedish to English seems great. There are two other Nemi books (now added to my Amazon Wishlist, hint!), but if you want a goth gal with a whack on the side of the head view of life (like when she gambles on arm wrestling and wins going, “The Weaker Sex my ASS!”), I recommend this. I also recommend using the link in the post because Amazon search dropped this book off the search engine...but I found it and ordered it...for some reason (if you know, tell me?). Amazon has Nemi (Volume 1) (v. 1) for about $10. Nemi 2 and Nemi 3 go for the same amount.

If you don't want the book for the burst out laughing, at least you now know a great gift for the goth girl you know (and are likely infatuated with! Um...unless it is your daughter, cousin, partner of friend: those gals, um, get the book for them, but love them, like a FRIEND)
I have made a few changes to the blog, including adding a page link at the top of the blog for people who want to know about my disease. It took six hours on Friday and some more today learning about adding ‘pages’ as a feature (Blogger is ‘so simple’, my ASS…er, I mean ‘Like not!’, see: Nemi and I are bonding into one! ). I have tried to keep it simple, you just click on the ‘About me and my disease’ button at the top of the page, and then ‘home’ to return to the main page.

And a reivew about more than just what it appears: the book called Generation Dead.It is considered a Young Adult book and one of the ‘supernatural’ series that is flooding the Young Adult market, but this book is different (though stand alone, a ‘series’ of books around it has been published at high speed and bad writing: accept no imitation, but only the original). The basic story is that odd USA marketed teen world, where things only happen in the US, everyone is white, no one is gay, no one, particularly no GIRLS have sex, and no one is disabled. In Generation Dead, a small percentage of teens in the US, for no known reason have been returning to life. While some theorize that it has to do with first person shooters, other ‘researchers’ think a combo of junk food and vitamins. But when the teens return, many have a hard time moving, and talking while others are a bit faster. Phoebe, the main character, goes to Oakvale High (like Berkley) which is a school friendly to the ‘living impaired’. Several new ‘living impaired’ have started this year including Tommy, a more active post-dead teen who tries out for the football team. This opens up the prejudice against ‘zombies’ as the coach tries to get players to cripple or stop the boy from joining. Phoebe, who is friends with Adam, her neighbor and a football player who used to be a bully but got centered through martial arts into not bullying, watches the practices and writes an evocative poem about Tommy which she gives to him. She isn’t in love, but she is...interested in him. And that interest grows.
The flip side is that Phoebe and her best friend Margi have to see in the halls their ex-friend Collette, who drowned, and yet is there, always 16, never getting older, and who has yet to speak to them. Through their reluctance to speak to Collette, and Margi’s hatred of the ‘living impaired’ there is a hidden story waiting to come out. Also, as others notice Pheobe, who is a goth, making moves to talk to Tommy, even sit with him on the bus, the idea that a LIVING, a hot goth living girl could be into…well, THEM brings out even more prejudice.
However, with Phoebe’s point of view, we find ourselves going from our own assumptions about the ‘living impaired’ to finding out they are individuals with a shared experience, but individuals but who have created a shared culture, humor and language. It took me a while but I started to recognize this as the experience of second generation immigrants, of LGBT kids who are open enough to have a group, to those who know they have an experience or viewpoint which alienates them from the majority. And it is a majority which makes assumptions and looks down on them. But also, because of that, it has forced them together, creating a unique culture of language, humor, and activities. The more Phoebe becomes part of their group, the more we wonder if the ‘living impaired’ talk so slow to the other students on purpose, to keep them away, and to keep themselves safe.

In Tommy and football, I could see myself and the frustrations I have had with the Y, where even AFTER I played volleyball, they are telling me that it is not possible, or not safe for me to play volleyball. The whole friendliness of the school and principal becomes suspect when the ‘living impaired’ start to want the same things as the rest of the students. Much like when the Y decided I needed to tell them, in advance, any activity I was going to do there….so they could ‘help me’. It is a book I think anyone who has, through religion, ethnicity, or other difference, experienced school in a way where keeping safe and not draw attention to yourself mixed with the need to speak, to have humor in life and life beyond the invisible limits imposed. Like disability, the question of ‘high functioning’ comes up along with ‘passing’, a term originated from when mixed black Americans of light skin would live as white, used now more for LGBT in schools or life, or Trans who live as their gender, which may not be the assigned one.

Much like any of these groups, there are those who are ‘living impaired’ and friends who want to educate, or help others understand them, or that they can do things like football. But there are also those of the ‘living impaired’ who want to separate, who say that the living will never understand, really. And that the majority is the group who is hurting them, who limits their rights and actions and so why spend time educating the people when your rights are unequal. While others want conflict in order to bring issues into the open and want to use people like Tommy and football to do it. These are some of the very attitudes I have read in various blog circles on the internet of those with shared experiences, including disability. As Phoebe drifts closer and closer to Tommy, and those who are friendly to the idea of hanging with the living, the tension from both those at school and the ‘living impaired’ increase. This book, Generation Dead by Daniel Waters is more than just a ‘zombie’ book but one in which I could see myself. Not just my disabled identity now but even my high school days. I went to a repressive high school, and created codes of language and facial expressions so I and others could say how we felt about things without drawing attention to ourselves from the authorities or those who sided with them.

The hardcover book Generation Dead is on sale at Amazon for $5 for the hardcover, and though I found it and read it at the library, I bought a first edition hardcover as part of Amazon’s clearance (or pay $9 for the paperback). Sometimes, like the book Stoner and Spaz, there are books which seem to speak to those who need to hear a voice saying, “You are not alone” the most.
This book transcends the whole supernatural element and brings to you the experience of getting to know the individuals of a different culture in a setting where it is dangerous to do so. You would think ‘wanting to know more’ or ‘getting to know someone’ couldn’t be dangerous, but we all know better. Generation Dead reminds the reader how many silent lines there are in our lives where those who are entitled and in control punish those who cross that line (like the extreme and viscous actions principals or School districts take over cross dressing or a gay date at the prom). My prom for example was divided by race, for example and there was a great deal of discussions and whether I would be expelled or not because I asked a black guy to dance, and did for one song. They decided that as I was graduating in three days, they would not expel me, but they did take away my ‘honors’ I was graduating with. Yeah, repressive school.

I bought two copies of Generation Dead, one for me, and one to give away, because the voice and story are so compelling and because I know others who can identify about being the ‘other’ or being the person who crossed the line in befriending the ‘other’. It may not win literary awards due to 'teen' status and the 'zombie' sublabel, but it is a well written and complex book. It was always interesting, unveiling my own assumptions while changing my viewpoint with a slight tongue in cheek (like the Z line, getting acceptance for the ‘living impaired’ through marketing of cool t-shirts, and body colognes – marketing exploitation is our friend?). As having a goth girl the main character in a school with a high population of kids who used to be dead is itself a tad tongue in cheek.

So a goth girl blog, and that, beyond drinking champagne (whee! look at all the colours!) that is what I did on my winter vacation!

lesbian cutters, goth cutters, lesbian goth cutters (self harm)

Right now, Linda has hidden all the knives, but tomorrow I will find them. Lets talk lesbian goth cutters, or goth cutters, or self harmers. Some days, I don’t like being around norms (normal people; niave, normal people), or those who lie about their fucked-up nature. I don’t like having to be judged for things that just are. I have, when paralyzed, and could only use one thumb, tapped out on the metal railing, S.O.S. ….S.O.S….S.O.S….S.O.S. The care worker didn’t get it then and when I got forth with skeletons dancing as earrings the norms don’t get it either.

This, cutting and fucked-up, isn’t about dying, this transcends dying, if you can believe that. I told Linda as I went into my third day without food that if I could avoid the workers and her for another few days, I could probably be the first terminal anorexic. Because anorexic isn’t about starving yourself to death, it is about control, or having some sort of control; emotional, something, in a situation or place where there is none for you. And so is cutting; control over the body, control over the blood, control over something. And it is about pain: the internal released, the external to hold.

There are times and types of pain that cannot be articulated in simplicity. Maybe some people are just born a little too emphatic, a little too open, a little too sensitive, a little too something. I started cutting somewhere between 4 and 5; I used the carving knife on my belly. My parents still have that carving knife; it has a stag horn handle.

I asked Linda why she thinks I cut and she said it was control and pain. That the more lost I become, the more used, the more beaten down, the more I need to take it out on someone, or something, but there is really only one object deserving of and endless variety of degradation and treatment: me.

There is also safety and beauty. That’s what Goth is in a way, being a person who appreciates the beauty in something that others see as forbidden or tasteless: blood, death, decay, mortality. The last time I cut, my circulation had retracted so much that I couldn’t bleed. That made me feel very wrong. I mean, when my skin has split open and I can make a smile with it, there should be blood, right? It was funny, but not beautiful, so I dress in spider corsets and kink boots.

I remember just entering college this woman telling people that I liked torturing children because I read the books of Edward Gorey. She was quite angry because I found them funny; I found them beautiful. Was I a cutter because I was a lesbian? No. Was I a cutter because I became a very young fuck bunny for host of people? No, though I can’t say it helps. I will free myself to speak of being lesbian, or at least of that inclination (as much as any woman in a wheelchair can be a sexual object – the great neutermobile!). I will one day know that the men who used the body and broke my mind in many pieces are NOT coming back. I don’t know how I will get there from here, but I will. But I will always be a cutter. It is written upon me, into me, my addiction.

Talk about cutting, about using the swift downward stroke with one hand, knife in the forefinger and thumb, and that burn, the white hot burn of blood from a German knife, running down, and another stroke and another, leaving a trail of blood as I wander in MY woods, hoping that I find my way home. Hansel and Gretel left bread crumbs which were eaten by birds. Blood doesn’t bring birds. And there is someTHING about me, a THING, which brings out the predator in some people, some men. You don’t want to go in my woods: unless you are one of us. The Fucked Up.

Things I worry about: Loss of Control – I worry a lot that I will lose control and do things to people, be a person who throws things, who attacks outward, and so I attack inward. I worry that I will lose control of attacking inward and cutting won’t be enough. Because sometimes when the crazy red demon is out, it doesn’t want to go back, it wants more, more and I worry that I will break my fingers, or put my arm through a glass window just to see what happens.

Actually I didn’t tell the truth, exactly, because of what happened to me, becoming the object, the therapists say, of violence, but seemed a lot like the object of pain and sex and fear all mixed together. I was obsessed, secretly terrified these men would come back. And so I learned every possible way to kill someone with one arm. So that way, no matter what they did, they would surely let one arm free and then, throat and nose strike, palm strike, fingers into the eyes. I practiced in my head, in my body. So THAT is what I fear most, that I will lose control and kill people. Not that there has ever been any evidence that I will, or even have that dispossession. One “expert” in abuse told me that I was ‘incapable’ of hurting people in that way. But I fear it.

And there is the roiling boil of the mind. The triggers everywhere, it brings you to the point of insanity, you speak of things in a monotone. It is then that cutting must be careful, so that you touch the scars, the healing scars dozens, hundreds of times a day to remember where you are, that you are here. That you have made it through another minute or hour or day. You want to know where I went missing.....I was deep in the woods.

And if you have known pain, or whatever it is that separates you from the norm; for some reason the humor is a little altered. The beauty is altered. And maybe there are perfectly normal people who just like to dress goth, and don’t want to dress up in a way that says, “I am sex and I am death in one.” Actually, that would be a relief, maybe dressing is like cutting, saying, that if you see the sex, if you fuck the body, then beast will be loose. Or maybe it is saying just that: I am already dead, and what you lust is a corpse. There is no evil, nothing that you can do that makes a corpse provocative that isn't funny, isn't grotesque.

Or maybe it is nicer than that; just saying, “I know what I am, and society doesn’t have it.” Or know that there is something far, far worse than death, and so, that makes death, something to play with, to dress as, to play at because it is far safer than the deep dark woods inside.

And just because you ACTUALLY happen to be dying does not magically cure this. Therapy helps, sometimes. I was told that what has been written on me, cut on me, is not who I am. I don’t know if I believe that; but I half believe, which is more than before. But what I have written myself, well that is S.O.S., and yet, when I write about this, people say it makes them disgusted, or angry, or sad. Well, I’m not exactly leaping around in joy when I cut, you know. I cut, so that I can sleep, so that I am HERE, instead of trapped in my mind THERE.

I used to cut because I was in a program where every class I had to get an A, and I was teaching and each class I taught was evaluated many times, and each time had to be perfect. That was enough, but there was so much more, like the fact I was homeless, or that the evaluator described himself as “A touchy-feelly guy and if you don’t like that, well tough, that’s just the way I am, and I’m the person who passes or fails you.” So he touched what he wanted when he wanted. And so, to get up each day, and go in and shower and get dressed in the restroom, and face the day, and the evaluations, and the rest I cut.

These days, I don’t cut that often, once or twice in a couple years. Because I am better? Well no, but I am better at hanging on, at not putting myself into situations like that, at standing up for myself. But sometimes things pile one atop another, sometimes things happen, things out of our control, very much out of our control that bring us back there, deep in the woods, following the blood trail.

Cutting makes me feel better. Cutting tells me that I am worse. Cutting tells me who and WHAT I am. I need to see the blood. Yes, I am a beast from horror films, the shambling THING, there is something WRONG with me. I am wrong. Sometimes I cut to stop from knowing what others feel. Sometimes I cut to stop feeling at all. Sometimes I cut so I can feel SOMETHING. If you are like me, you know all of this already, and if you aren’t I don’t know any way to stop you looking at me like that.