babybat days part one in Every day scata

Here’s the last question from PentaDamn…

10. What were your babybat days like?

If you smell smoke, it’s because I’m trying to remember my teen years.

You would think that there would have been more goths/punks/alternative kids in Salem MA when I was growing up. But I was the only one. Well there were a few in high school, but more on that in a bit.

I’m trying to figure out how to start lol I have no brain.

Ok. To be honest, I think I was born goth. lol no! Really! I’ve always been dark and angsty. I was brought up to love the strange and macabre. Being different was pretty much the goal my dad and I had. My favorite play dress up dress was an old black funeral dress that belonged to my grandmother and I remember wanting a black parasol to go with it lol It really would have completed the outfit lol

Like I said before, I’ve always been into music. The radio was always on at home. All different genres of music, but a lot of rock oldies from the 50s and 60s. Except for the Beatles and The Animals. lol for some reason my dad hated them.

Anyhoo, When I was 10, my sister K took me to my first concert at Salem State College (now University). The Ramones. According to Wikipedia, the concert was on April 22, 1982.

Now, my sister was not a punk rocker. She liked Lou Reed, but I think that’s as alternative as she got, so going to the concert wasn’t for her enjoyment. It was for mine :) Plus, C, her first husband was assigned the concert detail (he was a cop) and got the tickets free lol

There was a pretty diverse crowd. I was fascinated with the punks in the crowd because they looked so different! I was in love with the fashion immediately.

Punk rock has a wicked infectious beat. When the band came out, I couldn’t help but jump around like a fool lol I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics, just the sound. Again, I was love struck.

At that age, I couldn’t exactly go out and dress punk, or anything. But, I did the best I could with what I had, and I could at least say I looked different than my classmates lol

Goth wasn’t a thing I knew about at 10 years old. I couldn’t hop online and google “punk style” or whatever lol I had no clue what “real” punk/goth looked like. I just dressed to be different.

And would you believe there was not one kid like me in my school? Not. One! I was a lone wolf.

I would get teased a lot. But I would have been teased if I dressed normal, too. I wasn’t exactly popular to begin with. Actually, now that I think about it, I used my style as a shield, to a certain extent.

Random memory just popped up. It was recess, and I was standing around being my goth self when the Hispanic girl clique came over to me. The wanted to look at my makeup closer. I figured they would either put it on clown style to make fun of me, or they would just mumble about me behind my back. Not that these girls were mean. They were kids, and kids are just fucking mean.

The next day, the girls came into class with their makeup looking a lot like mine. Again, figured they were mocking me, but, oddly enough, they weren’t. They would come in looking a bit goth every once in a while. But really, I was still the only one.

I was the only one that listened to gothic music. No one knew who Souxie and the Banshees were. … Wait, I take that back. One of the girls I went to school with loved The Cure and The Damned, and I’m sure more. She didn’t dress goth, but had good goth taste in music. lol But no one else liked it.

Like I said before, I was the epitome of public opinion on goths. Not out of choice, though. I have mental illness, bipolar, major depressive disorder, anxiety…you get the idea. My mood matched my clothes.

Even though I was the only weirdo in my class, I still dressed how I wanted to. There were three girls who were seniors when I got into my freshman years that were totally goth, and I wanted to hang with them so bad! They were just so cool to me lol gads how pathetic.

But Junior year, I met a guy who was a football player. Super handsome, popular, 1000% text book 80s preppy. While he never said anything about the way I dressed, I could tell it made him a bit uncomfortable when we were with his friends. So I stopped dressing goth when I was with him.

And before I knew it, I had lost myself.