Back in the early Eighties, while Anastasia Solis and I were still married, we regarded ourselves the pinnacle of cool. After all, we’d rocked out to the Sex Pistols and Crass, spouted anarchist politics, and dressed like a pair of spree killers. But when we saw Gloria Mundi, Danse Macabre, and Bauhaus at London’s Batcave in 1981, we were suddenly confronted with something we’d never seen in America: Mohawks had given way to pale, high-contrast makeup, Doc Martens had faded to make room for black-and-purple Renaissance-era flourishes, and not a single kid was pogo-dancing—they were all "swirly-dancing," Ana observed, lyrically floating around with hands tracing patterns in the air. What the fuck? "Well," Ana said, "punk has been dead for over a year now, ever since Karl Lagerfeld produced a sack skirt with safety pins. Maybe this is the new thing. Anyway, the music is great, no?" So, in our continuing effort to reach new heights of hip, we bought a bunch of frilly blouses and Walter Raleigh thigh-boots in the King’s Road, took them back to Seattle, and proceeded to thoroughly scandalize the local rock scene. However, in time, other kids began to ape our style, and our beloved Vogue nightclub soon became indistinguishable from the Batcave. Naturally, we thought we were the last word in au courant—especially since my wife and I occupied seats at the apogee of our local scene—but we utterly failed to recognize that we’d simply crawled onto the biggest geek bandwagon in the history of western culture. Yes, goths are geeks, purely and simply, and there’s not a single observer who’d dispute the point.

Of course, the Illusion of Insouciance we’d cultivated was only reinforced by the advent of industrial, goth’s harder-edged cousin. The Princess Anastasia and I had always dug art-provocateurs Throbbing Gristle and Killing Joke, but became hopelessly enmeshed in industrial with SPK’s Leichenschrei and Cabaret Voltaire’s Dadaesque Dream Ticket. Like any self-respecting goth, rivetheads wore unrelieved black, though of a more futuristic bent and dripping with metal appointments. Merde à la puissance treize! we thought, never realizing that we’d uncritically fallen into a crater of geekiness more expansive than China. The New Romantic queens realized it; the hardcore German skater kids, listening to Die Ärzte and Blut + Eisen, took us for geeks; the Phil Collins and pastel-wielding Miami Vice crowd identified our geekiness with no trouble. But we just assumed ourselves the Epitome of Innovation, the last word in postmodern culture. We completely failed to realize that, from Boyd Rice to Maurizio Bianchi, from ambient to techno, we were the biggest goddamn bunch of geeks in human history. However, since we ran only with our own crowd, we were content with our self-aggrandizing mythology and never failed to compliment Gwen’s massive beehive, Stephanie’s leather trenchcoat, Guido’s piercings, and Erica’s newest tattoo. Damn it, we were fucking cool! Nobody looked as frightening as we did!