As a teenager in the early '90s, I was an enormous sook and relatively uncool.
Nowadays I would be called an emo, and clothing and music companies would fall over themselves to woo my wallet, but let's not be bitter about it.
Actually, I lie. I am still a little resentful about being born fifteen years too early. When I visit the CBD and see those glum faces with their asymmetrical haircuts and their eye makeup melting in the sun, I usually roll my eyes and go, "Huh, in MY day …"
We wore a lot of black, and sometimes, navy blue. There weren't any shops selling emo or goth gear (our school was in the country) so we looked more or less like everyone else, except we perspired more. Occasionally my mother would complain that I resembled a gigantic bruise. We drew tattoos and fake injuries on ourselves with ballpoint pens and moaned about how no one understood us.
I remember the look of horror on my friend's Mum's face when she caught us giving each other undercuts during the school holidays.
We listened to Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails. I wrote a short story about human misery, anthropomorphic furniture and a room full of blood. At lunchtime I read it out loud to my friends while their eyes glazed over with admiration (I'm sure it was admiration).
The only author who seemed to understand our darkness (gag) and pain (cringe) was Anne Rice. We obsessively read her bestselling trilogy, Interview with the Vampire (later made into a successful motion picture starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst), the Vampire Lestat, and the Queen of the Damned (made into a less successful motion picture starring Aaliyah - R.I.P. - in a metal bra and a weird accent. Stuart Townsend's costume was similarly scanty, but he accessorised it with the same facial expression for two hours).
At the time, Rice was still writing good angsty fiction, and hadn’t started on the potboilers that she churned out in the late '90s. When gothic novelists become rich and happy, their writing starts to go a little flat. It's really in their best interests to stay miserable.
We promised that if any of us became vampires, we would come back and turn the others.
I really hope no one has remembered that.
Becoming a creature of the night isn't at the top of my wishlist any more. Blood tastes terrible and crushed velvet itches. A love of bacon has ruined my chances of ever fitting into a leather corset. Also, the people on the Internet who claim to be real vampires are incredibly dull.
Anyway, as phases go, it didn’t last long. A few months later, we started Year 12 and there was little time for moping around. Most of our group studied 3 Unit English, which is similar to TEE English Literature. English Extreme, if you will. This surfeit of literature caused some kind of mental backlash, and we started reading '70s and '80s Mills and Boon novels, bought in bulk from St. Vinnie's. My friend T, a classical pianist who became the school dux, had the largest Mills and Boon collection of all of us.
But that’s a story for another day.