I'm a little bit country...

she's a little bit goth and punk.

So I decide to break out my newish kickers of the s**t for a night on the town. I put on my only cowboy shirt , my boot cut levis, my worn leather belt, and I'm good to go. I don't look down right hick, but I have the look of a mild mannered accountant ready to play cowboy for a night.

So Y and I go to meet her friend Mike for his birthday at Bull and Bush. After dinner, we give him the choice of where to go next. He chooses a bar at 23rd and Champa(?) that I've never heard of. They play "industrial" music, he says.

We go into this place and I immediately stick out like a white man at a Black Panthers meeting. It wasn't an "industrial" dance club. It was a Goth bar.

So my tan plaid shirt looks like neon white compared to all of the black at this club. I'm the only one whose hair is not platinum blonde or jet black. I have no makeup on, no fishnets, no black at all come to think of it. I stick out. I thought to myself, "of all the nights you decide to go hick, you choose the night to go to a goth bar."

So what did I do? I had a great time. I danced to Siouxsie and the Banshees, Decpeche Mode, the Cure, etc. I drank something alcoholic and steaming like witch's brew.

In any case, the really interesting part of the evening was Jerry, one of Mike's other friends, who joined us at the Goth bar. He was wearing a dark shirt and blue jeans and didn't quite glow in the dark like I did. But he was SO uncomfortable. It was as if he felt how I looked---really out of place. I'm not sure why he though it was so bad. No one looked at him (or me) twice. Nobody cared--well, except for my mistaking the women's room for the men's, but that's another story.

The whole experience made me think about how the people there were no less costumed than the people at "Cool River Cafe" meat market. Just a different style of dress.

Well, to quote my dad: "Clothes don't make the man".