Memoirs of a Teenage Goth: the Cafe Months

A strange teenage twilight exists, a betwixt and between period, a purgatory between school and pub; I shall call it ‘the café months’. And it is literally only a period of months, basically until you work up the balls to approach the pub door. Until then you are sentenced to sit around a café table sharing a cup of hot chocolate with four other povo waifs much to the disdain of the establishment’s owner. But this period can be looked on as a formative one, and it certainly led to many exciting adventures in my later life.

There were two venues of choice during my teenage twilight time, both in the Rundle Mall locale. One was an upstairs nook lined with booths where a friend of a friend worked. This friend was obviously somewhat embarrassed by the freaks the cat dragged in and generally gave us fairly short shrift so inevitably we drifted to choice number two, the open air café in the middle of the mall.

I don’t know if open spaces make it less obvious that you aren’t spending money but there seemed to be less chance we would be moved on from this location. And so we gathered, the hippies, the punks, the goths, the mods, and anyone else who didn’t fit in anywhere else. Basically there were no separate scenes in those days; there were so few people interested in any kind of scene that we all had to hang out together. There were no clutches of emos skulking around in the shadows, or marauding bands of skate punks tearing up the sidewalks. There were just a few sad misfits huddled over a brew and a couple of crumbs.

It was here that I met one of my most constant teenage companions Johnny. He was my first major crush, which was unfortunate since he was obviously gay. Still didn’t stop us fucking each other at the end of the night if no-one else was around, but more about that later. Johnny could be described as an extreme mod I suppose; when I first met him he had a black bowl haircut and was wearing a pair of purple stovepipe pants and a white shirt with a purple pyramid print. This would later be supplemented by a fluffy purple waistcoat that somewhat resembled a 70’s toilet mat.

I was in semi-mod mode myself at the time, just before the transition to goth took place. My uniform consisted of a black skivvy with a paisley mini skirt, black boots and big silver hoop earrings. What a marvelous pair Johnny and I must have made! He eventually followed me in to goth mode and I still have photos of us camping it up at the Austral with our dramatic black locks and talcum powder enhanced white makeup.

Another character to become familiar with from this time is Josie. She was basically a bogan with punk pretensions but we hit it off immediately due to our shared propensity for cheap wine and outrageously stupid antics. Clubbing in gorilla suits, pot plant stealing frenzies and interpretive dance at grunge gigs were just a few of our specialties. Our little crew was completed by the twins Tracey and Shelly, gorgeous and totally twisted. One of Shelly’s crowning achievements was falling off a toilet at Le Rox and breaking her elbow. Naturally she just got up and hit the dance floor again and dealt with it all the next day. One of my crowning achievements was tripping over in the beer garden at the Toucan Club and burning my hand on the pot belly stove. Naturally I just got up and hit the dance floor again. Occasionally the pain would break through and I would dash in to the toilets to run my hand under the cold water tap and then dash back out in time for the next song. I slept with my hand in a bucket of water that night and made my way to hospital the following day. I re-emerged later that week at a Wall of Voodoo gig with a bandaged mitt protruding from my vintage leather jacket.

Tracey, Shelly and I eventually ended up sharing a house together, a hovel frequented by Johnny and Josie and other unhinged alternative types. It became one of those notorious share houses that people loved to visit and then loved to leave again for the safety of civilization. Future installments of the memoir will doubtlessly feature the further adventures of this hallowed abode.

And to think all this germinated in a coffee shop. From a caffeinated but otherwise drug and alcohol free venue evolved a seedy sub-culture of teenage angst, lust, insanity and general joie de vivre. Let this be a warning to all you parents out there; when the kiddies say that all they do on a Friday night is hang out in a coffee shop beware! As the song goes, ‘from little things big things grow’.