My Word
by Rijn Collins @rjincollins.com
I
t was taking longer than I anticipated. Packing up to move house always does. I’d vowed to be brutal, with my mother’s mantra in mind: if in doubt, chuck it out! It only partially worked. I’d kept the Duran Duran records but reluctantly jettisoned the linguistics assignments stored on a dozen floppy discs. I didn’t quite remember the small wooden box. Cross-legged on the hallway floor, I opened it. A jumble of jewellery fell into my palm. The other hand found my chest, fingers pressing softly against my collarbone as the memories formed, and a smile with them. I spread the jewellery out on the carpet. A silver ring inlaid with a black pentagram was joined to a bangle by a tarnished chain. In the middle of the bangle was another, larger pentagram. There was a long chain with a huge cross, a sea-green jewel in its centre, and a leather wristband brandishing several silver spikes. It had been 20 years since I’d worn them. Remnants of my former incarnations, I knew immediately they were coming to the new house. The cross came from Melbourne’s Camberwell Market in the mid-80s. I wore it nestled on top of vintage lace dresses, accessorised by ripped fishnet stockings and 14-eye Doc Martens boots. I paraded my outfits at Zuzu’s, a nightclub on Exhibition Street, an appropriate address. I recall watching old black-and-white vampire movies projected four metres high onto the walls. Rushing the dancefloor for The Cult or The Cure, we planted our feet firmly on the ground and waved our branches around dramatically in the classic “Tree Dance” that, 30 years later, would cause mirth in my husband when I recreated it in our living room. The dance was not the most preposterous sight at a goth nightclub. Multiple Brides of Dracula floated around in their wedding dresses and veils, holding aloft hand mirrors to admire their ghostly visages caked in cheap white make-up. Later, you would see them on a bar stool between dances, sipping Midori through a straw to protect their black lipstick. I picked up the pentagram ring-and-bracelet combination. It took me to a different city, thousands of kilometres away. At 17 I moved to Brussels on exchange. Wading through high school in French and Flemish, I searched the city for my goth brethren to help anchor
me in my new home. On Rue des Harengs, I found it. Le Cercueil translated to The Coffin, a tiny cafe with Sisters of Mercy blaring from the speakers and beers served in skull mugs set upon coffin tables. In a city full of medieval history, it was this cafe I found most impressive. I returned to it time and time again. For my 18th birthday I hitchhiked to the Rhine Valley in Düsseldorf with a friend. On the train we concocted fake names and accompanying backstories. I was always pushing the constraints of my identity, seeing how far I could make it stretch. We met three German boys with high mohawks and black eyeliner and spent the day with them, culminating in a heaving, hectic punk club. Outside they knelt on the cobblestones and sang me ‘Happy Birthday’ in German. The pentagram combination was bought the week before I returned to Melbourne. On Rue des Éperonniers, Street of the Spur Makers, was a shopping arcade full of army boots and punk T-shirts. I was looking for a talisman to guide me on the long trip home, to help ease me back into Australian life. The ring fit well. When I snapped on the attached bangle, I felt I knew who I was, no matter how temporary it would prove to be. Two years ago, I found myself back on that street on my honeymoon. I was showing my husband around Brussels, the city I adore so much I’ve lived there several times now. We walked through the arcade, past where the jewellery shop used to be. On my hands were no garish goth rings, no crows or cobwebs. There was only a simple wedding ring set with two rubies. In a city where I’d tried on many skins in the past, it was the role of wife I was now embracing. I did check whether the Coffin Cafe was still there though. It was, as reassuring as any old friend. I gathered up the jewellery back into its container. Still sitting on the floor, I reached for a box. For a moment I stared at the other contents, already packed; a bell jar of snake skins, a pearlescent bird skull, and a bedraggled mouse I’d taxidermied myself. For the first time in years I questioned whether I actually had grown out of my goth tendencies, or whether they were still in me, a small flame I occasionally fed with nostalgia and Nosferatu. And then I placed the jewellery gently inside the box, deep down in a corner where it would be safe.
Rijn Collins is an award-winning Melbourne writer who explores her love of foreign languages and lands (and her goth past) in her memoir, Voice.
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Rijn Collins dusts off the cobwebs and crows and exhumes her past through an old jewellery box.
01 APR 2022
Oh My Goth
