The PC Underworld
posted 12 August 06 by J.S. Vodalarius
Today I went shopping. It wasn’t horrible girly “shawping” either. No, first I went to the coffee place in Marlborough and had a bubble tea and crocheted while getting my eMusic downloads. Then I poked around in Inkubus, bought cool tights and mildly cyanotic lipstick, and drove into Keene for magic soap, DVDs, and some other essentials of life. On the way home I stopped at Inkubus again for white face powder.
Actually it was sort of a Goth day, especially given my outfit, from the (hand-knitted) black lace scarf and deathly-pallor lip gloss to the big honking black leather boots. I enjoy my Goth days.
As I was descending from the car in the parking lot outside Target, I began to wonder what people thought of my appearance, and an image came to my mind. A small child, pointing at me and staring, asking the nearby mother, “Mommy, what’s she?”
And the mother responded, “That’s a Goth, dear.”
And in my probably overly detailed mental image I turned to this mother and child and told them, calmly, “Actually, I prefer the term Chthonian-American.”
The definition of “chthonian,” from Merriam-Webster Online:
chthonian, adj. – of or relating to the underworld
Seems appropriate, don’t it? I submit that we Goths of the Americas should begin to insist on being referred to as Chthonian-Americans. Not only is it accurate and amusing, it’ll irritate the hell out of everyone. And we all want that. Don’t we?