Natalie Essary - Helluva Luxe

I met her when I was waiting in line. By her I mean the bar, Helluva Luxe. It was the first time I saw the DJ, too, through the open doorway. She was suspended high above the dance floor, riding a monolithic booth carved from faux bone and crumbled castles. Smoke snaked around her as she sampled a song, head bent to her hand, messy black hair in her eyes. She wore a cherry bomb in each ear and a cigarette on her sharp lips. It was impossible to focus on her face as a whole, only flashes of features through the throbbing red light, but I could tell she was hot. Not pretty. Not the kind of girl you take home to meet mama. The other kind. The kind that will most definitely burn you. She was a treacherous beauty.

She took the cigarette from her mouth, and I thought I saw her lips move, but there was nobody else up there. As she flicked some ashes on the floor and turned her back to me, the massive doorman grunted. He shifted his leather-clad weight for emphasis, nodding once in the direction where wallets are generally kept. He hated me already. He couldve throttled me with his tatted meat hooks, but he looked too bored to bother. Clearly this wasnt the first time he had to wait for someone to stop ogling the DJ.

I jumped, said something predictable like, Oh right, sorry, and shuffled through my pockets. Travelling debris fluttered to the wet ground. Greyhound ticket, a receipt from Dennys I fingered my ID and handed it over. He examined it, tilting it this way and that under the streetlight. Then he gave me the obligatory onceover, chewed the corner of his mouth, and locked my gaze long enough to imply he could remember my face if he had to. One of his eyes was brown and one of them was blue. He reminded me of wolves Id met before. He handed back my license and turned his mighty doorman gaze to the night traffic. Then he ran his painted thumbnail under his broad nose and crossed his arms.

This song and dance meant I could go in.

The entranceway was a jigsaw puzzle of antique mirrors. Some were cracked, many were tarnished, and they all, no doubt, housed judgmental witches. I inhaled deeply and realized how much Id missed the smell of amber and pretension.

The blowfish riding the register from a lopsided barstool had her bony arms crossed under an open copy of Neverwhere . She finished her paragraph, smiled up at me like she could see through my skull, and made my money disappear with a resounding ring. Then she looked back down at her book and continued to suck wine from a skeleton tumbler through a glow-in-the-dark straw. I dropped a fin in her tip coffin, decided she might be cute if she didnt have crazy eyes, and wandered into the cavernous bar.

The walls were draped in dark tapestries and velvet window treatments. The toggles had fangs. There were no visible windows, only candle nooks dripping wax cobwebs set into the stone. Fallen columns, wound with ivy, were scattered among oversized black patterned ottomans and tall crimson tables.

I saw a flash of white and looked up. White is a no-no in a Goth bar. Id be more shocked to find someone wearing white than I would be to find somebody hanging out in the rafters. But it wasnt a pale human crouched over my head. It was a fairy. A marble one. She was creepy, in a drop-dead kind of way. She had jagged wings, a shredded dress and faintly purple lips. Something behind her blank eyes beat in time to the music, angry and flashing. The DJ was spinning Something I Can Never Have, rocking slowly back and forth in time with the dancers writhing along the floor. She studied her clipboard, crossed something out, and bit the tip of her pen. Then she set it all down, picked up her cigarette and looked dead at me.

My body caught fire.

I turned away abruptly and careened into a waif in a tutu. She had forest-colored hair. In one hand she held a drink, and in the other, some serious attitude. She snarled at me with her perfect bow of a mouth and examined her cleavage to see if I defiled her emerald corset. Then she glared at me again, thrust her tiny nose, ring and all, into the air and clomped off in her Rocky Horror boots. I heard laughter. It fluttered like wings. Then the DJ kicked on Lucretia, My Reflection, and the dance floor crowd combusted. I was smitten. Maybe a bit intimidated. But mostly just thirsty.

Like all decent Goth bars, this bar had more than one bar in it. Three, actuallyFront, Side and Back. Each designed and strategically positioned to attract a different flavor of clientele.

The front bar, the closest one to the door, was packed, as it should be. A veritable sea of the freshest fish available, all laughing too loudly and slithering by one another, hoping to hook this or that. The front bar is where you hang out if youre looking to score sex or drugs. Doom Cookies, Weekenders and Babybats frequent front bars.

Doom Cookies, self-explanatory. Those are the drama queens. Theyre often bar regulars, meaning theyve been going to the same place every night the doors are open for years, and therefore, they know everyone. Theyre usually chicks with daddy issues, or effeminate men. And they park by the entrance, because they cant afford to miss anything. Good gossip is what keeps them afloat.

Weekenders, I have no respect for. Those are the people who only go Goth on Friday and Saturday. They start out as average college students who think theyre living on the edge by going to the freak bar once a week, wearing the only black outfit they have with a little eyeliner and some fake plugs. Then they graduate from Whatever U and go on to practice Abercrombie and/or Fitch Monday through Friday, while holding down a day job in some fluorescent-lit call center cubicle. And they still go to the freak bar every weekend, because it keeps them from feeling thirty-one. Or thirty-two. Or thirty-three. But inside theyre miserable, because leading two lives is just too much damn work.

Babybats are the new Goths, fresh from the coffin, lunchbox in tow, trying so hard to be individuals that they all look exactly the same. Theyre complete snobs about fashion and music, but they can afford to be. They usually have huge disposable incomes, because they still live with their folks, while clocking forty a week at the local Hot Topic. They tend to be relatively harmless. Like any child, they just want to be played with.

As a general rule, I bypass front bars.

The side bar was deserted, darkened and unmanned. Little red candles in little red votives filled the spaces people did not. The blood-veined marble top was littered with beer coasters and three-by-five flyers for local bands. Obviously the side bar was reserved for live music nights, when tasty treats tricked through town to slither all over the stage, break all the broken hearts and then disappear again, leaving a trail of sexually suggestive stickers and babydoll tees. Show-goers hang out at side bars, and usually only long enough to order a drink.