Guilty pleasure.

I never was a Goth chick.  

I did manage to spend a good deal of high school stomping around with all my hair chopped off in army surplus pants and wife beaters.  On other days, I never bothered to get dressed or take care of my hair, or occasionally, I deigned to put on a pair of jeans and a sweater.  But occasionally.  Very occasionally.  

It was a rebellion against all the perfect girls who wore Juicy Couture and very expensive jeans and shoes and had the perfect hair.  My hair was never perfect.  I couldn't be perfect.  I wasn't allowed to have preferences in clothes either, because we couldn't afford to.  ...Or my parents were worried I'd turn into a total priss.  This fear of theirs lasted until I chopped off my hair and stopped wearing women's clothes.  My mom told me I was dressing like a lesbian, at which point I informed her so was she.  To her credit, she didn't get angry.  Instead she discovered Kohl's, which works for her because she's 5'8" and older.  It didn't work for me because at the time I was 5'10" and no bargain priced clothes ever fit you in you're a girl and really tall.  

But in the interim between high school cluelessness and my college education, I figured some things out for myself.  The surprise was that I never got into Goth or new Victorian.  Not only because I wasn't one of the cool kids, but it surprised me in retrospect because I loved The Secret Garden when I was little.  And when Jane Eyre was forced upon us sophomore year in high school, I fell madly in love with that story too.  The idea of large, old, buildings, with meandering passageways and ridiculous intricate details at every turn was fascinating.  The idea of secrets - family mysteries, hidden passages, and false walls/doors/drawers/etc. - was captivating.  What could lie behind the distracting bulwark of curliques, woodworking, brooches, and overgrown rose bushes?  

And this has continued into my neophyte adulthood, when I became embarrassingly obsessed with Harry Potter.  I think it's got to do with discovery and discernment (so maybe it's good I chose scientific research, no?).  All the magic, the juxtaposition of real and fanciful, modern and archaic, and logic and willpower.  Something like that.  

So when I read about this new steam punk thing, I was like, "DUUUUDE."  And I love it, especially the computers some crazy person modified to look like wood and inlay and tubes and piping.  I've seen the countless brooches, earrings, necklaces, cuffs, and other baubles people have made from watch parts, gears, and pins.  They're all quite beautiful, but so few of them work, and that's what really fascinates me, the ones that look like some odd gadget but really do something, like tell time, allow me to check my email, or let me teleport through space at the turn of a gear.  I'd never do myself up like some of the more hardcore steam punk types.  I feel like I'm a little too old for all that characterized dressing.  

But I am a little sad that I missed my 14 yr old window to be a crazy person... I'll just have to wait until I'm 60 to wear spats, I guess.