[Creed of Heresy]

You know, I don't mind admitting, I love to indulge in what many consider to be gothic cliches. I love wandering cemeteries at night and relying only on moonlight to read the engravings, and grave-rubbing the ones too worn down by time to be legible even in broad daylight. I prefer to be awake at night, if only because it's the only time of day I can drive around without worrying about sharing the road, or wandering downtown without dealing with a bunch of college frats and brats. I love to wear guyliner, black lipstick, and black (or red, or green, or gray, or silver) nail polish...especially with a glow-in-the-dark coating over it. I love my trench coat, my "inky frot" (a frot-coat, black, that I dyed to varying, nigh-invisible shades with reds and grays to give the original color faint, "inky" highlights), my Tripps (not the store-brought ones, the ones that actually cost upwards of $200 and are quite durable), my black, red, and charcoal velour trousers, my chain-decorated (both came with, and was modified with more, along with some embroidering of a symbol I use for varying purposes) black combats. I love my fishnet shirts, hand/arm gloves. I love my polished leather pants, and my red, black, purple, and white velvet vests. I love my spiked and non-spiked leather collars, fishnet neck-wraps, silver chain-link choker, and my happy-humanist and American Atheist necklaces (no ankhs or pentagrams, though; not going to pretend to believe something or express interest towards something I simply don't). And I adore my top hat, my bowler hat, my fedoras, my skullcaps.

But for all that, I also love wearing camouflage shirts and pants, and can rock a pair of dress khakis or slacks rather well, or so I've been told.

I love all kinds of music, with death rock and post-punk and darkwave being listed in there. I love many forms of art, though I admit to loving things with a death/mortality/macabre motif, or darkly-atmospheric erotica. I don't judge people (I'm an atheist yet I've been dating a catholic woman for a few weeks; not the first religious girl I've ever been with by a long shot, and may not be the last, but hopefully will be regardless of religious preferences), I don't give a free-falling fuck about skin coloration or nationality. I love all sorts of literature; I devour books with an insatiable need (I even gave the first Twilight book a chance. Then I introduced it to fire about halfway through). I'm a socio-democratic-minded progressive independent; there are many valid points from many different political views worth considering and balancing. I love cooking. If it can be fried, seared, roasted, slow-roasted, sauteed, marinated, etc, I can and probably will try to cook it.

I am an empathic individual. I volunteer at a **** crisis center to help those who have been traumatized by assault. I listen to the problems of acquaintances, friends, lovers, even strangers, all with genuine concern...granted, it'll have to merit that concern. Broken nail? Wahhh. I am fiercely loyal to those I call my friends, and generally tolerate not a single act that manipulates, hurts, or takes advantage of them.

I don't exhibit outwards aggression towards others without vindication. I don't scoff at the choices people make in regards to themselves. I don't deride others without a very damn good reason; seriously if you're trying to tell me the earth is 5,000 years old, I'm going to have a good belly laugh at your expense. And that's another thing. I don't mope, or sob in the dark, or refuse to crack a smile. I do smile. I laugh, I frown. I express sadnses and happiness in what context befits the situation.

Yet. It's the clothing that people view me by. This isn't just me. This is just in general. Buck the social norm, and you're "rocking the boat" or "inciting radicalism." I've met many who express delight and interest and admiration in what I wear. Far more so than I encounter derision. I DO tend to evoke blatant stares, but I understand this and do not mind it; I know that to many what I wear isn't really common and may seem just outright bizarre.

But there are those who, sadly, are not uncommon, who take sport in deriding what I wear. What others wear. In my mid-twenties and I'm still dealing with shitheads who are around my age, if not older by some or even many years in the same fucking way I dealt with it (in greater quantities, admittedly) in high school. Are you fucking kidding me? "Men" and "women" in their twenties or thirties, or even their forties, who feel the need to mock or insult me not because of what I stand for, believe, feel, or take interest in...but for my fucking preference of fashion. I've been called "immature" by some of these people; "you're not in high school anymore, stop trying so hard, grow up and wear something normal!" Immature? Not in high school? From these stupid fucks, that's outright hysteria-inducing at best, and condescendingly hypocritical at worst.

Fashion is, naturally, an expression of self...or at least an attempt to integrate into something you may be interested in. It DOES speak, to some extent, of who you are, but just how far does it really? Do I think the girls wearing the skin-tight butt-hugger jeans are buttsluts? Do I think the girls with the steep V-neck shirts are all eager for a breast-bukkake? Do I think the guys who wear pink are gay? Do I think every guy who wears a wife beater is trailer trash? Do I think every man who wears skin-tight T-shirts is a douchebag? Do I think the people wearing pegleg skinnyjeans and have wildly colorful hair are whining, sobbing emo pussies?

NO!! NO, I FUCKING DON'T! They dress in what they are comfortable in! They dress in what makes them feel most confident and expressive! But being expressive doesn't mean it has to define you! Not every girl wearing thigh-highs is a whore, not every guy wearing jeans is a boring, unimaginative blank slate, not every woman squeezing their figures into a corset is a cocktease, and not every man wearing a belly-shirt is a queer! Not every fucking person can be summed up in a few articles of clothing, and in fact very few can be. You can be gay, and vote republican. You can be straight as a razor and have friends who are about as straight as a circle! You can be racist but not homophobic and vice-versa. You can love the highly-engineered (sorry but it IS true) singing of Katy Perry and enjoy the howling roars of Children of Bodom, or the twangy lilt of Toby Keith and the sinister growling of Iron Maiden.

You can be a gay man and end up with a "fag-hag" whom you end up having sex with a few times at her house. You can be a lesbian and have that one male friend who fully understands it's a completely platonic relationship that you end up humping the life out of in the backseat of your car. Nobody is ever easily definable and can be summed up with a glance or a single sentence.

So why the silly fuck are there so many douchebags and sandy-vag'd cunts that seem to feel the inescapable urge to judge others by nothing more than what one single sense tells them about the other? Granted, yes, sometimes by sheer luck you assume something and it happens to be true. But this doesn't mean 100% of the population, or even 50% of the population, or even 10% of the population will provide you with such lucky guesses.

If you want to judge someone, get a fucking certification to practice law and run for judicial office...and even then you will likely learn that judging others is a singly trying practice when you suddenly must view everyone from a view of no bias or presumption.

Yes, I preach to the choir. But after having someone sling their diatribe at me on a rather trying day, I felt the need to vent.