Apocalyptic Anthony [Humboldt Vignettes]

Delusion embodied goth

Photo by Elyas Pasban on Unsplash

This is one in the Humboldt Vignette series. It may help to read the Introduction framing the series if this is the first vignette you’re reading.

“Woe is me,” could have been Apocalyptic Anthony’s motto. Perhaps even simply “Alas.” Instead Anthony, known as Apoc to anyone on the Hill who cared that he even existed, had a new Latin motto every week or so. Learned it from his Idiot’s Guide to Latin. Thought it would intimidate his hillbilly neighbors and impress Goth chicks during his quarterly sojourns to San Francisco. Liked getting sucked off while uttering “Veritas.” At least he fantasized about that several times a day.

Nearly anemic, six foot three, and 180 pounds made Apoc a scarecrow. His bright red hair and flour-white skin added to the effect. If only he had faded overalls, a plaid shirt, and straw hat he could have skipped down the yellow brick road with Dorothy.

Anthony was a friend of Dorothy’s. He knew every note and word to “The Wizard of Oz” and about 300 hundred other musicals by heart. Apoc never told anyone about his secret obsession. Ever. He kept his collection of near-mint, first vinyl pressings in a hidden stash lest his butch record collector friends discover them and his inner pansy nature. God knows they couldn’t handle a queer.

Listening to Coil, though, was okay with his pals. It was practically expected. And if you didn’t know the words to “Anal Staircase,” that John and Peter were the guiding force behind PTV’s Force the Hand of Chance, and that they owned original art by Crowley and Spare, well . . . You sucked. You were pathetic. Beneath acknowledging.

So in Anthony’s public collection of over one thousand albums he had all the necessary Apocalyptic Folk, Industrial, and Experimental music to keep his buds impressed and away from his musicals: Death in June, Current 93, In Gowan Ring, Nurse With Wound, TG, SPK, and even some early Whitehouse. All the moaning, noisy, and often irritatingly-so-self-indulgent music of his adopted subculture. Apoc loved it. It was here that he could be an effete aesthete, bag on popular culture and trends, yet keep his love of the musical as a high art form hidden from ridicule.