el grupo death mas brutal en mexico

Saw my first Morelian goth kid yesterday. He wore a black cape and boots with too many buckles. The right side of his head was shaved, but the long top strands drooped foppishly over the stubble. Skinny and pale (for Mexico), he had the paranoid look of someone who fears everyone around him is staring in disapproval. Or, far worse, that no one is.
When I was on Pitcairn Island in 1999, gossip was that one of the islanders was gay. At the time, I thought that might be the most isolated human existence possible — to be the only gay man on an island with only 40 residents, hundreds of miles away from the nearest fellow traveller, without so much as a passel of Queer Eye DVDs to keep you company. Being a goth kid in Morelia isn’t that bad, of course, but I wonder how much of a community that kid can find here. Where will he get his Siouxsie & the Banshees bootlegs?
Then again, I may be underestimating Morelia’s musical diversity. Sunday night brought to town what, judging by the number of posters on local walls, is the most anticipated concert of the year: a death metal act named Leprosy. Their posters feature pictures of the group looking scary and hairy and a slogan that is so deliciously wonderful it may end up on my tombstone:
Leprosy: El Grupo Death Mas Brutal En Mexico.
(“The most brutal death group in Mexico.”)
I can’t tell you how much I love the sounds of those words. For more than a week, I have been muttering to myself, in a scratchy voice half-Ricardo Montalban and half-Rob Zombie: El grupo death mas brutal en Mexico.
I can report that the phrase’s mention livens up any conversation — as do the obligatory follow-up jokes about the opening act. (Depending on the day, they include Cholera, Dengue Fever, and the Yaws).
I realize that, contrary to the impressions of suburban parents, the goth and death-metal demographics do not often overlap. But I imagine that, in Morelia, black-clad teens with unusual hair are forced to find commonalities.