Everyone has a goth they want to remember.

Just as everyone has a summer they wish to remember I believe that in the post 'The Crow' and possibly even the post 'New Romantics' era, there is something else classic that occurs in just about every teen to adolescent to man-child's life. That is the Goth.

This is the story of my Goth I want to remember but alas... can't.

It happened when on my first day in a new job in of all places a call center. With nervous trepidation, I actually made calls. Being used to telemarketing, and the need to ask strangers to switch phone providers, and hit upon so many a night that I would actually get a commission I was bracing for a return to constant abuse. In market research this is rare, and if I learnt anything from the job, it is just how bored some people are. The fact that people are willing to spend 40 minutes talking about cat food to a complete stranger in the most mechanical dialogue ever, is a harsh indictment of Australian television programming.

But that is irrelevent except to say that I was expecting abuse, and found instead that getting people to do surveys was easy. I began to relax. Relaxed a little more, then more, and more until I was like 'hang on, why am I so at ease?'

With the stunned revalation that I was being lulled to sleep, I became like one of them TV show characters heading towards the light, that suddenly searches around with their other senses in an attempt to shatter the false reality.

And then I noticed, the most angelic voice I, to this day, have ever heard. It was coming directly from behind me and was asking me about ... tinea?? It seemed to surround me, like brown woollen clothes surround old people. I expected to turn around and see a kindergarten teacher in some kind of crocheted jacket and possibly matching hat wearing a necklace made out of died pieces of macaroni instructing kids on the chain reaction that takes place when one mixes glitter, glue and paper.

Yes, that's how angelic this voice was, as in when Johnny cash sang:

'I heard a voice that sounded so sweet, I thought I heard the shuffle of angels feet, it spoke to me and my heart stood still, when he said "John go do my will..."'

And I turned around to find the tell tale Betty page hair, on the pallid complexion and questionably practical attire of a goth. And alas she was it for me, my goth I want to remember.

But alas, I cannot, because in my year of working in her proximity, I never recall actually having a conversation with her, and I don't believe now that I ever actually knew her name. Because the fact was she wasn't talking to me about 'tinea' just as I was not talking to her about cat food. We were employed to talk to complete strangers about these powderkeg issues. Not eachother.

My brother who later worked in the same call center, informed me that they used to try and sit people next to eachother that were couple worthy, evidently nobody thought of matching me up with... well anybody. I wasn't there to make friends either and I had a girlfriend of probably 2 years at that stage that I was at least moderately committed to keeping.

And now in periodic fits, like acid flashbacks that bubble up from time to time, I think of the goth I want to remember, and can't I'm sort of certain I know exactly what she looked like then, but then can't even facebook stalk her because I can't remember her name. After much meditation I kind of suspect that it started with 'D' but am only 40% sure of that.

Alas... the goths of our youth are but a fading memory.