Goths.
Ben was a goth. He was a hardcore goth at that. Six foot tall, mixed-race dark skin clashing with his dyed black hair and single, white contact lens and tall boots. He didn't look like a stupid teenager with acne and some spiky jewellery at all, he actually looked exactly like Satan incarnate, and when I was young and impressionable, this made him fucking cool. We were never best friends, but we did hang around in the same crowd.

One time, however, he pulled a pair of hairdresser's scissors out of his pocket, then proceeded to make cuts on his chest, when the usual goth crowd was drinking in our park spot in Camden. This was after prolonged drinking so he didn't have a great degree of self-control and ended up visibly bleeding and scarred. A man passed by and asked if he was alright, if he'd like an ambulance, at which Ben began to hurt himself more vigorously and shout "SATAN, FUCKING SATAN, FUCKING SATAN" at the poor chap. I swear I'm not making it up.

Another time, which I have heard about but never witnessed, concerns Ben's desire for a glass eye. He really did covet this person he knew with a glass eye, so he sought with his usual determination to get one for himself. He achieved this by putting first a bottle of vodka in his stomach and then a bottle of toilet-cleaner bleach in his eye. He passed out, woke up in terrific pain in hospital, blind in one eye, and later says his only regret was that he couldn't get a real glass eye out of the ordeal.

Besides Ben, we used to run with another girl who drank bleach (rather than pouring it in her eye like you're obviously supposed to) in a suicide attempt, resulting in her womb being removed - fucking risky form of contraception if you ask me, and Mushroom Joe, who cut elaborate satanic symbols into his wrists while hallucinating with the aid of magic mushrooms.

A fight was once started by someone we didn't know calling a girl we knew "a marilyn manson lookalike" because her boyfriend took exception to the fact that Marilyn Manson is a man (so, obviously, to look like him is to look manly - he's not David fucking Hasselhoff, you know). This was a proper gang fight, as well - the opposing, punk-fashioned gang bought bicycle chains and bits of metal. It also wasn't the first - we had had a run-in with a Somalian gang that involved one of the goths showing a white-pride tattoo or something, in which ten of our number were visibly injured, including the boy with the tattoo, who was stabbed near-fatally.

One time, this guy we know who's name I've forgotten had slept with another chap's girlfriend. The boyfriend in this story was a proper hard-nut who'd been in and out of anger management, the poor goth. He's a fairly nice guy, to be fair, but when he found out about this, we were all on our way to a house party at one of our friends, and both her boyfriend and her side-dish were on the train. Before we got on the train, Boyfriend beat Side up. When we got off the train, Boyfriend beat Side up. We got a little way up the road when Boyfriend beat Side up again, were at the house party when Boyfriend beat Side up a fourth time, and upon leaving the house, Boyfriend beat Side up a fifth time. Five. Seperate. Times.

We also continually tolerated, for some reason, the presence of a skinhead paedophile called Timmy who used to dress entirely in leather, carry a whip, mix and buy drinks for the younger girls, and had a restraining order against a thirteen-year-old goth girl, the youngest girl that would hang around with us.

Finally, there was one story concerning us goths which had a happy ending. A girl I didn't really know was talking about jumping into Camden Lock, in her heavy boots she probably would have drowned, when my friend came up to her and said "Oh man, stop that! What's the matter?". She replied: "Fuck off! I've lost my fucking baby, and it's all his fault!" and she started crying incoherently. He said, without missing a beat "Cheer up! You can always have another one!" to our general laughter and, I suppose, shock.

Everything in this post is true, by the way. Apologies for length.
( Reid got it going on like Donkey Kong, Fri 20 Jul 2007, 1:31, Reply)