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The Ludes

By Lisa M. Bradley

That might seem funny to those who’ve ever bothered to attend these performances, to say that someone didn’t belong. The audience is always a motley sort–faculty and spouses, local musicians and artists, music students and jocks who have to attend so many of these things to get credit for required courses, waitresses and office workers desperate for some culture, their school-age children (alternately awed and bored to tears), homeless folks who need a warm place to sleep for a couple of hours, mentally and physically handicapped folks hauled out as someone’s idea of a good deed, and, of course, recreational drug users with nothing better to do.

Still, he didn’t belong. He was Gothic. Not like those kids who hang out at Hot Topic and think wearing black nail polish expresses their inner turmoil, their eternal angst. I’d seen Goths there before and he wasn’t Goth, he was Gothic–dark and looming, faintly chivalrous in manner, seemingly possessed of a great, tragic secret. I thought of Bronte’s Heathcliff.