Five Questions for… the Goths Who Shagged On a Gravestone

Hi. Hello. Good Friday? How did your Thursday go? Out for a couple of drinks, or anything? Just a quiet one? Yeah. Yeah. No— yeah. Yeah, listen, look at these goths shagging on a gravestone:

They did it for 45 minutes, it says here. In Manchester.

In Manchester: the goths are shagging for three-quarters of an hour on graves. In Manchester, revolution happens. In Manchester, I have: some questions.

Theory #1: Yes. Shagging on a grave for 45 minutes is goth as fuck. You go through all the lower levels of goth – black T-shirt, mascara, hair dye, escalating now, growing faster and more goth; leather trench coat, nose piercing, try to get off a bus too quickly and get all of your chains caught on something and you miss your stop. Grow more goth: buy a complicated custom-made choker from America that somehow cost $87 in import tax and took six weeks to show up, subscribe to Amanda Palmer’s Patreon, your mum has to have an entire phone conversation with her mum to brace her for how goth you’re going to look when you come over for a roast on Easter. You are nothing, though – you are no goth at all – until you have fucked for 45 minutes on a grave in Manchester. These are the final levels that goths ascend to.

Theory #2: No. They’re not goths, though, are they. Look at them.

Theory #3: Absolutely yes. Goth is not what you wear, or what you listen to, or how many skull-shaped candles you own: goth is a feeling, goth is a spirit, goth is a vibe. And I have to say it, but: shagging for 45 straight minutes on top of a Manc skeleton is Goth! As! Fuck! All hail our horny goth king! Praise to our goth queen! The ultimate in goth has been achieved!

This happened in Manchester, 66 entire miles from where I grew up, but the lad recording it yelling "YER SCRUFFY CUNTS" at the rutting pair in pure and vivid northern tones suddenly made me yearn for home: I want a chip cob and a slightly too-long conversation with an emotionless neighbour about his hanging baskets, and I want a local newspaper Facebook thread about parking regulations to turn into a 300-reply squabble between two hard mums, and I want a cheap pint of lager and I want to walk around the Wilko in town for ages and ages and ages, and I want to walk quickly past a park bandstand where three bored teens are playing with a lighter before they shout "OI!" at me. And I want to watch goths – lord, I want to watch goths – I want to watch goths shagging together in ecstasy, stoically desecrating a grave.

Every single summer of my adult life, somewhere between mid-May and early July, most often landing in June, there is a News Story About People Shagging Outside.

Listen: people shag outside all the time. People shag through frigid tundra and highest summer. People shag in alleyways and club toilets. People fuck everywhere, all the time. People love rutting. They love to do cummy. They love it, mate. Mad for shags. But the point is: there is always one weather-bell shag, one shag that makes headlines, and that – that exact point, when the tabloids have done a half-jokey, half-handwringing piece about fucking outside where children play – that exact moment is the start of summer. The World Cup is around the corner. The sun is out and shining. Goths are fucking on graves. Summer is here, and it is glorious.

Way I see it, death goes one of three ways:

• Total oblivion, darkness, nothingness, it all stops;
• You either go to heaven or hell, where you live a full life there, in nirvana or despair;
• You sort of lie in your grave in a waking sleep, staring up through the earth at nothing, and the most exciting thing that happens is, once every six weeks, a dog comes and sniffs the ground and pisses above you.

Third option is the nightmare, for me: like slipping into a waking coma you can’t tell anyone you’re in. Your mind, slowly eroded down to mash by decades of boredom. All that nothing! All that dullness! Lying in a grave sounds terrible! Please torch me when I go!

Now, say, for instance, that two pissed Mancs come and rut on top of you for 45 minutes. That’s not so bad, is it? People say, like, "Oh: don’t shag on graves, goths." They say: "Have some respect for graves." Way I see it, I’m going to be mad if people don’t fuck on top of my grave when I’m done. In a way, shagging on top of a grave is the best and most sombre memorial there is. Mark death by celebrating the most vivid moments of life. If I'm a skeleton, staring through metres of soil at an endless oblivion, please, please, please, I’m begging you, all of you: please come and shag on top of me. If nothing else, it will give me something to watch.

Here’s the only reason I know the goths fucked for 45 minutes: because they went on Facebook and boasted about it. The video was captured by Scott "YER SCRUFFY CUNTS" Elwood, who posted it to Facebook, where it went local-Facebook-viral, and then, as The Sun reports, the man in the video hopped into the comments to say, essentially, "it is rude of you to film me whilst I fuck".

Here's the quote: "Try to have some fun in your life," the shagger said. "Stop perving on people having a quicky, well not that quick 45 minutes."

And I suppose I have two questions here: what is the psychological profile of a man who hops into the comments on a viral video to boast about how long he shagged on a gravestone for? Like: is he hoping for some DM slides off the back of that? "Saw you rutting on a grave. Heard you go like the fucking clappers, and for ages. Here’s my number, maybe you could plough me to death in a hearse." Additional Q: is 45 minutes shagging on a grave too much shagging on a grave? And I have to say, you know what: yes. Yes, I think 45 minutes shagging on a grave is too much shagging on a grave. The maximum amount of shagging on a grave is, like… 11 minutes, max. You’ve made your point. Now go home and finish with some decorum.

@joelgolby