What's a Push-the-Envelope Goth DJ to Do But Dress Down and Step Up When Kin Beckon?

What's a Push-the-Envelope Goth DJ to Do But Dress Down and Step Up When Kin Beckon?

Jason Isaacs, examining a caterpillar, is dropping his wig and red lipstick for Thanksgiving, for his family's sake. (From Jason Isaacs)

Zugzwang is a German word that describes a situation in chess in which a player finds himself in the unfortunate position of having only bad moves available. It is also the name of an Internet radio show by Gaithersburg native DJ Kinetiq, a student production summed up in nine words in its intro: "Loud. Elegant. Pugnacious. Romantic. Morbid. Dark. Goth. Industrial. Radio."

Among Kinetiq's musical influences are the bands Lords of Acid, Android Lust and Pigface. And he writes on a Web page that his hobbies include BDSM -- that is, bondage and discipline, dominance, submission and sadomasochism -- as well as "soccer, wine and scotch tasting, blood work, sex and music."

So for a man like DJ Kinetiq, one might assume it is something of a zugzwang to have to trek out to Aunt Joan's house in Olney for Thanksgiving. And don't we all have a zugzwang -- lunch with the boss, diaper games at the niece's baby shower, encountering the ex at a funeral?

And what could be more mainstream, after all, than Pilgrims? Than all the bonnets and hat-buckles and elementary-school paper turkeys and earnest American families grasping hands around the fat, glistening bird giving thanks! thanks! thanks!

And DJ Kinetiq, for one, is proudly not mainstream. He is a veteran of the D.C. rave and Goth scenes, he danced at Nation, listened to the Mutant Dance Party on WHFS, and while he says he likes "all kinds of music," he acknowledges, "I step out of the normal."

"I get really annoyed with pop culture," he said. "I look at it and it drives me nuts. It's annoying and at the same time, it's become very misleading. Basically everyone's copying off of each other."

Yes, today might be a holiday of horrors for our Gaithersburg Goth.

Except.

"It's an amazing feeling, it's really good coming back," he said. "It's a real festive day. We get to see each other, and some of us haven't seen each other the whole year."

At his aunt's house in Olney, he will join some 30 relatives -- his large extended family originally came from Guyana -- not as DJ Kinetiq but as Jason Isaacs, the 25-year-old graduate of Col. Zadok Magruder High School in Rockville, who studies broadcasting at the New England Institute of Art, and has two brothers. He will not wear the wig or the red lipstick, not for Thanksgiving.

"The thing is, the way I dress, I save that for a club or an event; I save it for that. When I'm in regular life, I dress very normally," he said. "I've never really looked at it as something my family would be used to."

At his Thanksgiving, they will put on calypso and reggae and eat and dance and eat. "For me, it's something I enjoy, really," he said. "And each of us, we're different. We're different people, but it doesn't stop the fact that we're family.

"We talk about what all extended families talk about: How are you doing? How's life? How's this, how's that? The new additions to the family," he said. "And in the afternoon, everyone's going to be watching some golf. So that should be fun."