I Used to Hate Halloween. Now I Can’t Live without It.
And I’m not being blackmailed by the gays to write this.
If you know me, or are familiar with my work, you know that I used to hate Halloween. I wrote about it in my book. I wrote about it in this newsletter the other week. For those of you just joining, including the 100+ folks who subscribed (!!!!) after last week’s butt-ass-bonkers post, where I interviewed my parents and brother about the time my brother claims to have seen a dead body in someone’s basement when he was a kid, here’s the TL;DR: I renounced Halloween in the fourth grade after being traumatized by what would later be revealed to be an extremely age-inappropriate haunted house my school turned the home economics classroom into. It wouldn’t be until my senior year of high school that I dipped a toe back into celebrating Halloween, and even then, it was as tame as it could be. (My best friend and I dressed up as vaudeville performers and sat in her Volvo station wagon in the Quickcheck parking lot eating sandwiches and drinking Dr. Pepper.)
A year later, a freshman at college, I realized the significance of the holiday—especially on a college campus. It was one of the biggest party nights of the year. My friends and I forewent the house parties and opted instead to head into Manhattan to celebrate Halloween at the now-defunct gay bar, Rush, where we all dressed like whores and got sick after because it was foam night and we had left the club drenched in soapy suds to wander out into a forty-degree night.
I continued to use Halloween as an excuse to dress up and party. Let it be known that, back then, to the everyday pedestrian, I appeared to be in a costume 365 days a year: to call my style back then flamboyant would be an understatement and then some. So, when I did dress up, it had to be a complete departure from the club kid people were used to seeing sauntering around campus. One year I dressed up as slutty Sarah Palin—not my best, but listen, we’ve all done a slutty version of something on Halloween at one point or another—and went out with the rugby team to one of the bars just off-campus whose workers looked the other way if you weren't twenty-one, and spent the night making out with every lesbian on the team (so the whole team) because of course I did. (Find a bond stronger than the one between lesbians and myself and I’ll give you my next royalty check.)
It wasn’t until a few years later, not that long ago, that I started to wade deeper into the waters of spooky season. My roommate at the time loved Halloween, but didn’t like to be scared, so it was the perfect set of training wheels for the thriller-and-horror-obsessed freak that I am today. We would decorate our apartment, light a bunch of candles, and spend every weekend of October watching The Craft, Hocus Pocus, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, and other titles of that ilk.
It’s no surprise that I was drawn to these types of films: horror and comedy have an abiding relationship with one another. The parallels in structure—both rely on set-up for a successful delivery, relieving tension with either a scream or a laugh, subvert norms to tell a story, and employ other similar narrative frameworks—and their union to form the sub-genre of horror comedy, lured me into the art of darkness. I was insatiable, paying close attention to the use of color, sound, and every other detail worth noting. The delivery of a line could make or break a scene, much like how a punchline could make or break a joke or the entire story leading up to it.
I started watching things like American Horror Story, which opened the door to other scarier vistas, from contemporary flicks like The Orphan, which ignited my deep love for actress Vera Farmiga, to classic horror movies like The Shining, Carrie, The Exorcist, and every other staple in the genre I could get my hands on.
I started dressing up for Halloween again, too. One year I went as Phyllis Diller, which was my first and last time bar-crawling in Manhattan on Halloween on a weekend. There were only so many Barbs from Stranger Things, wasted and shouting about wanting chicken fingers on the street that I could take, which, I realize now, makes me a hypocrite, but at least when I’m wasted and shouting about wanting chicken fingers, I do so in the privacy of my own home—at least now I do. Speaking of Stranger Things, I did go as Eleven a few years ago because, at the time, we had the same haircut. My most recent costume, in 2019 because in this house we do not speak of 2020, was Prue from The Great British Bake-Off, which is, to this date, my proudest moment.
Halloween slowly started to become a year-long celebration for me. There’s a sense of liberation to be gained from indulging in fantasy, especially if you’re queer. There’s a reason why Halloween is the second-biggest holiday (the first being Pride, of course) for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s not just an excuse to dress like a total ho—which we should be free to dress how we want all-year-round—it’s an invitation to explore the parts of ourselves that those outside of the LGBTQ+ community fear, the things the world beyond progressive hubs—and sometimes even in them—tells us are too disturbing, perverted, or, depending where in the world you live, are abominable.
For one night a year, we are able to express the darkest and deepest parts of ourselves without fear of reprisal, donning head-to-toe leather or sky-high heels or intensely hued wigs, bending gender and warping other boxes we’re expected to fit neatly into. Or maybe some of us just want to squirt some fake blood on our tit and call it a day! We know what it’s like to hide from the world and change the way we look, speak, and act, depending on whose company we're in, to tip-toe around a world that could inflict harm on us at any moment. When you’re in the closet and dreaming about wearing lipstick beyond the confines of your bedroom, Halloween is the night to dress up as Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show and no one bats an eyelash because it’s deemed socially acceptable just this one night. It’s a respite from limitations, both self-imposed and beyond. It is an invitation to possibility.
It’s the thrill of possibility that I seek. Don’t get me wrong: visiting supposedly haunted sites is not on my itinerary. I am well-aware that Halloween is a time when the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds is its thinnest. And, while I am not scared of my grandmother’s spirit writing, “you call what you do a job??” in the condensation of the bathroom mirror while I’m in the shower, I still won’t be buying an Ouija board anytime soon. I still spook too easily. But that works to my advantage.
I’ve come to like getting scared (from behind a screen, mind you). It’s a rush I actively seek, because it allows me to suspend my disbelief, which is crucial to my self-care—REALITY IS TOXIC. Whether it’s through dressing up, watching a scary movie, or reading spooky stories and books—both fictional or not—Halloween, and all that comes with it, has become the holiday I eagerly await the most. Not that I need a designated month/day to shit myself watching a movie; I can do that whenever. But it’s just a little bit more magical when there’s a collective sacrifice of realism.
At the end of the day, Halloween reminds us that anything is possible. Also, discounted candy.
Credits
Cover art by: James Jeffers
Photo credits: Prue Leith by David Venni for Good Housekeeping
Editorial assistant: Jesse Adele
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