Thursday, October 28, 2010

I'll get you my pretty, and little your brother, too!


When I was a wee lad all I ever wanted to be for Halloween was a witch—complete with pantyhose and an itchy black wig. I think this was my Halloween costume three years in a row, upon my own personal request, of course. In hindsight, it was actually pretty cool of my parents to let me do that year after year. I'm sure my dad loved it. Probably just about as much as when I'd put the Christmas tree skirt on like a dress and jump and twirl around our living room at Christmastime—a proud moment for any Midwestern father. Hm, isn't that interesting? Why do gay children have an innate desire for feminine things? Maybe that's a total blanket statement, but I think I'm having a revelation, people. I didn't have any sisters, and my mom wasn't particularly girly, so why the girly desires? I wasn't really exposed to it. Maybe it was an influence of all my female friends—of which I naturally gravitated to. Maybe it was the TV? I'm reading this book right now about how body pain and skin problems are the result of suppressed rage and I'm almost to the part where the reader, me, is going to uncover their, my, secret rage. Supposedly, something is to have happened in my childhood to spawn this unconscious rage—something I'm not supposed to know about yet. This is apparently some sort defense mechanism of one's subconscious in efforts to protect the conscious mind from emotional distress. What if something wacky happened in my childhood, like my mom dressing me up as a girl, taking photos and telling everyone I was a girl? You know, one of those stories: like where some guy cries every night, "Why do I sit down to pee and can only 'get off' when I sniff high-heeled shoes!? Whhhhhhy?!" And then he finds out his aunt made him wear pink panties or something... nah, if anything I traumatized them by dressing as a girl and taking photos. I didn't technically "take photos". I made videos. It was artistic, you guys, not like porn or something. This is getting off topic. And I'm sure the real story is that my mom had to explain how the little witch was really her son, shrugging her shoulders and smiling to the perturbed neighbors. Maybe she should be reading this book. Anyway, I'm sure my secret rage is a product of being a little feminine boy who grew up in Toledo, Ohio and was called 'faggot' and 'girly-girl' everyday and would come home and cry. Pretty depressing.. kinda like those gay teen suicides. Seriously, what's up with that? It's like that movie Suicide Club.. or Heathers, sort of. It seems so silly to just go and off yourself, although, with the way the world is, maybe they just saved themselves a lot of heartache. Being gay kinda sucks. Where do you go? It's not like Jon and I could just move to some cute little town and stroll down to the general store to buy bread, or have a little potluck—the villagers would greet us with torches, not casseroles. Even New York isn't safe. Every gay person I know there has been called a faggot numerous times, plus there's all those crazy beatings, and those weirdos who tortured captive gays in their Brooklyn apartment, or whatever. The world doesn't like us—even if Ricky Martin, or Cher, or whoever, makes a viral YouTube video saying it's fine. It's not fine, Cher. So, I guess I should be happy I have parents who let me wear pantyhose, only if it was once a year, and who only slightly groaned when I was nancying about in that holiday tree dressing.


Speaking of gay Halloween costumes: Jon and I are going as Batman and Robin. Yes, I'm wearing spandex this year—in public. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea. I blame Jon. My head is way too big for spandex. I think this is because I was born c-section. I imagine my head as a Mylar balloon, all long and flat, and behind it: my body, trailing behind like a curly ribbon—more of an afterthought than anything. My Halloween costume exacerbates this misfortune. It also makes my face look all squishy and bloated. I'm not sure if this is because of the contrast of head-to-toe Lycra to the small amount of visible face flesh, or possibly the fact that my face is being squeezed through a tiny stretchy hole, or maybe it's just that my face is bloated and squishy. I, unfortunately, expect the latter. Not everyone can be Val Kilmer, you guys. Someones gotta be William Shatner.

Tonight is "beggar's night", as my grandmother calls it. As a child, I found this term ridiculously funny. Growing up in a wealthy suburb, where the concept of people begging for food was so foreign and hilarious to me, I imagined "beggar's night" to consist of smelly children in tattered clothes with soot-smudged faces plodding door-to-door for tiny, garishly wrapped, sweet morsels of sustenance. Or even worse yet: smelly children with no costumes, holding dirty pillow cases slightly a gap, frowning for candy. Now that we live in Merion Village, this all makes sense. Full circle, as they say. So, hopefully no one tries to shoot us this year, tie us to the back of their red, white and blue pickup truck, only to drive us three houses down the street—where they would then fashion our arms into a gun rack. You never know, really.
Happy Halloween, you guys!

Trick or treat! Thank you. (Although, nowadays I believe they omit the last part.)

2 comments:

Jon said...

If I'd known you wanted to be a witch, I wouldn't have suggested we wear spandex. Or at least not men's spandex.

Nick Kusner said...

Ain't you a precious witch.