A. and I were walking through Target the other day and noticed all the Halloween paraphanelia displayed throughout the store. A. commented, "Ah, Halloween. I just don't care." Sadly, I had to agree. Halloween has sort of become meaningless to me as I've gotten older.
I used to like Halloween. Really. One year I spent a very long time putting together an elaborate costume so that a friend and I could dress up as the Wonder Twins. Hell, I even spray painted a stuffed monkey blue so that we could have Gleek!
How did that Halloween turn out?
Everywhere we went, it seemed that very few people had put as much thought or effort into their costumes as us and no one really seemed all that impressed with the amount of time we had spent on ours. I also spent the better part of the evening trying to get someone else to hold Gleek since it got rather tiresome carrying that damn stuffed monkey around while drinking a gin and tonic.
Since then I have had rather similar experiences with Halloween. There was the year A. and I dressed as Paul and Jan Crouch from the TBN network. I painted a pair of pumps gold and turned a blonde buffont wig into a glorious pink disaster all in the hopes of having a fabulous Halloween. While our costumes got a few chuckles from those "in the know", we spent the night sipping cheap beer in a friends back yard. Not exactly the night I had hoped for.
Even as I young child I always tried to make Halloween extra special. My ever patient mother would sit back and allow me to decorate our house with cobwebs and fake plastic spiders. I convinced my father one year that what our house really needed was a cemetary and he proceeded to make me tombstones for our front yard. I purchased a book on constructing the perfect haunted house and then turned our garage into a house of horrors. I even managed to get my rather stoic brother to participate and covered him in fake blood made from corn syrup and red food coloring.
Sounds like the makings of a classic childhood Halloween, doesn't it?
For whatever reason, it all just felt like a big let down the next day. I suppose I felt like no one was genuinely scared or impressed with what I had created. Of course it was probably a little naive to think that I could scare someone simply by covering my brother in fake scars and stage blood and having him scream as they walked by. But come on people! I rigged that spider so it would fall on you! That took pulleys and rope! Complicated stuff for a dim-witted 12 year old!
It would be wrong of me to say that all Halloweens have been disasters. A. and I dressed as an altar boy and a priest one year, got tons of laughs and managed to get rip roaring drunk at a friends party. Good times. The sad part is that drinking more than my fair share of gin and tonics was what made that Halloween so much fun.
So, I've decided this year to spend Halloween the way every civilized gay boy should: getting smashed in a bar while watching half-naked men gyrate. And I won't even need a costume.
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