copyright 1995 Beren deMotier

Halloween 1995

And Is Your Costume Ready?

            Adulthood has it’s moments, if you’re not too tired to appreciate them.  There are private joys and personal accomplishments galore.  There are friends and family.  There are opportunities and disappointments.  There’s always taxes and usually sex though the ratios seem to change every so often.

            But sometimes you just want to be a kid again.  At least I do.

            It’s Halloween that’s got me thinking this way.  The annual spook fest is coming on fast and since the wife and I are now the proud parents of two kids that we adore more than life itself we’re off and running to do it right.  We’ve got pumpkin lights, skeletons, bat garland and we’re positively tripping over a misshapen orange crowd as we climb our front porch.  We’ve done the preschool pumpkin patch, bought the candles, bought the candy, assigned each pumpkin on the aforementioned porch to it’s destined mutilator and decided on costumes months ago (though now I have two weeks to produce an authentic replica of a prehistoric reptile which is a. comfortable enough not to be ripped off in frustration after three minutes wear and b. accurate enough to satisfy a dinosaur connoisseur who at almost four can identify easily a hundred different species and their prey of choice).  Halloween fever is upon us.

            Sure, we don’t have to do it, for the baby.  There’s no need to dress a nine month old in a Halloween costume, but hey, these are memories we’re making here and I don’t want to be hearing about it twenty years from now that I was playing favorites as a seamstress.  She is stuck as a dinosaur though.  I’ve got a niche going.  Next year I’m sure she’ll be able to make her own demands upon my sewing talents, but this year she can hitch along on the prehistoric ride.

            And speaking of prehistory, that’s what Halloween keeps reminding me of, my pre-history.  Pre-kids.  Pre-married.  Pre-settled down.  You know, the slut-puppy days.  And even sometimes, vaguely, childhood.

            It’s funny when you stop being the one dressing up and start being the one dressing someone else.  It’s one of those passages to adulthood that comes along quietly and then hits you, Whoa!, this is it, youth is gone.

            It’s not like the wife and I got here overnight.  When we got together we were young and swingin’.  Let’s face it, Halloween is a good gay holiday.  There are relatively few family confrontations involved, virtually no religion and absolutely no need to consider anything sacred.  It’s a natural.  And as a group, we can do costumes.  Our friends spent months planning their costumes, sometimes ensemble pieces requiring yards of sequined taffeta and twelve extras to carry the train.    

            When we were younger and first together, we did the town.  We hit the bars, parties, the Bump in Seattle.  And there were certain adjustments to be made.  My wife is a nice, normal sort of lesbian and I’ve never claimed anything of the kind.  I had an agenda and it wasn’t the same as hers.  If you’re used to tricking yourself out as a feminist assassin, SM queen or Marilyn Monroe in whatever small, indiscreet ensemble of leather and lace you can come up with and cornering your prey around four in the morning on an annual basis, it takes a couple of years to get used to going as a couple.  She thought Halloween was for fun and amusement.  I thought it was a life or death expression of the deepest self.  There were issues to be worked out.  One simply cannot crush one’s figure into a rip-away leather skirt and stilettos without some regret when being accompanied by a tramp with soot upon her face.  Fortunately the memory fades.....

            And now I’m chatting up the mother’s at the preschool about fabric stores,  drawing illustrations on the back of envelopes that challenge all design practicality, and buying polar fleece at 8.99 a yard to make a costume that will take thirty hours, four diet cokes and two chocolate bars (or possibly a bag of miniature ones) to sew, and whose fate will be decided with the split-second whim of a four year old. 

            Last year was our first trick-or-treat year.  They do it in our neighborhood.  Big time.  It was exciting, and joyful, and raining like hell.  The look on our son’s face as he came back with my wife, his little candy bucket half-full of stuff he’d hardly even heard of but knew was the food of the Gods, was quite a sight.  There’s a tradition I can live with.  I may not look sexy, but I found the love I was looking for in all those darkened places.

            Now that’s a treat you have to be old enough to appreciate.  And well worth it.