In my gay opinion, Halloween is for kids. This year I was thinking back to my childhood and only remember my last Halloween trick or treating. Picture it, Sicily 1942 (sorry, I’ve been watching too much The Golden Girls), more like Meriden, 1984. For those unfamiliar with world-renowned Meriden, back then it was a small multi-cultural city in Connecticut with big city aspirations with it’s motorcycle gang and KKK rallies. Not really the ideal setting for a young gaybie growing up so I stayed in my Madonna poster adorned closet into my 20’s. Somebody needed to sit me down for a heart to heart, “Girlfriend, you’re queerer than a three-dollar bill and you need to put down the Twinkies because your shirt buttons are starting to pucker and just because your leopard print pjs have an elastic waistband doesn’t mean you want them on your jeans as well”.
I was starting my teens tossing around costume ideas. Cop? Firefighter? Luke Skywalker? But deep down I knew what I wanted to be. I pranced into the living room after school one day, where my mother was watching Guiding Light and announced, “for Halloween I want to be a whore”. My mother was a single mother who wasn’t the Carol Brady type. She lifted her right hand that held her Salem 100’s cigarette gesturing me to stop blocking TV. Then she raised her left hand that held her goblet of Carlo Rossi white wine from the gallon jug under the kitchen sink and directed me to go upstairs to her room, pick out a dress, grab her wig off the shelf and she’d help me when her soaps were over.
What did I learn about being a whore from my mom (there’s something you don’t hear or say everyday). #1: Don’t apply your lipstick perfectly, it needs to be slightly smudged. I guess it needs to have that I-just-blew-a-trucker-behind-a-dumpster look. #2: Use a purse to put your candy in, instead of the appropriately named Trick Or Treat bag. Should I be offended that my mom didn’t think I would be good enough to have a pimp represent me? Maybe she just thought I would be an entrepreneurial slut and handle my own finances. #3: You need to have a boa, so she would make mine. I was going to be the sort of fancy lady of the night you’d see on Dynasty.
Halloween night came, I put on my dress that was black with gold sequined top with see-through sleeves (I was such a tease), sunglasses big enough to hide 60% of my face (it was the 80’s after all), matching fuck-me pumps and massive white purse for all the cash I’d make. Then my mom presented me with the boa she made out of left over pieces of yarn from various crocheting projects. It was multi-colored, different sizes and styles or yarn, and completely didn’t go with my dress. Joseph had his technicolor dreamcoat and I had my boa. My gay-closeted teen hormones were raging and I threw a shit-fit worthy of any of the drag queens on Rupaul‘s Drag Race. I stomped around in my borrowed pumps, threw down the gauntlet (well the purse) and vowed to never trick or treat again. That was the year I was almost a whore for Halloween but instead I was a cunt.
Welcome to my October
