page 2 - Out in the Mountains

Halloween,

by Terje Anderson
As a child, I hated Halloween. As

a confirmed non-candy eater, going
door to door for sweets held little
appeal. Costumes were even worse:

some of the most humiliating childhood
memories I have are those of standing
on the elementary school play ground
with several hundred costumed children,
parading for judges giving prizes. I
was usually dressed in a costume which
was improvised late the night before,
when parental coercion finally overcame
my strong desire to be the only student
without a Halloween disguise. The
result, as expected, was that I usually
went as one of the three old reliables:
a hobo, a ghost, or (most tellingly) in
drag.

At about the age of ten, I finally
abandoned Halloween, relieved that
never again would l frantically try to
dream up a costume idea.

My resolve weakened when, at
seventeen, l rediscovered Halloween.
Not the Halloween of little kids and
candy corn, but the gay bacchanal of
Halloween, our high holy day of
costumes, frivolity and gaiety. The first
Halloween in a gay men's bar
mesmerized me, as I stared at dozens of
imitation Carmen Mirandas, Judy
Garlands, and Diana Ross‘s, to name
but a few of the impersonators who
ranged from mediocre to convincing.

But even more than the drag
queens, l was taken in by the
uncharacteristic abandon which defined
the celebration. Carnival in Rio, Mardi
Gras in New Orleans, and Halloween in

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Out in the Mounlriins
PO Box 438
Hinesburg, VT 05461.

On! in the .\Iounfuin.\' is published by the Out in Illa
.\IotnIfuin.\‘ collective: Elizabeth Mae, Howard Russell,
David Ryan, Suzi Shira. Philip Roberts, Linda Wheeler,
Terje Anderson. Gilles Yves Bonneau, and Antonio Baio.

cause.”

a gay bar share an energy level and

vitality matched by
celebrations.
Since my rediscovery of Halloween,

lew other

rarely have l let the event pass
unnoticed, and costume is de rigeur. l
have been a lumberjack, a hockey

player, and both ends of a camel. An
appearance as Jackie Kennedy, complete
with pink dress and pill box hat, once
scandalized and delighted a party
(although l steadfastly resisted friends‘
efforts to smear ketchup on ‘the outfit
as exceeding th4 bounds of acceptable

taste).
I've taken a particular liking to
group costumes. l dressed as an

Andrews sister and a Supreme with the
same group of guys in successive years.
l‘ve been the only male nun in a group
of twelve (managing to give virtual
heart failure to an unsuspecting
restroom user who saw me standing at
a urinal dressed in complete habit).

Perhaps my favorite group costumes
were the ones I went on with a group
of feminists I hung out with at college.
Our appearance as the "seven deadly
sins‘ was marred only by my
disappointment at not being allowed to
go as 'Gluttong," but instead being
forced to wear a two-foot long papier
mache phallus while dressed as lust
(typecast again).

Equally successful was our sojourn
as ‘Freudian Slips," clad in lingerie,

Queen for a Day

acting out psychological cliches. (l, for
example, wore handcuffs to indicate my
state of “arrested development".)

The great group non—costume
involved five of_us bar hopping in only

jock straps, braving both potential
arrest and late October winds in the
process.

Cruising in costume can be an
adventure - except in cases such as the
aforementioned athletic supporters,
rarely do you have a good sense of
what all those people in the bar really
look like underneath the disguise. The

phrase "trick or treat‘ takes on all
kinds of new significance in that
setting. (l retain fond memories of a

Halloween encounter when two of us
wearing vast quantities of grease paint
and make-up ended up in bet together -
messy, but somehow
the holiday spirit).
Halloween was meant to be a gay

in keeping with

holiday. Living in a society where we
are forced to hide, celebrating in
‘costume some how seems more than

appropriate - an safe. Even the images
of Halloween monsters, vampires, and
ghouls seem to suit us - invisible by
daylight, coming alive only after night
fall. As any reader of Anne Rice's
vampire gooks can tell you, the lure of
the supernatural is laced heavily with
the erotic and the homoerotic.

From its campiest to its most
sensual, Halloween is ours - let's enjoy
it for all it is worth.

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inform people on the problems and

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