Way back in the early mid-80s, I found myself at a Halloween party hosted by my debate partner, Clytemnestra, at her great-aunt's chalet in Gstaad. As I sat on the terrace, tapping my Sperry topsiders to the rhythm of a Duran Duran pop diddy and admiring the few swaths of vibrant foliage that still clung to the whitening Alps, Nestra's older brother, Rodolpho, swept out the living room door and into the kidney-shaped Jacuzzi. Wearing little more than a well-placed woolen sock and a half-length cape of black velveteen, he looked like nothing so much as a refugee from Batman's summer camp. Or a half-assed Phantom of the Opera. Or a lewder, gayer Zorro. But then, they're all about the same thing, aren't they….
I digress.
Within five minutes, all of gay Switzerland had followed Rodolpho's lead. Scores of gay men in mufti were buzzing around my deck chair sounding for all the world like the happy hour crowd at a gay bar in the middle of Charles de Gaulle Airport. "Bla bla Armani bla blaghli." "Oui, oui! Bleah bleah Yves Saint Laurent." "Nein, blach Karl Lagerfeld blach, bitter!" And so on.
Watching the throng of animated polyglots from genital-level, I began to wonder: Where did all these homos come from? Is that Limahl by the bean dip? What am I doing in Switzerland? Is Simon Le Bon on drugs? And since when do Europeans celebrate Halloween, anyway?
Many years later, I still can't answer those questions (though I have my suspicions about Mr. Le Bon). All I know for certain is that Halloween is to queers what an N*Sync concert is to teenage girls (and queers). As I've matured from budding gayboy to superlative nellybeast, Halloween has grown with me, developing into a major homo holiday over the past decade or so. Along with pride, Mardi Gras, and various Labor Day events, October 31st is a time for gay men and their BLT kinfolk to take to the streets, pump up the volume, and freak out the squares.
Which is all well and good, but I still have to wonder why: I mean, why do gays identify so strongly with this handful of holidays and not with, say, Fourth of July? Or Thanksgiving? Or National Aviation Day for chrissakes?
Ultimately, it comes down to one thing: costumes. Think about it: Each of these events requires us to glam up and shimmy through a series of parties, along the way sizing up other maskers and smiling smugly into our Ketel One cosmos, secure in the knowledge that our get-up renders us significantly prettier/wittier/gayer than everyone else in the room.
On that note: knowing how important superior holiday apparel is to each and every one of you, the editors of this fine magazine have asked me--costume snob par excellence--to give you, constant reader, the inside scoop on Halloween attire for 2001. Follow these four rules of thumb (warning: you may need to grow an extra pair of hands), and you'll be the bee's knees this Samhain….
Rule #1: Dress to impress through excess.
Whatever you're wearing, make it excessively fabulous, excessively ugly, excessively funny, excessively obscene--anything but excessively boring. My friend Nigel provided a textbook example of excess last year when he attended the oh-so-exclusive Dorf on Golf Ball dressed as Dolly Parton von Hindenburg. I think you can imagine what that looked like. Oh, the humanity!
Rule #2: Rustle up a three-way.
Group costumes can be very entertaining, and as an added bonus, they provide Shrinking Violets the peer support they need to come out of their straight-laced shells. In recent months, I've seen some excellent group numbers on America's fair streets-notably Provincetown's infamous Kay sisters--Grinda, Bumpa, and Viala--and the Walker Texas Rangers from Southern Decadence. It's common wisdom, girls: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. …Oh, hell, join 'em anyway.
Rule #3: We are not amused by Kato Kaelin.
Topical costumes can be simultaneously fabulous and funny--and goddess knows we could use a little humor these days. Just do us all a favor and be current. If I see one more Lewinsky-blue Gap dress stained with Cool Whip, I'm gonna scream. Yo, seriously.
Given Planet Earth's current political situation, though, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to come up with something incisive, witty, and au courant. My friend Patrick, for example, had the great idea to go this year as Britney Spears--but not just any old Britney. Patrick's dolling up as Britney might appear on an espionage mission in the heart of Afghanistan. I can see the Pepsi Girl now, covered from head to toe in skin-tight silver lamé, surrounded by hordes of adoring little fans screaming, "Omigod! I totally love your burqa!" Along similar lines, a couple of zaftig neighbors are renting a motorcycle with sidecar to become "Two Fatwa Ladies." I myself am proud to announce that I've nearly convinced two of my closest friends to join me as Talibananarama. Remember, dears: puns are your friend.
Rule #4: If you can't say anything nice….
You probably weren't looking for moral guidance here (and if you were, why?), but you're getting it anyway. Call my altruistic, but I wanna make sure even the most daft among you walk that fine line between camp and crassness with style and grace.
You see, the problem is that this year revelers are faced with countless possibilities for satirical sartorial statements--some nice, some not so nice. For example, I'd avoid hijacker-themed outfits; even stewardess costumes seem vaguely inappropriate right now. Parodying firemen and/or policemen might also hit a raw nerve (and not in a good, edgy way). On the other hand, groups of hunky men in anthrax-proof hazmat latex could be very sexy and sassy, indeed. And if you feel compelled to go with a semi-butch, military theme, how's about masking as a fighter pilot, armed with your own personal arsenal of "bunker busters" or "butt busters" or something. As my father's third wife, Carmelita, always said, just use your head, darling, and I'm sure something will come to you.
Happy Halloween!