There was a time, and I toss this off as an aberration of middle-aged mental illness, I greatly enjoyed Halloween. Downtown Portland. In the Eighties. Could be fun for socialites and serial killers. From November 8, 1989.
You are not the kind of guy who would be dressed up like this at this time of the night. But here you are. Halloween week. Portland.
Fright nights, wig city.
You live in Northweird, a neighborhood where nobody gives a second glance at a purple Mohawk and eight rings pierced in an ear and a ruby atop a nostril. Routine.
A small voice inside you insists costumed, anonymous partying is the result of too much superficiality in society. Priorities askew. A collective scream at the loss of individuality and the absence of an authentic Jewish delicatessen.
You remember your childhood, where Trick-or-Treat was a form of teenage extortion. You either got a milk chocolate with nuts or they got their car windows soaped. Or their front yard TPed. Or, if they weren’t your buddy’s parents, maybe a bag of cow plop.
Light the bag with a match, leave it flaming on the stoop, ring the doorbell and watch them stomp out the flames.
From a distance.
You are a grown-up now. You get your kicks by obscuring your identity, and going to parties with hundreds of other grownups. Who drink too much.
This is no longer a holiday for children. Once again, you miss the good old days.
You hear a knock on the door. It’s Super Dave. He’s dressed up like a cat. All black, with the very same identical mask that you’re wearing. You’re a dog. Something is clearly wrong here. Mistakes have been made. Leaving together, you’re still insisting your mask is the face of a canine.
You pull into a Chevron station. The pump jockey takes one look and states the obvious. “Two cats, huh?”
“No, he’s a dog,” Super Dave replies. “Fill it up, please.”
You growl and sulk.
The first party is in suburbia. The entire Mickey Mouse club is here, including Cubby and Annette. One guy is dressed like a lottery machine. Two priests. A bottle Of Listerine antiseptic mouthwash. Enough cowboys for a posse.
One desperado, obviously a paid-up member of the NRA, is wearing a real six-shooter with real bullets on his belt. He’s immediately disarmed but not before proving he’s a couple of cartridges short of a full clip, if you know what I mean.
Andy Warhol. Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles. One beautiful woman looks like she didn’t bother to wear a costume. She assures you she’s dressed as a single mother of two. Her own version of a super-hero.
You have to be careful on Halloween. There were two females costumed as elderly women. Along with Super Dave, you ask them to dance. Turns out the younger one is sixty-three. “Nice cat mask, honey,” she says and gives you a squeeze.
You have never been to the Boo Ball before. You have no excuses. The affair is legend in a town that likes to celebrate its holidays, preferably the more meaningless dates. Your apartment remains trashed from that Arbor Day blowout.
Still, you are not prepared for what you find at the Union Train Station.
The nightclub scene in Star Wars aside, you haven’t seen anything quite this bizarre since your first wedding reception when you married that dark-haired schoolgirl in the Brooklyn Community Center in 1970. Stranger than former in-laws. For starters, there’s more of them, some twelve hundred revelers. And all is not as it seems.
Freddy Kreuger, Jason Voorhees and that guy in the hockey mask, Michael Something. The younger generation’s idea of folk heroes.
Costumes look different here. Edgier. One guy, drinking a draft beer and wearing nothing but lederhosen, jockey shorts and a rose bud taped to his burly chest, claims to be dressed as The Emperor With No Clothes. He is accompanied by his aide, in some gray, fuzzy, vague, amorphous costume that makes no sense at all. “I’m Operation Jumpstart,” he boasts. “Last year, I was A Safer City Plan. Year before that, Alfred E. Neumann.”
Moments later, you watch him walk off into the crowd mumbling about a lack of specifics and the need for long-range planing. A cave man hits him over the head with what looks like a mastodon’s tibia.
You see a woman dressed as the Trojan nuclear plant. Complete with debris in the safety screens. Her date wears dark safety glasses and a white cane with a red tip and a sign – Inpection Team. Both of them glow in the dark. There’s Zsa Zsa Gabor, more diamonds than South Africa. She takes one look at you and purrs, “Nice cat, darlink,” and you wish she’d dressed like a fire hydrant.
Another woman, wearing a polyester prom gown, carrying a microphone – is that a pancake on her face or is she wearing too much makeup? It must be Tammy Faye Bakker. Because her companion is short, carrying a Bible and wearing a black-and-white-striped prisoner’s outfit.
He’s begging for a dollar.
Of course, all the classics are here. Count Dracula. Werewolf. (Behind you!!) Frankenstein.
Two lumberjacks with owl decoys perched precariously on plaid flannel shoulders.
Four gorgeous brunettes, hair pulled by tight, in slinky black dresses and addicted to love. You wish you had come as Robert Palmer.
In unison, they meow at you.
A buxom blonde in a low-cut blouse, she’s Little Bo Peep. She asks you what you’re dressed as and, what the hell, might as well tell her: you’re a cat. She’s carrying a pitchfork with a bloody skull’s head on top. Nice touch.
Halloween’s not much of a holiday for vegetarians.
Holiday? Indeed, you even looked up its origins in the Columnist’s Guide To Virtually Useless Information. Turns out, centuries ago, long before your parents were born, there was a witch named Louise. Wicked Wheezie, they called her.
She’d come to a home and she’d be greeted with, “Hello, Wheez.” And they’d give her a family pet, usually black cats, which have next to no nutritional value, or some produce, mostly pumpkins, because this was the end of harvest.
“Hello, Wheez” Night over the years became simply Halloween for short.
You know that could be the only explanation that actually makes sense.
