The first Halloween costume I can ever remember wanting to wear, but which I thankfully never got the opportunity to wear, was Mr. Mistoffelees: the magical cat from the 1988 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Cats. Something tells me that for a wee gay boy only starting to figure out how different he was from all the people around him, and who was trying desperately to hide that fact, a one-piece black leotard and top hat probably wouldn’t have been the best choice. Not to mention the magic wand.
The next Halloween costume I remember is a nerd, a “couple’s” costume with my best friend Brayden, that I can only imagine was both the last costume in the world I probably wanted to wear, and also, being that my 10-year-old self was madly in love with Brayden, was simultaneously the best costume in the world. If I had to guess, I was probably having dreams about dressing up as Michelle Pfeifer’s Catwoman and waking up in tears that I couldn’t make that happen. I assume my decision to dress up as Brandon Lee from The Crow the following year, complete with black hockey tape wrapped around my torso and black makeup around my eyes, was my way of trying to render that. I really just needed the ears and a whip, and it would have been Catwoman all the way. I remember something feeling so off about dressing as an ass-kicking dude from an action flick. I was already failing desperately at that role in my real life; the last thing I needed was to highlight that fact on my favourite night of the year.
It’s slightly ironic that Halloween is my favourite holiday, since I don’t think I have ever really felt comfortable in any costume I’ve worn. In my younger years, I almost always wanted to be something I couldn’t. Whether it was Catwoman, or Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, or Winona Ryder in Heathers, or Bette Midler, things never really went the way I wanted. Luckily, costumes aren’t my favourite part of Halloween. It was never even the candy, although who doesn’t love a giant pillowcase filled with candy?
My love of Halloween has always been my lifelong passion for the macabre. I love Ouija boards, and seances, and witches, and horror movies. I read somewhere that the reason so many gay men love horror movies so much is because we somehow primally identify with the villains.
Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, all outcasts who take revenge on the ones who wronged them. I’m not too sure that theory tracks, or maybe I’m just scared to think too deeply about it. However, I will admit that in elementary school I invented a game called ‘Murder’, where all my friends (all girls, of course) and I would pretend to be guests on a luxury cruise ship, a role perfectly played by our school playground. All the girls would check-in to different rooms, then venture out to enjoy their fabulous vacations. And then I would slowly stalk around the ship and kill each one of them. Make of that what you will.
Anyway, back to costumes. As we all know, there comes a time when Halloween suddenly shifts from being about dressing up fun and scary, and becomes entirely about dressing up hot and slutty. Especially, and some might say necessarily, if you plan on ending up at the clerb.
Which is probably why I started throwing annual Halloween parties so that I didn’t ever have to end up at the club, since a strong mix of shame and body dysmorphia mixed with just a twist of toxic culturist kept me from ever wanting to try to be sexy on Halloween. Unfortunately, in my 20s, I still wasn’t comfortable dressing as Winona or Bette, and usually found myself scrambling to figure something out.
The one year I was convinced to go to the gay bar with my new boyfriend, I decided I’d be what I imagined would be some version of a Disney Prince, thinking it could still be funny while, maybe, hopefully, being slightly hot. What we ended up with was yellow tights, shiny pink bloomers, a puffy pirate shirt, and a terrible wig. And a tiara. Don’t ask me how it happened, but also maybe don’t decide to accessorize after you’ve already started drinking. All I know is I found myself wasted on a dance floor surrounded by hot cops and cowboys, wondering how long my lovely new relationship was going to last.
Another year, my bestie Amber and I decided to be Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. These costumes were actually great. But my one stipulation for wearing them was that we did not end up anywhere close to the club, especially not the gay club. Cut to us wasted at midnight waiting in a freezing cold line (this was Calgary, by the way), surrounded by half-naked twinks in angel wings. There are numerous pictures of the two of us from that night in the club, but something about wildly teased wigs and white makeup dripping down our drunken, sweaty faces in the flash of a camera didn’t really do anything for us. Especially while swimming in a sea of abs. Trust me. There are pictures that somehow simultaneously catch the glow of perfectly sculpted abdominal muscles next to the gaunt, ghostly face of sweaty 2am Sweeney Todd. At least the miserable look on my face perfectly matched the character. I went home alone that night.
I’ve always and will always love Halloween. But dressing up in costumes almost always kills me. Like a few years ago, when I had finally, for the first time, dedicated enough solid hours at the gym that I was starting to feel ok about my body for maybe the first time in my life. This was going to be my year. And I had the perfect costume idea that would show just a bit of skin and, maybe, finally get me in on slutty Halloween: Jesus Christ Superstar. So hot, right? (I’m not going to lie, the largely Broadway theme to many of my costumes didn’t really occur to me until I was writing this essay.) It was great. I had a gold glittered crown of thorns. I had glitter all over my beautiful, flowing Jesus wig. And I had a tiny slutty sheet draped around my body. I was feeling good. So good that it seemed like a great idea to smoke a big fat joint outside the big gay party before going in.
I apologize again to my boyfriend and friends who were there with me, since it was barely half an hour before I had a slight panic attack on the dancefloor after ruthlessly comparing myself to the countless ripped torsos around me. Sometimes the ghosts we thought we’d finally exorcised come back to haunt us at the worst times. Half an hour later, I was home on the couch eating poutine as glitter tears rolled down my face.
I guess if I look hard enough, I could find some sort of deeper truth to all of this. The way so much of my life has felt like wearing a costume that I don’t quite fully belong in. How much of my life I spent trying to hide myself behind masks that never really did their job the way I needed them to.
I spent years trying to be anything other than who I really was. Wanting to be fitter than I was. Butcher than I was. Constantly warring with my body and the way it didn’t conform to the standards of my culture, and the way that made me feel like an alien even amongst all the other aliens. And while it might seem like wearing a costume could be a great way of escaping all of this, spending one fabulous night a year getting the chance to be somebody else, ironically, somehow, it has always felt like wearing costumes only ever exposed the parts of myself I was trying to hide.
Luckily one of the gifts of getting older is that the feeling of needing to be something other than me has started to ease up, the edges of my self-criticism slowly wilting away. Finally, it feels like all the roles I’ve played and costumes I’ve tried on in my life have started mattering much less than the fabulous little gay boy buried underneath it all.
So, maybe this year I’ll do something different for Halloween. Maybe this year I’ll be courageous and finally be the one thing I’ve always been the most scared to be… Mr. Mistoffelees.
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