I thought I had outgrown Halloween by the time I was 25, but discovered that I had not.
My (not so old) friend Susan had a bunch of friends that I knew, primarily from a poetry workshop she helped organize. One of the group was going to have a Halloween costume party. I’m not sure that I had any costume ideas, but Susan did, and when she suggested, I embraced it. (Or so I remember.)
I had a beard and a mustache at the time, so I shaved them. Then Susan and a couple of her friends made me up. We found a dress in a second-hand store, a wig and shoes from somewhere, and we went to the party, she as “Sid”, and me as “Shirley”.
I affected a high pitched voice, but frankly, I figured that people would know it was me. After all, I was still a six-foot black person. Much to my shock and amazement, no one recognized me! Well, not until later in the evening, when my “five o’clock shadow” starred to appear.
The Halloween of 1978 inspired me to dress up for several years thereafter, though never again in drag.
Happy Halloween to everyone, especially to “Sid”, who I’ve finally gotten in contact with again after several years, and to FGH for scanning the picture.
Or put another way, in my friend Mark’s Sanheim greeting: “This Time, the Dark Night, the New Year, the Thinned Veil; remember your ancestry, Turn to face the Dawn. It Goes, then comes again.
Blessings Be.”
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