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Unleash your inner freak this Halloween

Unleash your inner freak this Halloween

Every October I’m bombarded with messages from gay and lesbian friends.

“OMG, have you decided what you are going to be for Halloween yet?” My inbox flashes hourly with ecstatic conversations about costumes.“I can’t decide between being a dead flapper or a tree fairy,” one friend said.

“Who wants to be Bonnie so I can be Clyde?” the conversation continued.

“Maybe I’ll be a sexy version of that chick on Glee that looks like Ellen … ”

“What have you decided on, Holly?”

I haven’t invested much thought into this year’s costume. I do, however, have one night planned for Halloween festivities.

The Denver Zombie Crawl.

I hate scary movies; I had nightmares for weeks after my best friend in high school made me watch Psycho. But the zombie crawl seems less freakish and terrifying knowing I am personally involved, dressed up in character and playing along. Perhaps it’s a bit of the high school drama nerd in me that still kicks every now and again. If I know I have oatmeal “brains” splattered on my face and fake blood seeping out the cracks of my mouth, I can play along and even get into true zombie character without the “freak out” factor.

What better way to get in the Halloween spirit than to drag foot down 16th Street Mall, with a few hundred other spirited Denver zombies? Really, the experience is epic, and just plain fantastic. The often posh and pretentious vibe you usually experience in Lodo is transformed by the slew of fabulously horrific looking Denverites donning their deadliest fashions.

For the LGBT community, Halloween is a holiday especially catered to us. It is the one-day a year we will not be judged for dressing and acting however we want.

The rest of the year’s “big” holidays are based around religion, or still encompass a patriarchal backdrop. Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, you get the picture. These holidays seem to be more difficult for our community. Countless people in the LGBT community have voiced their struggles of feeling condemned and ostracized by their Catholic family members or Evangelical neighbors.

And although Halloween comes from All Hallows Eve, a Christian holiday adapted from a Pagan holy day, it has become the antithesis of traditional religious holy days. Halloween is a day in which you won’t be kicked out of a public place for dressing as extreme and unusual as your heart desires. No judgment, no harassment.

You can be Richard Gere, or Richard Simmons. A ghost, a ghoul, Marilyn Monroe, a dirty politician or a sexy barbarian. You can even organize your posse to dress up as the entire cast of Glee. The possibilities are endless, as are the costume parties at the Denver gay bars who are offering thousands of dollars in cash and prizes this year. See page 27 for the bar listing of Halloween activities.

The only other time the gays go all out in the same fashion, is PrideFest. The Castro in San Francisco even boasts their Halloween festivities have just as much eye-candy as Pride, if not more. And the Mardi Gras capital has a weeklong “Gay Halloween” celebration, which attracts thousands of gays, lesbians and transgenders to Bourbon Street at an alarming rate ever since the event began in the early ’80s.

I think the gay fascination with this holiday has less to do with the fact that it’s a big party weekend at the gay bars and more to do with playing on our roles as outsiders.

We love things that are fantastical, unusual and just plain absurd. We appreciate differences and revel in bending stereotypical notions of gender norms. We appreciate cross-dressing, drag and impersonation so much that it has become a part of our experiences of celebrations whether you’re mingling with the Cycle Sluts at Hamburger Mary’s or watching the transformation of Jorge Flores into drag sensation Nina Flowers. We are excited by make-believe worlds and fantasy. Halloween is our chance, and excuse, to let loose and give in to the creativity of making ourselves look fantastic and unique.

With National Coming Out day behind us, Halloween is another reason to be proud of being gay. If you’re anything like my fanatic friends, you may even have a few costumes picked out for this year’s festivities. One for work, one for the zombie crawl and a couple options for the long weekend of barhopping and costume contests.

“I’ve got it,” said the same friend who was pondering dressing up as a sexy version of Jane Lynch.

“I’m going to be a cougar version of the crazy cat lady. Then I can hit on the freshman lesbians who are dressed up like playboy bunnies and still wear a skort!”

 

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