What I see when I open my barren door
11:35am | Okay, it’s not as dramatic as all that. I am not spearheading a puritanical push against All Hallows’ Eve on the grounds that it promotes paganism or some such rot. And I’m not really saying that Halloween is in existential peril.
But I am doing nothing to help preserve this great, fun tradition. And I am not proud of my inaction, my apathy.
I was privileged enough to enjoy an upper-middle-class 1970s early childhood, my nuclear family being part of the first generation of residents in a North Orange County housing tract. As such, my home was surrounded by others inhabited by children of just my age.
And Halloween was a fantasy, the streets so crawling with costumed kids it seemed an organized happening and not the organic byproduct of a particular cultural moment. On our trick-or-treating rounds my best friend Darren and I might encounter as many full-blown haunted houses as domiciles where our doorbell-ringing went unanswered. Of a hundred or so homes, maybe 10 — maybe — were without goblins or ghosts or some such seasonal décor.
I can’t say I was ever particularly creative with my costumes. You could guess right off that if I was ever going to show an artistic bent, it wasn’t going to be in the visual realm, my role-playing games being far more dressed up with words and ideas than anything you could see. And so on October 31st I would set out for the evening in a rubber devil’s mask or a black jeans and vest on top of white shirt that was supposed to make me Han Solo because I was carrying a gun, outfits in which I entered school costume contests without ever winning, placing, or showing (nor did I believe I deserved to). But I dressed up every year, wanting to participate, however marginally.
Then came October 31st, 1987, my second year of college and first at CSU Fullerton. I showed up on campus dressed up as Jim McMahon (the Chicago Bears Super Bowl XX MVP quarterback), and was horrified to find myself the only person within sight dressed up in any way. I sheepishly removed my headband, my sunglasses, tried to crawl out of my skin. The student body during my freshman year at San Diego State had disported themselves quite differently, full of the Halloween spirit. But here, it seemed, that spirit had been exorcised.
Who can chart all the events and factors that shape a given part of our personality? But as I moved into my 20s, it was obvious that my means of self-expression became increasingly solipsistic, my desired role in the outside world being that of witness.
In my mid 20s I rented my first apartment on my own and purchased bags of the little mini Milky Ways and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups that had been my favorites as a trick-or-treater. I stayed home all night, but not one child came to my door.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised, as I had seen a pronounced change between my Halloween experience and that of my sister (eight years younger). My disappointment, though, is more understandable. As is one of its effects: my enthusiasm for participating in Halloween was dampened.
In the years since I haven’t done much to celebrate. I never decorate. I will go to parties and even dress up — though my minimal costumes always require explanation, a fact that appeals to my sense of humor1 — but I am never part of the visual pageant that is so central to the holiday.
The reasons are myriad. Aside from the aforementioned, I’m averse to purchasing/possessing pretty much anything that will not have a long-term functionality in my life; I do not relate to clothing as a means of self-expression (even if it may inevitably serve that purpose to at least some degree); I do not aspire to draw attention to myself visually; and so on.
This topic has been more prominent in my thoughts for the last two years — namely, the timeframe in which I have taken part in Burning Man. Out there in the Black Rock Desert, part of the whole ethos is that you are creating the world — including all its sartorial stimuli — for your fellow proximate souls to enjoy. And while I’ll don the occasional wacky hat or pair of rainbow suspenders during the week, no one out there is finding great whimsy in my physical presence. Even in that milieu, the role I’m comfortable playing, the role I naturally play, is unchanged. I observe and experience and even interact, but I’ll never show up in a “Best of Burning Man” highlight reel. If my spirit is sufferable, my flesh is nonetheless weak.
But see, I like spectacle. I may not particularly want to be part of it, but I’ll always come out for it, to the point of immersion. The Grand Prix, the Gay Pride Parade, a protest march or political demonstration, SoundWalk, the theatre — I dig it all.
And so yet another reason I love Long Beach — which in my peregrinations is almost exclusively the portion relatively near the water — is how decked out it gets, for Halloween, for Christmas, for pretty much any old reason. I like seeing it; I like being in its midst. I walk around and I see people going all out to give the rest of us a show. And it feels selfish not to return the favor in kind.
No, none of us are obligated to dress up or decorate; this doesn’t fall along the lines of anything we might call a moral imperative. And I’m sure we all hope that, for all the ways in which we as individuals don’t contribute to our community, there are a few things we do that, on balance, leaves Long Beach at least a tiny bit better than it would be without us.
But as I smile to myself at my neighbors’ pumpkins and spider webs, I can’t help lamenting what I lack, and wondering what I want to change. Maybe I’ll do nothing for Halloween. But maybe this year I’ll put up Christmas lights.
1 E.g., I showed up to one party in a graduation robe and multi-page printout in my hand. “What are you?” I would be asked. “I’m Supreme Court Justice William Brennan,” I said, the printout in my hand being a copy of Texas v. Johnson, one of the landmark First Amendment decisions he authored.
At the end of the hall
In the foyer of the building next door
Another view of next door
A house on 3rd Street