Hello my lectrices and lecteurs. Hannibal Lecteurs.
I’m a Halloween uberfan, and have vowed to subject you all to three weeks of seasonal literary succotash.
Mwa. Mwahaha.
I’m standing in front of Spirit Halloween, you know, one of those stores that pops up at the end of August, laden with every horrific plastic lawn decoration and flammable costume known to mankind, the markup of which will ensure that the franchise survives until next year on two months of sales.
An electronic demon beckons me, arms outstretched, its muddled, pixelated voice sounding like it’s being projected from the inner recesses of an empty sardine tin. Beside him, an injection molded zombie makes an ineffectual grab for my ankle. I take in the ludicrous display with a critical eye, decide it’s ridiculous enough to send a shiver of pleasure coursing up and down my spine, and stride jovially into the shop, unperturbed by the disjointed, black-haired puppet that’s crouching like a spider and admonishing me to keep out. As I come closer, the puppet leaps, shrieking, towards me, and I yelp like a Pomeranian, feeling high-pitched and excitable.
I laugh at myself, thinking that I’m laughing in the face of death, and that this, after all, is the whole point of Halloween, and that a greater metaphor lies beneath the occulting veil. I’m on the verge of having a deep thought, but quickly throw it under my boot, crush it with my stacked heel, and head towards the Costumes pour femmes.
I scour the racks of women’s costumes, and consider everything from the pirate packs with their floppy foam accessories to the Little Red Riding Hood costume, which is essentially a cape, a “corset” with printed lacing and what is either a miniskirt or a headdress of some kind. Since the cape comes equipped (needs be) with a hood, I infer that it is, indeed, a skirt. The use of fabric is economical. Everything is made with what looks and feels like recycled ShamWows, and sewn with an utter disregard for the most basic laws of physics. The costumes seem to be held together by our collective suspension of disbelief. The price tag, however, suggests that this garment was crafted by highly skilled artisans who were paid fair wages and offered pristine working conditions, and I can only surmise that they must have been sewing in the dark, in order to save on electricity and therefore make the costumes more accessible to those feeling festive but financially oppressed.
As I fondle a PVC cop getup, complete with toy handcuffs, I meditate on its bizarre, delightfully campy eroticism. The police officer minidress with deep frontal vee squeaks encouragingly between my thumb and index finger, reminding me of the costume parties of my late twenties, where scantily-clad heaving bodies would fling themselves and their cheap drinks around in the disquieting industrial areas of the city, their intoxicated conversations masked by smoke machines and strobe lights.
I was always the one dressed like Mike Myers (the one in the leisure suit or the one with the chef’s knife, take your pick), convulsing on the dance floor.
The Erotic Halloween Costume never appealed to me but today, out of the corner of my eye, I spot something blazingly, unabashedly yellow accompanied by these, most enticing, words: Sexy Banana. I’m staring at a yellow mini dress, the top of which is folded over to make the wearer appear as though they are a banana being peeled. One can, in fact, peel the human banana by pulling on a zipper that runs down the front of the garment. I notice there are other sexy fruits from which to choose, but the banana strikes me as being, forgive me, the best pick of the bunch.
It comes as no surprise that a generally repressive sexual culture, which simultaneously trivializes the hypersexualization of women, should generate a generous seasonal harvest of sexy fruit to be displayed, in a morally and socially acceptable manner, for a few hours at the local meat markets, varying the diet before wilting in the unforgiving light of the morning after.
Still, the absurdity of the banana is wherein its brilliance lies. The semantics of staid sexiness - say the sexiness of a catsuit or a French maid outfit - are too overt, too obvious, too loud, too predictable. This doesn’t, I don’t think, detract from the pleasure of pulling on fishnet tights and wrapping a collar around one’s neck, or handling a feather duster. Reveling within the noisy and formularized confines of well-trodden eroticism with the tarts and vicars is a dependable way to throw the ass over the teakettle.
Bottoms up. Cul sec, as one says in French, a better translation of which would be “dry ass.”
But(t) please. The banana. Isn’t it much tastier to defuse sexuality by dressing it down with humour? Disguised as this most phallic of fruit, the fruit of made-for-TV movie condom demonstrations, how can one feel anything other than delectable? In addition, humour allows any wearer whose attempts at seduction have been thwarted, to cloak the unsuccessful experiments in self-effacing irony. Everyone loves a banana, especially when it’s a little green.
I hesitate another minute or two, only because my tastebuds are trained to recognize and appreciate the acrid taste of preposterousness and the fine flavour of the idiotic. Finally, I return the yellow polyester dress, somewhat reluctantly, to where it came from, between the sexy nurse and the sexy watermelon.
I walk towards the other end of the store, sidestepping the disjointed screeching puppet, who’s now climbing up a styrofoam wall, and head for the theater makeup section. I look over the greasepaints and the liquid latex and the fake overbites and decide I’d rather slip into this stuff than on a discarded banana skin.
I’d like to take a moment to direct your attention to more important things - if you haven’t had a chance to read the excerpt from Jessica Murphy’s haunting novel, Wishbone, you can access part 1 here and part 2 here.
Fun! This Hannibal (e)Lectrice wants to read more... It seems that you could write a whole other piece (pardon the pun) on the sexy watermelon costume. (How does one pull that off exactly? By throwing the seeds, like billet-doux, every where to entice the other fruits?). Also, I thought this sentence was brilliant: "The costumes seem to be held together by our collective suspension of disbelief." 😝