Halloween: a totally gay tradition

The holiday season is upon us and by holiday I don’t mean Thanksgiving or Christmas. I am referring to the holiday, that highest of holy days for most gay men; from the moment we stumble across mom’s jewelry box right past middle age when makeup and monsters continue to give us a thrill.

Am I stereotyping? Well, yes. There are plenty of lesbians who love Halloween just as much, perhaps even more, and there are handbags full of gay men who are over it. “Halloween is nothing to me,” Rob, one of my more fabulous friends told me. “I used to do drag and dress up 3-5 times a week. To me Halloween is money to waste on costumes, crap and cover charges everywhere you go.”

He has a point but most Americans, gay and straight will disagree. Right now men, women and children across the land are excitedly preparing themselves for Oct. 31. They are reveling in this once-a-year opportunity to put silly clothes on, smother themselves in fake blood, attach a hatchet to their back and say Boo!

It occurred to me that a lot of creative juices must be flowing during these days and weeks before All Hallows’ Eve. In fact it is probably a time when our gayest genes get fully exercised (or exorcised). Our camp sensibility collides with shrewd insight. Crafty ingenuity meets up with fevered excess. Then, when society grants us all permission to be queer for a day, before you know it an over-the-top spectacle of glamour and gore has crept into the LGBT community’s annual calendar.

But, then it’s over. Poof! Gone. Just like that. All that remains is a hangover, a smear of glittery make-up on your pillow and a sprinkling of photos. Not so this year! This year I made it my mission to savor the moment and appreciate the artistry that goes into creating a Halloween event. Plus, I am from England where Halloween is nothing more than a blip on the holiday radar. I was curious to find out what motivates Halloween fanatics to go the whole hog with the pumpkins and the cobwebs, beginning the moment the clock ticks a minute past Labor Day.

I began with Kiefla, one of the most sought after make-up artists in San Diego. He is a teacher, he has a regular clientele and he has some mad special effects skills. I asked him if he knew anyone planning for Halloween this far out. “Are you kidding!” he screamed. “I am always busy this time of year but this is my busiest October ever. I’ve been slammed since the beginning of the month.”

As it happened Kiefla had a packed Saturday ahead of him so I asked if I could tag along. However, I was not waking up at 5 a.m. to watch him create one-hundred zombies (chasers not stumblers) for a 5k obstacle course in Temecula. So we decided to rendezvous at a lesbian couple’s house in Chula Vista, where he was scheduled to transform the hosts into Beetlejuice and Lydia.

But first, I had another appointment deep in the heart of Logan Heights.

“It’s become a tradition.” Kevin Stroman told me. Kevin and his husband Bryan Balderman have been together four years and this is their fourth Halloween party.

Bryan admits that he is the more Halloween addicted of the two. He specifically enjoys Disney’s take on Tim Burton’s animated favorite The Nightmare Before Christmas, an aesthetic that inspires the couple’s decoration theme. Scary, faux photos have replaced real photos in many picture frames; there are purple ribbons everywhere and wax drips over old musty books and a candelabrum. Overhead, clots of spider-webbing hang from an invisible mesh spanning the ceiling.

“We’ve been decorating since Labor Day.” Bryan tells me. Then Kevin flicks a switch instantly plunging the house’s dark interior into a jittery swarm of black, red and purple lights. “The lights are new,” Kevin says. Right on cue their black cat appears and starts rubbing my arm. “Was the cat purchased specially for a midnight sacrifice?” I ask. No one laughs. Apparently not.

“I’d better change,” Bryan says. I’m dressing as an old man.” He goes upstairs looking like an ordinary twenty-something in jeans and a T-shirt. Five minutes later he re-emerges wearing a ratty wife-beater and an old pair of sweats pulled up to his armpits. Bryan is a performer by profession and he has pulled off quite a transformation. Omar, the couple’s roommate has spookily appeared out of nowhere. I ask him what he’s going as. “A skeleton,” he says, looking at Bryan, adding: “I would never dress so that I look less attractive.” My sentiments exactly!

I know Kiefla is waiting but I want to ask Bryan why he enjoys Halloween so much. I hover in a bathroom doorway watching him apply wrinkles to his forehead, his head haloed by a swirl of bat decals stuck to the shower door. Is it me or is his old-man stoop becoming increasingly crooked. He is seriously focused on applying his make-up.

“I like dress-up,” he says, “And decorating. I like older things. As a kid I loved Halloween and I still do. I’d love to have a business decorating people’s houses at this time of year.” We chat briefly about why the holiday is so popular in the U.S. and agree that it probably has something to do with the culture’s commercialization of anything, especially those things it needs to suppress, like the demonic. “But,” he adds, “my enjoyment of Halloween is related to my Wiccan belief.” It’s an association I did not expect.

A guest bustles into the house clutching a bag and a wig just as I leave. “What’s your costume?” I ask him as we pass each other in the hall. “Just a drag queen,” he answers, chirpily. “Anyone in particular?” I probe. “Fitting into the dress is all that I’m going for.”

Predictably I get lost in Chula Vista. I turn left and then right and then left again and it is clear I have arrived at my destination. How do I know? Well, picture a neat row of suburban bungalows all of them painted beige and brown. Now picture the third one on the right smothered in orange lights and caked in witches. It’s the gayest building on the block!

The whole property is wrapped in tape that proclaims caution and danger. A huge coffin is propped up in the corner of the yard; beside it is a skeleton sat bolt upright, then several more witches, a miniature graveyard, an inflatable pumpkin and an inflatable black carriage with an inflatable horse. I look for a house number to double-check the address but there’s a huge black bat dangling above the front door. There’s no doubt this is the home of Mona and Kellie Hinkle.

“It’s our second party so I guess it’s become a tradition.” Kellie tells me. This tradition thing sounds familiar. The couple has been together seven years and five at this address. “I love it!” Mona adds, outing herself as the Halloween addict in the relationship. She tells me that it’s a straight neighborhood but they have influenced their neighbors who have recently begun to decorate too. “The kids come and stare at our house for hours,” she says with deserved pride. “We’ll have 500 kids trick-or-treating on Halloween!”

Kiefla arrives from his zombie event with his make-up paraphernalia. He looks like an impish Halloween trickster but it’s not a seasonal thing. He’s sporting a black bowler hat, a nose ring, a pierced lip and a lot of tattoos. “Are those new or painted on?” I ask, pointing at thinly drawn cobweb sideburns either side of his face. “They’re real,” he says. “I just got them.” Then he hustles off to the kitchen to start spray-painting Beetlejuice’s Lydia onto Kellie’s waiting face.

Mona gives me a quick tour. The backyard is chock full of Halloween-themed tables and chairs and monsters and mannequins and guillotines. “Where do you keep all this stuff the rest of the year?” I ask. “In the garage and two attics,” she tells me. “We have just as many decorations for Christmas.”

The second annual Hinkle Halloween party is going to be a big event and Mona comes across as a serious, well-calibrated planner. But she lights up like a kid when she surveys all the toys and decorations. “I’ve loved Halloween since I was young,” she tells me. “My mom made my costumes for school and I always won the contests. For me it’s all about making your own costumes; not just buying something.”

Kiefla summons her to the make-up chair. Mona is going as the titular Beetlejuice and it’s her turn to get sprayed. I ask Kiefla what his schedule is like and he lists a number of events stretching into November ending with Dia de los Muertos, Nov. 2. I survey his very idiosyncratic style and ask about his relationship to Halloween. He looks up from his focused concentration for the first time and says, “I love it. I consider myself Wiccan. It’s an important holiday in that tradition.” Then he turns back to Mona and sprays another mist of “death white” onto her face.

They still have a lot to do so I take off, hitting the freeway just as the clouds open with rain. It occurs to me that I’ve met five new people but in that small sample a few traits are clear. Both couples are eager to name their events a tradition, reminding me that all families need these bonding customs and that strong communities rely on them for cohesion. It also seemed to me that three of the five party planners were enthusiastically re-living fond childhood experiences which were actively connecting them to that youthfulness LGBT folks are often known for.

I know that straight folks in the States enjoy it just as much, but there was something refreshingly young in the way Kiefla, Bryan and Mona in particular were engaged in the fantasy.