Where Skeletal Life is Known

Halloween brings a certain kind of comforting anonyminity.

Most don’t give you a second look when you’re wearing queer-coded clothes on Halloween. A few seem to know - giving you either a wide, toothy smile or a scowl. You wonder how the latter know what they know.

Crisp autumn air nips at the tip of your nose and you walk through downtown. 

The skeletons are mostly not out this year, and you and your partner speculate wildly about what might’ve driven them into hiding. Theives? Vandals? Priestly intentions gone wrong?

The buildings wear a veneer of acceptance that makes you feel comfortable. Vibrant murals scream ‘AUTUMN!’ at you and the trees are likewise fluorescent. 

A last-minute decision is made to participate in a Halloween bar crawl. You snag the last two tickets - it must be kismet - and prepare to lubricate by downing a Tums.

Trudging from pub to pour house, you gather treats along the way. Other women stop you to compliment you on your Elphaba costume. 

“LOVE. PERFECT. No notes.”

You feel your head spinning as you walk into a local dive bar. A psychobilly band rips through songs at breakneck speed, upright bass hammering the foundation of the place. A faded wooden bar, thick with the grime of cheap whiskey, is populated almost exclusively by large, bearded white men swigging PBR and Old Crow. This used to feel like home to you.

Most of the men glare at you as you walk in, either in bewilderment or rage. One in flannel spits on the ground as you walk by, prompting a nervous half-laugh utterance from your throat. Not wanting to be rude, you ignore the alarms in your head and walk to the back of the bar - “just to see”. You feel yourself shrink the farther you get back into the bar, and you feel more eyes on you and your partner. 

You both silently make the decision to leave the bar. The nervous knot in your stomach is replaced by a deep sense of rejection as you step out of the front door.

You decide to drive away this unpleasant humor with a switch to liquor. 

A pinball machine sits in the corner of the next bar and you’re glued to it. Watching the lights blaze and following the silver sphere as it races across the gaudy cartoon playfield is incredibly therapeutic to you. You promise yourself a return trip so you can play the Twilight Zone machine that is currently out of order.

The night is becoming increasingly blurry as time races away from you. You stumble home and are grateful for your large stature. A group of women walking in the same direction approaches you, and asks if they can walk home with you. 

You feel the rejection of the night’s earlier events; but even more viscerally, you become keenly aware that this group of women approached you for safety.