For a city renowned for its stilted, unoriginal, power-suited clones, I never figured D.C. for much of a Halloween town. Prior to moving here, I imagined the parties on the Hill to be a congested, acrimonious tangle of Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats dressed in flowing white robes that looked, depending on how they were worn, like ministerial garb or a Klan outfit. The Republicans decked out in corduroy and peasant girl dresses with Birkenstocks and syringes taped to their arms.
Ask a Democrat what s/he's supposed to be and you elicit a chuckle that is followed closely by "I'm a Republican" at a volume intended to carry over to the other side of the room. Ask a Republican, and s/he tells you defiantly, "I'm a liberal. Isn't it obvious?"
I never expected anything even remotely creative to come from the D.C. crowd on this, the most pagan of holidays. When I got on the Metro this morning, headed to work, I could not have been more surprised. Half the people in my train car were dressed up.
The first celebrant I saw was a young guy seated by the double doors.
He had a short, twirled muss of black hair, gaunt cheeks, an angular jaw, and thick, rectangular shaped glasses that obscured a pair of round green eyes that were a touch too close together. He wore a flat, almost cement, gray jacket that stopped at his waist. If it were leather it would look very much like the kind of motorcycle jacket that comes in bright colors and is worn by Italians from Long Island who aspire to Ducati ownership. His pants were that dark over-dyed denim that greasers made popular and Dickies perfected. The turned-up cuff at the bottom of each heavy pant lag hung just above the tongue of a black Chuck Taylor.
I stood firmly planted in the center aisle of the train as it pulled away and I snuck glances at his costume. I thought to myself, I'm pretty sure I know what he is. He's the "Can you hear me now?" Verizon guy. Then I heard him talking to his chubby, sweatered friend about reflexology. That's when I realized he was actually going as a hipster doofus. Well, he nailed it.
His friend was the one discussing how hard it's been for her to balance her work schedule and the last few units she needed to finish up her reflexology degree. Can you even get a degree in reflexology? Isn't that usually something that comes with a Certificate of Completion? I'm not sure if she was in costume. What does a Wiccan apprentice even look like? Chances are she wasn't in the holiday spirit; she was just a college dropout with a thyroid condition.
Across the way, standing next to the other set of double doors was a short-haired statuesque black woman who was headed to work dressed as the love child of Seal and Naomi Campbell. She pulled out all the stops for her costume. She stood expressionless and ramrod straight. She had fucked-up scarification all over her face and she looked through her over-sized sunglasses with a piercing stare that said I will club you unconscious with a Sidekick if you tell me to smile.
A cursory scan of the rest of my train car revealed a number of people in poorly thought out, poorly executed costumes. There were the two guys sitting next to each other going as "gay Hill staffers", the woman behind them dressed up as "apathy", the woman across from her going as "angry black woman", the guy next to her dressed as "white guy scared of angry black women", and the drooling, unwashed homeless man passed out quietly in the corner dressed as "a Mexican."
The lot of them reminded me of 5th grade book reports: assembled in bleary-eyed haste on the heels of procrastination and disinterest. Hints of good ideas found throughout that, naturally, fall short due to lack of proper execution.
The train pulled into my stop and I made my way to the opening doors both heartened by the degree of participation by D.C.'s rush-hour commuters and disappointed by their lack of true creativity. I passed through the doors onto the platform and brushed past a pale-complected, frizzy-haired blonde girl wearing little red horns, a little red tail, and holding a trident with little red tips. I don't think she was wearing a costume, though. I think she just wanted everyone to know that she really likes anal.
Posted by nils at 8:15 PM