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Uninvited
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30 October 2011
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By the time I was in high school (mid-late 90s), no one my age did much to celebrate Halloween. It was a holiday for little kids. And even a few years later in college, I don't have much memory of anyone dressing up or going to parties or anything. Sure, I was at a ridiculously conservative Christian school, but it wasn't as if students were dismissing Halloween for religious reasons. I can't say why, but no one paid it any mind. My last Halloween there must have been in 2001.
Sometime between then and now, something changed. Now it's a holiday for adults just as much as it is for kids, and a chance for everyone to be creative, have fun, and more than ever, show off their devious and "naughty" side. As someone who's as wrapped up in fantasy as I am, this would be nothing but a positive development, right? So why does it bother me so much?
For the past few years I've been stuck working evenings at my job, usually covering weekends, so my commute home would always involve driving through the main street in town. This always takes me past about seven bars in a space of four blocks, sidewalks packed with young townies drunkenly stumbling about, groups of girls in miniskirts and heels passing by packs of rowdy dudes in baseball caps and tight-fitting Tapout t-shirts, all checking each other out and exchanging incoherent drunken banter. If these sort of encounters ever lead anywhere, then it's sometime long after the stoplight has turned green and I'm already driving away. Anyway, on the weekend preceding Halloween, this public space transforms itself into a giant costume party, a gauntlet of girls in sexy costumes... nurses, schoolgirls, "sexy" pirates, go-go dancers, etc. Meanwhile, guys battle to outdo each other with over-the-top "themed" costumes ("See that giant turd I'm wearing as a hat? I'm a s***-head! Get it?") or other outifts designed to make them the center of attention (last year, I saw not one but two people in life-size penis-costumes walking down the sidewalk on opposite sides of the street). And yeah, plenty of people dress up in traditional costumes too, but I can't get over the feeling that something's changed, that people enjoy this day (or this weekend, whatever) as a time to not just dress up and have fun but to push the limits of drinking, flirting, and partying in ways that only type-A hyper-extroverts can.
I have a coworker that I'm friends with ("work-friends," but friends nonetheless, I guess) who, a few weeks ago, asked me to help her pick out a Halloween costume online. In the end, she passed over the "sexy fairy" costume she'd been considering in favor of the "sexy pirate" instead, which I guess she's probably out wearing right now at some party she was invited to in another state. I shouldn't let my imagination get carried away, but whenever I think about parties like this... wow, they just sound amazing. It probably doesn't help that I've only been to one or two proper parties in my life... ever. But hey, the first one I went to was one of the most fun nights of my life (as for the second, I'll just say it has a lot to do with the fact that I've never gone to any parties since). All my friends growing up and in college were extremely conservative Christians who didn't drink or approve of spin-the-bottle, much less sex. Our idea of having fun was watered-down, muted, censored, parental-approved, a sad imitation of the real thing. I was content to simply have real friends (for the first time in my life!) but as I became aware of the world around me ("careful little eyes what you see," the children's song goes), I began to want something more out of life than youth group retreats and weekends playing board games. By the time we'd all grown up and grown apart, I began to understand the scope of what I'd missed out on in high school and college, and was finding that my chances to meet other people my age (mid 20s) that I had anything in common with were few and far between. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the times I had with friends back then, but I'm also bitter about how I let their morals shape me simply out of peer pressure and my intense desire to please others before tending to any of my own needs.
This brings me to this week, as I sat in class with a bunch of college freshmen, and overheard this exchange:
"What are you going as for Halloween?" he asked.
"A cat," she said. "I'm just going to wear a little black dress and a pair of cat ears I bought at Target. They were like a dollar."
Little black dresses? Cat ears? Is this heaven? Just to put things in perspective, when I was in college, most girls wore nothing but Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts and had no interest in dabbling in such playful, sexy pursuits. I'd go so far as to say that most had no concept of themselves as sexual beings, but I suppose the same was true of most guys on campus as well. Regardless, if this sort of thing was going on outside of the safe bubble of our no-smoking/drinking/dancing school, I sure didn't find out about it until years later. So now, not only adults are in on the fun, but teenagers out on their own for the first time are as well. (Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!) And as for myself... I look at this holiday and (more specifically) the world of pleasures it represents and don't see a place for myself within it. I see a world of extremely happy, extremely extroverted, extremely free young people, and it all feels like a giant party that I'm stuck on the outside looking in on.
To be honest, I'm not really all that sore about not having a Halloween party to go to. It's just that times like this always serve as a reminder that something is wrong with me, that there are joys of this world that I'm forbidden from being a part of, that time is rushing by and that, once again, I realized where the fun is at far too late. And I'm aware that these kind of messages running through my head are nothing more than variations of the same echoes I hear all the time: you're different, you don't belong, people don't like you, and it will always be this way. I try to focus on the positive things in my life: my girlfriend, the few friends I do have, the positive future I'm trying to build for myself. But the present always compares to the could-have-been that I imagine instead.
I really want a group of friends that I can "go out" with and have fun in the same way that everyone else seems to have. But another year passes, I grow older and yet another year further away from my days in high school, another year beyond my days in college and that brief time afterwards in which I felt that I was finally getting a taste of what life had to offer, and I'm still no closer to meeting those people, finding those interests, experiencing those triumphs or successes that I feel will make my life complete and fulfilling. I know I'm pining for false ideals that I've carefully constructed in my head for years and years, but I don't know what else to do. My friends are married and have kids. Meanwhile I'm still the same person I was five years ago, and in a lot of ways, the same person I was when I was a teenager. I'm 32 now. Instead of secretly wishing that I was out drinking and grinding with cute 18 year-olds in miniskirts and cat ears (c'mon, you think that's sexy too), shouldn't I be ready to grow up and move on? Instead, I'm pretty much dreading the future and living with the feeling that I missed out on what should have been the most fun years of my life.
I'd have liked my first entry here to be a little more positive, but I just wanted to vent tonight. Actually, I already have a blog "out there" that I've been writing entries in for almost two years, but posting something like this on it just doesn't feel right. For now, this seems like a safer place for me to let thoughts like this out. I guess we'll see what happens from here.
Sometime between then and now, something changed. Now it's a holiday for adults just as much as it is for kids, and a chance for everyone to be creative, have fun, and more than ever, show off their devious and "naughty" side. As someone who's as wrapped up in fantasy as I am, this would be nothing but a positive development, right? So why does it bother me so much?
For the past few years I've been stuck working evenings at my job, usually covering weekends, so my commute home would always involve driving through the main street in town. This always takes me past about seven bars in a space of four blocks, sidewalks packed with young townies drunkenly stumbling about, groups of girls in miniskirts and heels passing by packs of rowdy dudes in baseball caps and tight-fitting Tapout t-shirts, all checking each other out and exchanging incoherent drunken banter. If these sort of encounters ever lead anywhere, then it's sometime long after the stoplight has turned green and I'm already driving away. Anyway, on the weekend preceding Halloween, this public space transforms itself into a giant costume party, a gauntlet of girls in sexy costumes... nurses, schoolgirls, "sexy" pirates, go-go dancers, etc. Meanwhile, guys battle to outdo each other with over-the-top "themed" costumes ("See that giant turd I'm wearing as a hat? I'm a s***-head! Get it?") or other outifts designed to make them the center of attention (last year, I saw not one but two people in life-size penis-costumes walking down the sidewalk on opposite sides of the street). And yeah, plenty of people dress up in traditional costumes too, but I can't get over the feeling that something's changed, that people enjoy this day (or this weekend, whatever) as a time to not just dress up and have fun but to push the limits of drinking, flirting, and partying in ways that only type-A hyper-extroverts can.
I have a coworker that I'm friends with ("work-friends," but friends nonetheless, I guess) who, a few weeks ago, asked me to help her pick out a Halloween costume online. In the end, she passed over the "sexy fairy" costume she'd been considering in favor of the "sexy pirate" instead, which I guess she's probably out wearing right now at some party she was invited to in another state. I shouldn't let my imagination get carried away, but whenever I think about parties like this... wow, they just sound amazing. It probably doesn't help that I've only been to one or two proper parties in my life... ever. But hey, the first one I went to was one of the most fun nights of my life (as for the second, I'll just say it has a lot to do with the fact that I've never gone to any parties since). All my friends growing up and in college were extremely conservative Christians who didn't drink or approve of spin-the-bottle, much less sex. Our idea of having fun was watered-down, muted, censored, parental-approved, a sad imitation of the real thing. I was content to simply have real friends (for the first time in my life!) but as I became aware of the world around me ("careful little eyes what you see," the children's song goes), I began to want something more out of life than youth group retreats and weekends playing board games. By the time we'd all grown up and grown apart, I began to understand the scope of what I'd missed out on in high school and college, and was finding that my chances to meet other people my age (mid 20s) that I had anything in common with were few and far between. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the times I had with friends back then, but I'm also bitter about how I let their morals shape me simply out of peer pressure and my intense desire to please others before tending to any of my own needs.
This brings me to this week, as I sat in class with a bunch of college freshmen, and overheard this exchange:
"What are you going as for Halloween?" he asked.
"A cat," she said. "I'm just going to wear a little black dress and a pair of cat ears I bought at Target. They were like a dollar."
Little black dresses? Cat ears? Is this heaven? Just to put things in perspective, when I was in college, most girls wore nothing but Winnie the Pooh sweatshirts and had no interest in dabbling in such playful, sexy pursuits. I'd go so far as to say that most had no concept of themselves as sexual beings, but I suppose the same was true of most guys on campus as well. Regardless, if this sort of thing was going on outside of the safe bubble of our no-smoking/drinking/dancing school, I sure didn't find out about it until years later. So now, not only adults are in on the fun, but teenagers out on their own for the first time are as well. (Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!) And as for myself... I look at this holiday and (more specifically) the world of pleasures it represents and don't see a place for myself within it. I see a world of extremely happy, extremely extroverted, extremely free young people, and it all feels like a giant party that I'm stuck on the outside looking in on.
To be honest, I'm not really all that sore about not having a Halloween party to go to. It's just that times like this always serve as a reminder that something is wrong with me, that there are joys of this world that I'm forbidden from being a part of, that time is rushing by and that, once again, I realized where the fun is at far too late. And I'm aware that these kind of messages running through my head are nothing more than variations of the same echoes I hear all the time: you're different, you don't belong, people don't like you, and it will always be this way. I try to focus on the positive things in my life: my girlfriend, the few friends I do have, the positive future I'm trying to build for myself. But the present always compares to the could-have-been that I imagine instead.
I really want a group of friends that I can "go out" with and have fun in the same way that everyone else seems to have. But another year passes, I grow older and yet another year further away from my days in high school, another year beyond my days in college and that brief time afterwards in which I felt that I was finally getting a taste of what life had to offer, and I'm still no closer to meeting those people, finding those interests, experiencing those triumphs or successes that I feel will make my life complete and fulfilling. I know I'm pining for false ideals that I've carefully constructed in my head for years and years, but I don't know what else to do. My friends are married and have kids. Meanwhile I'm still the same person I was five years ago, and in a lot of ways, the same person I was when I was a teenager. I'm 32 now. Instead of secretly wishing that I was out drinking and grinding with cute 18 year-olds in miniskirts and cat ears (c'mon, you think that's sexy too), shouldn't I be ready to grow up and move on? Instead, I'm pretty much dreading the future and living with the feeling that I missed out on what should have been the most fun years of my life.
I'd have liked my first entry here to be a little more positive, but I just wanted to vent tonight. Actually, I already have a blog "out there" that I've been writing entries in for almost two years, but posting something like this on it just doesn't feel right. For now, this seems like a safer place for me to let thoughts like this out. I guess we'll see what happens from here.
