PERVERTS IN TRAINING, REWARDED WITH CANDY

Halloween in San Francisco is better than anywhere else. We're special that way.
It isn't necessarily the spike-heeled gay transvestite vampires that make it so, although admittedly they are a large part of what makes it great. It's the total ambience.


Many people dress up. By no means all of them are gay or children.


Example ONE: A very busty and leggy Little Miss Muffet, in a dress that was short and tight, and extremely revealing, with a large mock-spider pulling down the top to nearly expose a nipple. Her panties had the word 'tuffet' stenciled across in mirror script.

Example TWO: A gentleman wearing a striped box and two discs. I thought he was an old-fashioned film camera, but when he got closer I could tell that he was the money I could have saved by calling GEICO.

Example THREE: A dry flower arrangement consisting largely of straw, corn, and twigs tied to the head and shoulders. An exotic pattern tablecloth wrapped around the torso like a sarong. The result being between angry child of the corn, Aztec priest, and Polynesian orgiast. Drunkenly shedding all over the place.

Example FOUR: A large well-muscled black man having a smoke outside my office building on Friday, wearing a short frilly blue skirt, a femmy shirt that was far too small, and a very lovely blue bonnet. Lots of leg and smooth rippling skin.
When I asked him what he was, he replied in a very deep rich voice "I'm Little Bro Peep!".


Halloween is an exercise in data-overload for some people, like the Chinese kiddie-winkies being led around by their bemused parents to collect candy. Dressing up and getting loot for doing so is a bright new idea that takes some digesting. Their parents probably got a hand-out from the school explaining the holiday and it's traditions, and the kids were then pressured into dressing up by teachers convinced that it would help them adapt faster to American society.



WAAAAAAAAAAAH!

There was a darling little four or five year old Chinese moppet on my way home on Friday with cat whiskers drawn on her cheeks. She did not look happy - probably numb with tales of poisoned candy, razor apples, healthy snacks, ghouls, goblins, batman, baby-snatchers, wizards, witches, crones, and evil stepmothers.
When a very elderly white woman leaned over to ask "and what are YOU supposed to be?", the little girl looked up with frightened eyes and just started yowling, clearly at her wits end with it all.
It was extremely cute.

She wasn't the only Chinese person not fully vested in the holiday.

Seeing the sex-gargoyles from hell trouping past on Polk Street at twilight, some Chinese parents must have wondered if encouraging their kids to dress up might not be a very bad idea.


On the other hand, such ambiguity and disturbing undertones make halloween one of my favourite times of the year.
I'll be lurking with candy at the edge of your vision now.