By J. Lee Austin
Crazy Blast from a Wacky Past 👻
Halloween has always been a special day on the calendar for me, quite literally from day one. My mother, who was herself born on Halloween, conceived yours truly on the evening of October 31st, 1952. What are the odds of that … about as likely as teaching a camel to dance the tango on the head of a pin. Hey, if you’re gonna make an omelette you gotta scramble some metaphors.
If you had the dubious fortune of being born back in those halcyon days, you may have some fond memories of Halloween as it once was … unescorted kids running hog wild in moving traffic, bungling along in bulky, vision-limiting costumes on half-dark streets and wandering up to the houses of complete strangers, all while getting a gluttonous carbohydrate buzz on. It was like Disney for rednecks or something. For the record I love rednecks. By the way Jeff, a chainsaw is most definitely a musical instrument.
But then along came the psycho sickos slipping fiendish tricks inside our treats and warping things forever. Annual Candy Night still happens, albeit much safer now that parents stick to trusty neighbors, good friends and generous churches for their kids’ sugar-coated Bacchanalia.
Fast forward to the 1980’s, when anything goes and everything went. The high-water mark for me was probably my graduation from medical school in 1983. The remainder of the decade was spent grappling with that whole residency thing, when the system tries to educate you to death, so you can call yourself a specialist. I don’t see myself as a specialist, although some do call me special. Ok doc, sure whatever.
Medical school taught me stuff … stuff like … what I didn’t want to be when I grew up … a doctor for adults. Nothing against adults, mind you. I’m practically one myself. That left me with being a kid doctor (or so I thought), so I left Texas Tech for UT San Antonio, department of Pediatrics. The decision was helped along by the fact that I love kids and think they are far smarter than adults. Especially democrats. And republicans.
The Pedi Internship taught some valuable lessons as well. For one, working a full time job as a lowly intern and then being “on call” for sick kids every 3rd night turns you into a freaking zombie, a stumbling, fumbling, foggy brain lagoon creature, not unlike the beast in that trunk full of ethanol, ether and angel powder, Fear and Loathing style. Good thing interning only lasted a year. Any longer and I would be typing from a rubber room, ok that’s not even a thing, just stop it.
After making those important, crack o’ dawn, bleary-eyed rounds on your hospital patients, then holding pedi-clinic all day, then treating sick kids all night, you had to drive from the UT campus on the outskirts of town, to the Brady-Green Clinic downtown. I usually didn’t remember the drive, having fallen asleep twenty times en route. Funny thing, even after all those micro-naps, I never felt rested and certainly not mentally prepared for the next day’s infected barrage of fevers, rashes, diarrheas and snots. By now you have figured out that pediatricians are the most underpaid physicians in the world. Ever.
Half-way through internship purgatory, I decided to jump Pedi-ship for the relative sanity of Pathology, which usually only deals with pieces and parts of patients. Well, except for autopsies. While autopsies do involve an entire human, there are no parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles screaming at you about how you should be radiating their kid with X-rays because that’s how their other doctor always does it. And by the way, he always gave them antibiotics for their runny nose, so get with the program, Doc! After awhile all I could muster was a blank stare … the iconic, hammered intern face of defeat.
Battered and bruised, I left UT for the Baptist Hospital downtown, not far from the Alamo, where I spent a meaningful year of residency in Surgical Pathology, under the wings of some quirky geniuses named Delmer and Risdall. I learned a lot from those guys but wanted a bigger school with a more rounded experience. I got accepted into programs in both Houston and Galveston, ultimately choosing the one with better fishing, bikinis and sunsets. Shallow Hal, at your service.
To make a long story longer, I made friends with many good folks there on the island, some of whom were rabidly passionate about Halloween. Matter of fact, they had an actual team of Hallo-maniacs who would devote the entire month of October to preparing a house for the wildest shindig of the year. Committed party animals would travel from far away, other states even, to attend the monsterous bash.
As you may have guessed, I got caught up in the vortex and joined the team, helping create an event which would include highly evocative elaborations … bloody scenes of ghouls operating in surgical suites, Sparky the fully electrified, 110 volt electric chair, and a life-size (ironically enough) gallows erected for the ever popular drop-and-dangle executions made possible by a hidden harness. We were all bat-crap crazy, what can I say.
Our house was so haunted and the whole thing such a raucous cacophony that most of the neighbors would leave town for the night. They were smart like that. The cops would usually stop by at the witching hour to remind us of those neighbors who didn’t evacuate and were trying in vain to sleep. It was like a badge of honor thing for “the law” to honor us with their presence. Pigs wouldn’t understand.
The costumery was way off the chain, as outlandish as your imagination would allow. The competition was fierce, so I decided that cross-dressing might be a good way to cut through the noise and gain top-tier status. Future historians will probably agree I nailed it.
With that little epiphany, it was game-on for my inner girly-girl for the next four Halloweens. To be clear, I had no trans proclivities per se, barely even knew what the word meant. But after a couple years of my dressing crossways for the party, the macho man buddies started questioning the whole thing.
“Are there bats in your belfry or is there something you would like to tell us?”
“Well boys, if you can find any other costume that’s this much fun, I will happily wear it.”
They didn’t. And neither did I.
My initial foray into the feminine genre was the lovable cheerleader Joanie, who had an imposing white “J” on the chest of her busty sweater, sewn lovingly in place by my dear mother, who was happy to join in the hilarity. My grandmother was also complicit in the absurdity by loaning me a comically gigantic brassiere.
Lively pom-poms, short white skirt, a pair of red hose, tennis shoes with bells and a wig of curly red hair completed the ghastly picture. The red hosiery split wide-open early on, with all my jumping and cart-wheeling spasms. I may have unwittingly invented air-conditioned lingerie.
I learned a lot my first night in drag. The guys would grab the massive sock-filled bra, while the ladies preferred pinching the booty. Go figure. One inebriated fellow latched onto my “breast” with his teeth and wouldn’t let go. I had to forcefully pop him loose like a cork from a champagne bottle. Joanie was not for the timid or faint of heart.
Yeah, it was all fun and games until this big, drunk cowboy decided it was time to “love” the cheerleader, loudly shouting his amorous feelings, charging me like a mad bull and chasing me out of the Hotel Galvez Bar, and thence around the pool. Guess I must have struck a chord somewhere in that lunatic. So I had that goin’ for me.
The following year my Annie Oakley impression made the scene, sporting ivory handled six-shooters, pearl snap shirt, 10 gallon hat and 3 gallons of makeup. The crowd in the street went wild when she scrambled up onto the roof of the 3 story house, in her best Tony Llamas, belly-crawled and covertly shoved the hapless dummy, who had wisely elected to commit suicide by splattering his big, fat giant pumpkin head on the sidewalk. Lucky for us, this was way before anyone identified as a seasonal vegetable.
Almost broke my little cowgirl heart when the crowd then began to chant, “Jump, jump, jump!” right up at me. They were kidding … I’m sure of it. I was rustically adorable, c’mon man.
The following years saw my lady like alter-ego take the forms of tennis great Martina Navratilova and the wickedly outrageous Roller Derby Queen in her sequin-bejeweled Tutu and high speed skates. Rock on Queenie, you da bomb.
Here’s to a simpler time, when your only motive could be little more than a pure desire to make someone laugh, j
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” ~~ Robin Williams
