Disguising Myself

It’s only a few days until Hallow’s Eve; it has to be one of my favorite nights of the year. With the exception of maybe one year, for the past 20+ years I’ve been dressing up in some sort of eye-catching attire. This year will be no less; I’m thinking the circus meets a fashionista-a-la-Gaultier. Unfortunately, I’m feeling a little under the (hot LA) weather, but come Wednesday evening, I’m hoping to be 100%! 

Back in 1997 before moving away to NYC from SF, I had dinner with my best friend Roberto and his boyfriend Julio. I showed up wearing polyester hot shorts and my red, white, and blue 70’s motorcycle leather jacket. He looked at me and said, “I’m going to miss you bitch!” He was referring to our Friday nights of dressing up and living it up. Looking back, it took a lot of ‘huevos’ to show up to dinner dressed as I was. Ah, good times. Great times! 

A few months later I went to my first Susanne Bartsch Halloween party. Just a few weeks prior, with a line down the street, I showed up to one of her weekly events, and though I had never met him before, Kenny Kenny allowed me to walk right in. I felt like a movie star. 

The image pictured here is a photograph of Ms. Bartsch and myself at her ’97 Halloween party. Now that I think of it, I wonder about who took this photo and how it came into my hands. It’s interesting to see the photographer in the background along with the faces in the frame. I must have had a camera with me and asked a stranger to snap it. 

While walking past Ms. Bartsch, she turned around, looked at me and said, “Amazing!” It was the biggest compliment ever! My uber gay sailor was pure genius! Unfortunately aside from my ‘Pussyboy’ sailor hat, the bottom half was the best part (and not visible in any photos from that evening.) The outfit was a real sailor uniform that I restructured myself. I had the button flap pulled down revealing a stars and stripes g-string; it was sexy as hell. I love that I had the balls to walk around the city dressed so provocatively. 

And as for disguises, in one way or another, we all wear masks throughout the year. Some of these masks provide with protection, some of them allow us to fit in. While some of them hide us, some reveal who we are. But, interestingly enough, the real self is revealed through our words and our actions. 

And as for little words of wisdom, Oscar Wilde said it beautifully, ““What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”