A White Trash Halloween
Expect many an entry Halloween-related, as it is the best day of the year and all. It is also a White Trash-approved holiday. The only holiday that ranks higher in the trailer park is the 4th of July, but those are stories for another time.
So, some people have written to me asking for ideas for Halloween costumes, through the horror blog I write. Which reminded me of the White Trashiest of all White Trash costumes, courtesy of my cousin, Dwayne. Now, the WT don’t go for all this fancy costume-buying frippery. Nope, we made our costumes out of whatever was handy in the hamper or closet, and often, costumes were made from…stolen…items. You could count on a dozen flowered, striped, and checked ghosts popping up every year in sheets stolen from assorted neighborhood clotheslines.
And we crashed the middle-class world of Halloween: we’d pile into the back of a pickup truck and head over to the ‘nicer’ neighborhoods, sheets flapping in the wind. We’d also crash their rec center Halloween parties. One year, my cousin Dwayne decided he wanted to win the costume contest at that year’s party. “Well, you’ll never do it as a ghost,” I told him.
He sighed. “I know.” He shuffled off to have a beer and think about it.
He showed up at the door a half hour later, armed with jars of red paint and white paint. “Do you have any whipped cream? The kind in the can, not the tub?”
“In the fridge. Why?”
“My costume.” He smeared the red paint all over his face, except for his nose, which he painted white. Have you figured it out yet? He took the can of whipped cream when we left. Later that night, in a middle-class rec room, among sparkly store-bought costumes, Dwayne revealed his own.
When it was his turn to parade across the small stage in the costume contest, he shook the can of whipped cream. “I am…” He paused dramatically. “A zit!” He squirted his mouth full of whipped cream, and slapped his cheeks. The white cream shot out of his mouth with a
sploooot.
He smiled “I just popped myself.” He bowed and left the stage.
He didn’t win. We got kicked out. Sheets found their way back to various clotheslines, filled with eyeholes but still usable. I swear, before that day I’d never heard of that costume. But for years after that, you could always find a few people dressing up as A Zit. Even today. I like to think that the pioneer was a young boy named Dwayne, from a tiny trailer park in the middle of nowhere. I wonder what he’s dressing up like now in prison?
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