A Halloween Carol: The Ghosts of Queer Past
Written by Dr Paul Taylor-Pitt, author of Still Here! Still Queer! Now What? available here.
It’s a commonly held belief that Halloween is Gay Christmas. For one night of the year we get to live out our fantasies, dress up and go out as someone else. Wigs, harnesses, glitter…what’s not to like? Sadly it doesn’t always go to plan. I once went to a Halloween Party as The Hulk, body fully painted green, wearing a ripped shirt and shorts. It turned out I had misread the invitation as it was actually a dinner party, and I was the only person dressed up. To add insult to injury, when I walked in someone pointed and said “Shrek!” It made the pumpkin carving contest surprisingly tense.
The sinister irony of Gay Christmas is that many of us have been dressing up as someone else for a long time, particularly by the time we’ve reached midlife. Our generation grew up in a time of Section 28, AIDS and an unequal age of consent. We had few, if any, positive role models to show us how to grow up and age in a way that celebrated our queerness. So here we are, in the so-called prime of our lives, living with the rights and freedoms that seemed impossible to imagine when we were young. Yet for many of our generation, something doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe we’ve been wearing the costume of conformity for decades and it’s starting to chafe. We’ve used a lot of energy fitting in. It’s tiring! Thankfully a good night’s sleep will help.
Enter Charles Dickens. In ‘A Christmas Carol’, Scrooge is visited over night by three ghosts who show him his past, present and possible future. It’s a great story that we can queer up by setting it at Halloween. So welcome to “A Halloween Carol” where your handsome middle-aged queer hero goes to bed on Halloween Eve only to be visited by three convenient-for-the-plot ghosts. Ready or not, here they come.
The Ghost of Queer Past: Still Here!
Our first visitor arrives carrying the tales of everything we have survived. He’s carrying a Walkman, listening to Madonna. He has terrible hair (why did nobody tell me at the time?) and carries a lot of scars. He lived through hostile headlines, societal judgement and being told we would grow up to be sad, lonely or dead. He gives me a stern stare for holding onto some of the stories that no longer serve me, or beating myself up for not fitting into a box that was never designed for me. He gives me permission to forgive myself for everything I wasn’t able to be, and reminds me that I survived. He comes with a message. Surviving is not the same as living. He also has a question:
“What did you learn to do to survive that you might no longer need to do?”
He vanishes in a puff of pink smoke and glitter, leaving a faint whiff of Patchouli behind. He loves a bit of the drama.
The Ghost of Queer Present: Still Queer!
Our second visitor arrives holding a massive mirror. This one has been hitting the gym – those those things are heavy! I can’t see him because my vision is filled with my own image staring back from the mirror. Not the image I want others to see, or the curated instagram persona, but the real me. The ghost invites me to look at myself. No judgement, just curiosity. He invites me to reflect on my life right now. How much of it am I living for my own pleasure and to what extent do I make that smaller for the sake of others? It’s a little uncomfortable.
Swole Ghoul wonders how much of my current patterns are still in place to protect the younger version of myself who learned that being queer came with consequences. He pops a muscly arm from behind the mirror and high fives me. He tells me that I’m just getting to the good bit and can embrace all the parts of me I used to have to hide. Thanks bro! He also has a question:
“Are you living the life you want, or the life you’ve learned?”
Not just a pretty face! Swole Ghoul vanishes in a cloud of protein powder, shouting something about using the code GHOUL10 for a discount on his supplements.
The Ghost of Queer Futures: Now What?
I begin to wonder if I’m ever going to get any sleep tonight. Right on cue, a holographic FUTUREGHOST beams into the room. His eyes become projectors – fancy – and a film starts playing. It’s my funeral, date unknown. There’s a good turnout, thankfully, and I watch as friends and loved ones stand to say a few words about me. There’s no sound, so I am left to imagine what they are saying. In between tears and laughter, they look to my coffin (under a disco ball, as requested) and wave me goodbye. I feel filled with love.
FUTUREGHOST turns off the screen. I notice at some point I started crying. Not an ugly cry, but a touching tear like Sinead O’Connor in the Nothing Compares 2 U video. FUTUREGHOST uses his built in Bluetooth speaker to remind me that while my end is not in immediate sight, it’s on the horizon and getting closer. He encourages me to remember that change is possible. Nothing is too late while we still have air in our lungs. We can change direction, find new people, explore different identities and make our dreams come true. We get to choose. He also, of course he does, has a question:
“What needs encouragement for you to be more yourself from now on?”
He blurps out in a flash of digital light, asking me to subscribe, like and follow if I want more messages from the future. I think that’s probably enough for one night.
I wake up on Halloween, feeling like I’ve had the weirdest dream. There’s a knock at the door and I hear “Trick Or Treat?” Shouted through the letterbox. It makes me wonder, is queer midlife a trick or a treat? Well, obviously it’s both. The trick is to discover that some of the things that kept us safe and helped us survive no longer serve us. We might acknowledge that we are entering the best part of our lives and can enjoy it. So many of our queer loved ones did not make it this far. The treat is to realise that we can change our relationship with ourselves, with our queerness, and with life.
That’s what Still Here! Still Queer! Now What? Is about. It celebrates us. Encourages us to live vibrantly and vividly. It also invites us to become more whole. We don’t need to be fixed, we might just need to be reminded that our queerness was never the problem other people made it out to be. We don’t have to be someone different, just more ourselves.
So, this Halloween please dress up, become a monster, frighten the neighbours. Or be exactly as you are in your beautiful queer skin, painted green or not. Happy Gay Christmas!
Dr Paul Taylor-Pitt is an organisation development specialist, LGBTQ+ activist, researcher and coach with 30 years’ experience helping people and systems transform. A speaker, mentor and podcast host, he holds a doctorate in Organization Development Professional Practice and is a Fellow of the RSA. He lives in London with his husband, Dan.