I lived in San Francisco with my boyfriend, who had gotten a job at a big corporate law firm. We had uprooted our entire lives in Philadelphia, drove across the country … I had never even been to California. I’m an East Coaster. I’m a Rhode Islander, for God’s sake. I missed my family. I was 22 years old, or something like that.
The boyfriend had been working in the public defender’s office in Philadelphia, and while it was grueling, upsetting, and not-well-paid work, it was what he really wanted to be doing, what turned him on about law. But then came the massive school loans – and so he took the corporate job – and felt like he made some Faustian deal … he worked 85 hour weeks, I had no job at the time … he and I were also breaking up as quickly and as messily as we POSSIBLY could …
All in all, the sojourn in San Francisco was a disaster.
In the middle of all of this came Halloween. Halloween in San Francisco is basically treated like a national holiday. I’ve never seen Halloween celebrated so ferociously, with such commitment. It’s like the Gay Pride here in New York. EVERYONE is in costume, costumes which have been lovingly prepared for months in advance.
My boyfriend and I were invited to a Halloween party, hosted by one of the other lawyers. I would have rather just wandered the streets, staring at the spectacle, but whatever. I joined the boyfriend at the party.
Boyfriend went as Atlas. His costume consisted of tank top, sweat pants, and he carried a balloon globe on his shoulders.
I was in a bit of a, shall we say, dark mood. So I went as Squeaky Fromme (aka Lynette Fromme), one of Charles Manson’s freak followers, who also attempted to assassinate President Ford, and is in prison to this day.
A sick costume? Yes. (Perhaps not as sick as the year I went as Sharon Tate.) I like sick costumes. I like to dress up as someone who actually existed. A person from history. Someone messed up, complicated, someone I can embody. So that’s what I did.
I didn’t shave my head, but I wore a beret – like she did in the earlier days – and drew an X on my forehead – and wore a long flowing black cape. She and her good buddy Sandra Good (what a wack-job SHE was) would hang around outside the courthouse, the two of them wearing capes, like messengers of death with sweet little-girl faces. Squeaky Fromme is obviously insane, but Sandra Good always struck me as the more dangerous one.
But the REALLY sick part of the costume was the sign I made.
I got a huge piece of cardboard, and enlarged that wild-eyed picture of Charles Manson – the famous one. I’m sure you know it. So I made it HUGE. And then wrote under it, in red marker: “CHARLIE’S CHRIST.” (That was Squeaky’s whole thing.) And then on the other side I wrote in huge jagged letters: “PRESIDENT FORD – WATCH YOUR BACK.”
I’d probably be arrested for such a costume today.
The responses he and I got as we walked through the streets – I wish I had a photo of it. He staggered beside me, back bent, head down, with the globe on his shoulders. Every time I looked over at him, tears of laughter would stream down my face. But then there I was, stalking along beside him, carrying this insane and violent sign – with a big black X on my forehead … I remember people pointing and laughing at Atlas, calling out to him from across the street, “Hang in there, man!” or “Thanks for holding the world up for us!” But I got responses of much wider variety. Some people stopped and stared. One guy (who happened to be dressed as Spock, which just added to the humor of it all) came running over to me, and pretended to bow to me. But it was SPOCK. And then there were people who were downright pissed off. Or scared of me.
We got to the lawyer Halloween party which was a big ol’ yawn. Most of the women-lawyers just had on Playboy bunny ears, or were dressed vaguely as flappers, or something – You know, the kind of costume designed to point up your beauty, to show off your stuff.
But there was I. Little Miss Scary Freak Squeaky Fromme. Drinking wine like a lunatic, and watching all the hot young lawyer-esses hit on my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. I said to him later, “That one chick who told you she wanted to lend you a book she liked … she’s gonna be the first one to make a move on you when I’m out of the picture.” He scoffed at this. “I am SO not interested in her. Stop it. No, she won’t.” But heh heh heh, I was right. Do not underestimate women’s intuition about other women. I’m rarely wrong.
And she was the one, too, who kind of got pissed off at my costume.
“That’s not funny,” she scolded me. I already could smell the competition coming off of her … she wanted my boyfriend … she didn’t like me already …
“I never thought this was funny,” I said. “This isn’t a joke to me.”
“You know that that whole Manson family actually started here in San Francisco.” she informed me snottily.
“Yes. A freak show like that WOULD be started here in San Fran, wouldn’t it.” (She was originally FROM San Francisco, so she didn’t like that at all.) Meanwhile, in my mind, all I’m thinking is: It’s not the costume you don’t like. It’s ME. You want to get your paws on my man. Well, okay, babe – I’m gonna be in LA soon, and you’ll have your chance…
She kept staring at my sign, as though it were hypnotic. “That’s just … SO not funny.” she kept saying.
The party was, to put it mildly, very lame. My boyfriend and I both agreed. So we left. And wandered the streets. We had a blast, doing only that.
A couple of days later – Boyfriend was trying to get his fireplace to work, in his new apartment. But the flue wouldn’t stay open, or something … not sure what was the problem – but we ended up taking my CHARLIE’S CHRIST poster off the stick, and putting it up in the chimney. I can’t remember WHY we did this, or even if it was a working fireplace … Maybe he wanted to air it all out, I don’t know – but the CHARLIE’S CHRIST poster fit perfectly up there, and held the flue open, and all was well.
We promptly forgot all about it.
I moved to Los Angeles. He stayed in San Fran. I moved to Chicago. He stayed on in San Fran. He lived in that apartment for another year, and finally met another woman (whom he is now married to) – and he moved in with her.
I never thought about the CHARLIE’S CHRIST poster. I was busy making a tear through Chicago, I couldn’t even really remember that dark autumn when I was racing up and down the coast of California, trying to find my own life. But then one day – I remembered it. Wait a sec … what ever happened to that poster? We put it up the chimney for whatever reason … did we ever take it out again?
Or … my God … did we leave it there … only to be found by the next tenants? Who would have had NO IDEA that this was part of a Halloween costume … they might think it was … real … a relic of some kind …
I pictured the scene. A nice young couple, moving their stuff in … They’ve got their IKEA furniture, they’ve got pasta in glass jars, they have a cat, they have a nice stereo system … You can see them, can’t you? And he decides to open up the flue, but something’s up there … he’s not sure what it is … He reaches up, and slowly draws out my insane poster … with the massive Charles Manson photo … the feverish warning to Gerald Ford …
If you found something like that in your chimney, wouldn’t you be completely freaked out???
Many years later, I asked my ex-boyfriend: “Do you remember if you ever took that Charles Manson thing out of the chimney?”
Funny how memory works. He didn’t know what I was talking about at all.
“Charles Manson? Chimney? What? I was Atlas for Halloween? What?”
No memory.
This tells me that that poster was left behind in that apartment when he moved out. Who knows … maybe it’s there still!
I once saw a t-shirt that said “CHARLIE’S ANGELS”, with the logo from the TV show, and pictures of Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle and I forget who else imposed over each one of the silhouette of the angels posed with their guns. Very tacky. Very poor taste.
I regret not buying it to this day.
Leslie Van Houten was probably the third one, right??
I just have a sick fascination with those girls. I really do. Leslie most of all.
Oh, and poor taste is the best kind of taste, sometimes.
“The boyfriend had been working in the public defender’s office in Philadelphia, and while it was grueling, upsetting, and not-well-paid work, it was what he really wanted to be doing, what turned him on about law.”
God, I know I could never work in a PD’s office. I have too much of a prosecutorial mindset, and I know for a fact that most of their clients ARE guilty. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect the people who do it: it’s a tough job, and someone has to do it. Generally speaking the Deputy PD’s I practiced opposite in LA were usually better at it then when I faced private counsel. That doesn’t necessarily mean the PD’s were better lawyers overall, just that they were specialists while most attorneys in private criminal defense practice aren’t: it’s a field that’s still predominantly smaller firms or solo practitioners that usually do other things as well.
“But then came the massive school loans…”
Oy, tell me about it. It’s not nice to be waiting for my grandparents to die, but…the lot their house is on would go for way more than they believe.
“and so he took the corporate job – and felt like he made some Faustian deal … he worked 85 hour weeks”
I could never do corporate. Private practice, yes, absolutely, but litigation, not transactional work, which I’m certain would quickly drive me to suicide. Especially hours like that.
“I’ve never seen Halloween celebrated so ferociously, with such commitment.”
Heh, you really DO need to go to New Orleans. ;-)
Dave – He did corporate for a while, and finally got out – and now has found his niche. He’s no longer a public defender (he said something to me like, “I really want to start focusing on putting these people AWAY now”) – but he’s doing law he believes in. No more Faustian deals.
He would describe to me the corporate atmosphere – and the whole billable hours thing – the whole thing sounded so Byzantine, and hard to grasp …
The worst part of it, though, of course – was spending so much time of his life doing a type of law that he found to be despicable and soulless.
It was Leslie, now that I think about it.
My office is right across the street from the State Capitol, and every day I walk right by the spot where Squeaky shot at President Ford. I knew I was starting to get old when I pointed out the spot to our summer intern a couple of weeks ago and she said “who?” I think she meant Squeaky, but who knows.
We were wondering about that sign.
Please disregard any future phone messages.
hahahaha Very good one. :)
Great costume…great story. There will be a certain circle of hell where all the people with the sickest halloween costumes will be sent…it will be filled with people with the best senses of humor. Haven’t done the halloween thing for a bit but my favorites were:
Rob Hall. Rob was one of the climbers that died in the Everest tragedy of ’96. I walked around the party saying “Is it cold or is it just me?”
Norman Bates…I wore the outfit from the movie act a little quirky. I would then go into the bathroom and arhue with “Mother”. The biggest laugh came when somebody spilled some wine I creamed “Oh god…blood…Mother! Blood!”
You were Rob Hall for Halloween???? That is absolutely brilliant.
I’ll see you in hell. I look forward to it.
wow…pardon the horrid spelling and grammar. Thats what happenes when the blood sugar runs low.
or when you make a comment from the top of Mount Everest in the middle of a blizzard…
Wasn’t Rob Hall the New Zealander? Who ended up having a good-bye conversation with his wife, somehow, while he was stuck up on the mountain? Like – he knew he wouldn’t get down and they somehow patched her in from NZ?
If I can manage it, I’m going this year as Bill ‘The Butcher’ Cutting. I’ve been practicing the accent, you see….
My brother,sisters and I decided to sell the family home after father passed away. The biggest job was cleaning out forty years of accumulated junk and other useless stuff that he somehow managed to squirrel away. One of the things I found was an old ventriloquist’s dummy that looked just like W.C. Fields. I had given it to my brother as a gag gift many years before and somehow it wound up the attic with the National Geographics. We had always called the dummy “Uncle Frank” (another story).
We decided that since Uncle Frank had spent his entire life in the big old rambling home, it sumply wouldn’t do to unroot him in his advanced years. So….we stuck him under a loose board in the attic, with a name tag. As far as I know, Uncle Frank slumbers there still.
Now all that needs to happen is Uncle Frank has to come alive at night and start playing with shiny knives or something, and you’ve got yourself a best-seller. :)
One and the same…In watching the bad TV movie of “Into Thin Air” I had a bout with male menopause and cried like a baby. Harder than when I watched “My Dog Skip”. But this stays between us…right.
heh heh. I’ll never tell.
Hey, I wept a couple tears during that section in the book. So I understand.
Scott — To make your costume really authentic, you should also wear a t-shirt that says “I love Orlando Bloom.”
Bill’s going to get me for that.
The Manson girls offer a rich cornucopia of frightening halloween costume potential. They were especially good examples of how serious drugs make you look old and scary and ugly way before your time.
Oh, at first glance I read that all-caps “CHARLIE’S CHRIST” as “CHARLIE CRIST,” who is Florida’s Attorney General.
Sheila…….HIlarious! What a damn hoot and a half.
The first Holloween costume I ever had, my Mom made me. I went as a tossed salad.
2 years ago, Chrisanne and I went as Jason (From Friday the 13th) and his Mother. Chrisanne was Jason, I was his Mother. Now for all the true horror film buffs out there, you know that Jason was NOT the original killer……it was his Mother. So Chrisanne (all 4 feet of her) was dressed in a black shirt, black pants and a hockey mask, and I was dressed as a suburban housewife, while carrying a huge butcher knife dripping with blood. Oh yeah, and I had Chrisanne on a leash all night long. She never said one word to anyone, and people were not amused.
Screw ’em. We laughed our asses off.
Alex – Uhm: PHOTOGRAPHS??
That’s a great story, red. Actually, it’s the sort of thing that you might be able to make good use of in a novel…
CW – yeah, it always amazed me when I heard these girls actual ages. They were teenagers, but they looked TIRED and USED UP. Very creepy.