I knew Halloween was doomed when the Sun rejected it. It’s like when the world rejected Pluto.
“But you simply CANNOT reject Pluto as a planet NOOOWWWWW!” we objected, those of us who
grew up with Pluto the Planet, Pluto the Dog, and just the general Pluto-ness
of the EN-tire Solar System. Ahem.
“Nope.” said NASA, or whatever governing body governs such
things as when a planet is a planet and is then demoted to “ dwarf-planet“
status. I mean I get it - as technology
marches on developing finer and finer measuring tools, and we inevitably end up “discovering”
more and more “stuff” out there, we have to re-define when a “thing” becomes a
“thing.” Or else we will have waaaaaaaayyyy TOO many “things.” And then what? Well then, we have a show called HOARDERS -
When I announced my costume idea to the Sun, he demanded to
know, “What happened to Pris 2.0 – 7.0?”
Well – not demanded.
More like I demanded “And what happened to Pris 2.0 – 7.0 you
ask?” He cocked his head at me, a look of annoyance, confusion and
fascination all rolled up into one.
I leaned in, closer, to his ear…”…they’re all rolled up into
me.”
To which he shrieked back in mock fear and then snickered at
my robust, if not overly-boisterous theory.
Thinking back, I’m really not sure where the idea for Pris - 8.0 came from.
Once the Sun quit Halloween, I realized that was my ticket to quit
Halloween. Except, you see, maybe I wasn’t
quite
ready to quit Halloween.
So late on Wednesday when I remembered there was a “Skin” Boat party on Halloween night, I
started to get excited about the possibility of an adult Halloween, meaning one
without kids. Until the child is 18, this is
what this means.
I’m thinking about clever costume ideas and I remember that
I still have this ‘do going on and how could I make the most of this ‘do. Well, considering that I am surrounded by
video, technology, futuristic images of all sorts, and PLUS we are in some dark
times right now, and PLUS the 30th anniversary of Bladerunner was
2012…it all came together in one flash of brilliance (as these things often do):
Pris - 8.0.
So - what happened to Pris 2.0 – 7.0? No
need. Pris - 8.0
is just that much better. Pris the Original was known as the “basic pleasure model” Pris - 8.0 is known simply
as "MILF" – ‘nuff said. In the future, we
use acronyms – it’s much faster. Does
anyone know what FML means? I do. It stands for “Fuck My Life.” We didn’t say such things when I was 11 years
old. Then again, the Sun is much better
adjusted and happy than I was at 11.
Pris - 8.0: Not a white
face anymore, because alabaster is OUT.
IN is brown, golden brown.
Picture
a scene out of the Matrix II where all of the beautiful brown people of Zion
are dancing the freedom dance! And how
would ppl know I was Pris? Well - the raccoon
eyes of course! I’d be a dead ringa!
But when I went out to the Party, nobody knew who I was. And –
a spell worse than that - nobody even
cared.
“Do you know who I’m supposed to be?” I finally asked a
friend, when I had received not one remark, nor one single query about my badass
costume.
“Um. Scary?” she replied. I wanted to walk out the club right
there. I KNEW when I had made the
commitment to stand in that dreaded line that I was coming eerily close to hipster-ville. I could feel the energy. It’s the energy of “…why do we SEE hipster on
you, but we don’t FEEL hipster?” It can
be very confusing…sort of like cognitive dissonance, when you have an expectation, a preconceived notion about how
someone is, how someone walks in this world, based on how they look – to you. To
clear this up for everyone: it’s the brown skin. I have witnessed time and time again brown
folks - who are NOT of the hipster variety - get a sort of automatic “pass”
into hipster-ville. Which they should, since
the word “hip” is, after all, derived from the Black experience. Whether or not they want the pass is a
personal issue.
So they are all getting this hipster vibe off me, but are
also not really feeling me, so I realize I’m just gonna have to feel myself
(a-GAIN), so the first band really does it for me. Enough so that when the first band goes off and
there is an intermission, I grab a vacated seat up top so that I have a bird’s
eye view of the stage.
The next act hits the stage and begins to “warm-up,” part of
the act is a tall, thin, black gender-bending man with an obvious wig, and a
white woman with an eye patch - both in black pointy boots, both in long black
trench-coats…stretching. Seriously: like
lunges and deep-knee bends. So at first,
I’m thinking, wow! There is going to be this really hot dance show accompanying
more of the kind of music that I had just heard! But when the music starts to play and they begin
their dance, which is nothing more than gyrating nearly nude (yes the
trench-coats come off), up on everyone and everyTHING…musical instruments, the
floor, each-other, I decide to call it.
Back home I think to myself: where is my space? Two
weeks ago, I stood in the center of a room full of black women of all shades
(except ‘half-breed’ shade) trying to dance the rhythm of our (black)
ancestors, and I could palpably feel my difference. And I couldn’t dance my dance because of
it. Tonight, I danced my dance, but my
dance got cut short by a group called the Itchy-O and their full-on grope-fest
during what I THOUGHT was supposed to be a music show!
So I ask myself again - where is my space? Where are my people? And then a still-small voice inside says “its
ALL HERE love, you just have to sort out the pieces.”
xo
ritz
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