Indulgences and Drag Queen Divinity

  
She went on a crusade when I was in the fourth of fifth grade to ban all the Halloween books from the library. They were my favorite books and included the How to Draw...Monsters book that I checked out and tucked in my drawer. They were as Satanic as Aerosmith, which she also banned me from listening to.

I was stuck with the Disney records and Alvin and the Chipmunks spinning round on the Playmobile record player. Those and anything Charlie Brown. They were wholesome and innocent and weren't tainted with sexuality of non-conformity. Monsters and Halloween were just too scary.

It confused me because all the years previous Halloween was a celebration. It was the time I could finally put on a costume and make-up. I think that's what did it: I enjoyed it.

The effort failed. The Halloween Party was a money maker (although a small one) for the church and that overruled Satan. It is kind of the same thing as indulgences: pay and the church will overlook or forgive anything (except homosexuality).

She moved on to R-rated movies, rock and roll, and anything sci-fi or horror related. So many things were Satanic: Buddhism, the bastards who made fun of me at school and sent me home in tears, not playing sports, cigarettes. Candy-coated, rose-colored innocence was the only thing I was allowed to experience. I was not that. And counter to all her protection, I still found 1-976 numbers, Playgirls, Hellraiser, much older men. No matter how many boundaries and borders were constructed, I found a way around and between them. Nothing worked.

Time passed. I came out. She turned progressive. Sin evolved. It was no longer the black and white of righteous childhood. It became the murky gray of Daedalian adulthood.

Now, she's working as an administrative assistant at an AIDS hospice in Minneapolis. Spirituality is more than Catholicism. Drag queens are divine. And her most recent concern was her costume for Sci Fi Bingo starring Miss Richfield 1981. (I suggested 1950s sci fi chic.)

Times and people change. I just hope we don't burn our new found wings.

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