Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [32]
What I’d never expected was for so many of these costumes to look like a road map to someone’s childhood abuse. Where I’d predicted benign eccentricity, I began instead to hear unanswered questions: Was that pierced guy in the harness with the spike-studded neck stretcher the victim of a violent father? That poker-faced, obese, freckled girl in the tutu who sat obediently chained to the feet of the biker in the leather chaps, her pale legs folded under her like bolster pillows—what frightening, long-buried scenario from her childhood was playing and replaying in her head as she knelt there? Was this a fantasy that came from a lifetime of social rejection? Or was acting sad part of the way she showed a sadistic biker beau that she cared about him and was having fun? What sequence of disturbing events had led a guy who usually got up in the morning and worked at the window of a bank to come to this stifling-hot room dressed like a ten-year-old girl in an Alice in Wonderland pinafore, knee-high white stockings, and Mary Janes? Did he have a disturbed mother, like the woman that raised Sybil, who’d forced him to dress like a little girl? These kinds of questions began to sand the funny edge right off of things for me.
In the name of thoroughness, I had promised myself that I’d stay long enough to see at least one of everything. But by midnight, I felt an urge to slow down a little. I decided to take a break in the quietest room I could find, which turned out to be a second-floor library, empty but for a row of folding chairs against one wall. What a blessing, I thought as I took a seat, to see that nothing at all was going on here. Now I could indulge my own favorite fetish: retreating to an empty room during a party, just before sneaking out the back door. Or that was my plan until I was joined by a woman with a parasol and ruffled bloomers, looking like she’d stepped out of Sunday in the Park with George. She followed behind a Ted Bundy doppelgänger who was leading her by a leash attached to a dog collar. The two of them set up shop on the unused chairs about ten feet from where I was sitting, then began to go through the paces of an S&M (unless it was B&D) playlet, for which I appeared to be the designated audience. At least that was a conclusion I couldn’t help but reach, since I was the only other person in the room.
This raised an etiquette dilemma that Emily Post had never touched on: When you’re the only one in the audience for a spanking demonstration that involves a bare-butted woman who is looking directly into your eyes, how long must you sit quietly, pretending to be enthralled, before you’re permitted to sneak out? I was reminded of the time an actress I knew insisted that I attend her one-woman show. I put off going for as long as I could. Then finally, during the last week of the run, I gave in out of politeness, intending to sit in the last row of the theater until things became unbearable. That was before I realized that no one else had bought a ticket that day. I was the only audience member, therefore I had no choice but to commit to enjoying the show till its very end. Yet, looking back, my friend and her tale of spiritual awakening was entertainment of the highest form compared to this Bo Peep–meets–Ted Bundy chair-based one-act psycho-drama. Many are the times I have thought, while watching a porno movie, that I was glad I didn’t know anything about the cast. This turned out to be a detailed refresher course in that feeling.
So there I sat, trying to maintain an amused but not too enthusiastic expression as I watched Ted Bundy teach Bo Peep an allegorical lesson. I tried to look reasonably appreciative to spare them the embarrassment