The Sexy Halloween

I'm going to go ahead and say it. Stephen King needs to stop writing. I used to be a fan and devoured his books quickly. I think he's already said every important thing that he had to say about life and death. He writes too damn much and takes too damn long to say what he's already said before a million times. I even bought his book "Danse Macabre" that purported to explain his own personal philosophy about horror. To save you the trouble I'll summarize. We all fear the horrible death and he exploits that fear. He also says that as a child he enjoyed horror movies but that he comforted himself by "looking for the zipper" on the monster. When the monster turned the corner and entered the room he silently assured himself that there was no real reason to be afraid because it was merely a guy in a rubber suit. Okay I get that and I've even done that myself. However, in today's world, special effects are superb and unconfortably convincing in their ability to show us what it would be like to actually suffer that horrible death that King talked about.
We really can't find that zipper anymore. So what do we do? I'll tell you in a minute.
I used to be a freak for horror movies and I sought them out and even bought magazines that canonized classic horror movies and even further introduced me to new filmmakers and their special effects teams. I too wanted to understand how it was done, because the horror...the deaths...were becoming more convincing. Too good and that disturbed me. Eventually I lost interest completely in the horror genre...books and movies....and I dropped them cold. Today I have no stomach for the new horror. It's too much about suffering...too much about pain...too much about torture ... too much about the grand and horrible death. Orchestrated by sadists and sick minds.
Some of you have heard my story about my close friend whose favorite holiday is Halloween. Mark used to host parties for Halloween like other people hosted Christmas parties. Everyone was expected to come in costume and party for at least two days. And he videotaped the entire thing so that he could watch it later. All the drinking, smoking and general debauchery documented for posterity. We had a ball and we laughed at ourselves as we watched the tape.
Who got lucky...who got sick...who made a fool of themselves...who looked scary and who looked sexy. But here's the point. Nobody was scared. We didn't think about fear or death. We made it fun and sexy. Mark owned Halloween. His party was a distraction from the real issues of the season.
Nowadays bars and taverns and nightclubs all do what Mark was doing long ago. They manufacture Halloween distractions encouraging patrons to come on out as naughty nurses, sexy witches, seductive vampires and monsters and any number of new and neutered franchised boogeymen. Although some people appear to cling to the traditional view of Halloween most of us retreat into the fun and sexy category. It's for our own protection. Sexy distracts us from the real and more depressing fact of death. It is our own coping mechanism that allows us to "see the zipper" when in fact there is none. Ultimately that is what it's all about now. As I get older the reality becomes more real. Memento Mori ... we all must die. It's like they say, in the final analysis, . nobody gets out of here alive. Not very comforting but its true. Happy Halloween.