Henry

The Fourth of July got me to thinking about Halloween.  Will I have a party?  Who am I going to be?  For years I said I’d be Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

I’d wear a wig and an old fashioned nurse’s uniform with snaps down the front.  I would wear it open to reveal S&M wear, a bustier, fishnets, etc.  This was Nurse Ratched’s true essence.  She was a sadist.  I’d wear a name plate with ‘Nurse Ratched’ on it and to top it off, I’d wear a neck brace.  Because she deserved it, Jack Nicholson’s character strangles her near the end, so she had to wear one.  For a long time I didn’t want to say that I wanted to be her because I didn’t want people to copy me, but I don’t give a crap any more.  So what the heck — I’ll tell you my other idea.  Henry.

Some of you may know him.  He’s Henry from Henry:  A Portrait of a Serial Killer.  This was a fabulous underground cult movie based on the life of Henry Lee Lucas.  A lot of people were put off by it I suppose but I tell you, the movie was artfully done in a bare bones fashion.  There was clever humor infused throughout and a couple of really dark catch-phrases that I love.  The theme song is the shit.  I play it when I come home from work in a bad mood dreaming of mass murder:

It might be a wee bit of a stretch since I’m a black woman but I’d pull it off.  For a Henry costume, I need a man’s wig, a light, rust-colored jacket, some high water pants, and an exterminator can —  Henry poses as an exterminator to get into people’s houses.  He also has a distinctive walk which I love — the walk reminds me of one of the characters in Scooby-Doo — long, stiff strides.  The annual Halloween parade in Greenwich Village would be a great opportunity for me to demonstrate this walk.  I wonder if anybody would know who the hell I was.