Why I Don't Like Halloween
Hi! Sorry, no new newsletter this week… instead here’s a re-run from 2023. This week just kind of got away from me with podcasting and travel and other stuff. I will try and do two newsletters next week to compensate.
Also, on Nov. 10 I’ll be at the Franklin Park Reading Series in Brooklyn. On Nov. 17 I’ll be at Parentheses Books in Harrisonburg, Virginia. On Nov. 19 I’ll be doing an event hosted by Little District Books in Washington, D.C., at As You Are. On Nov. 20 I’ll be at George Mason University for the Trans Day of Literature with Andrew Joseph White and Dominique Dickey. And then I’ll be at the Miami Book Fair.
Why I Don’t Celebrate Halloween
I didn't always dislike Halloween. When I was a kid, I kind of liked it: I used to dress up as one of the Doctors from Doctor Who almost every year (see above) though hardly anybody ever recognized my costume. But I scored a lot of candy (which mostly wasn't stolen by my dad.)
When I started figuring out that I might not be the dude everyone thought I was, I had one really magical Halloween where I dressed up in borrowed clothes and a friend helped me with my makeup, and we went out on a busy street for a while. My heart pounded and I was convinced that something horrendous was about to happen, but we just had a lovely time mingling with the throng of costumed people. It was the first time I ever went out of doors as myself, and it really felt magical, as if this night had created a moment where anything was possible.
As time went by, though, my relationship with Halloween soured. Once I started transitioning, the same thing that made my first night out in girl clothes possible started to work against me. If I went out wearing an even remotely cute outfit during the handful of days before or after Halloween, people would assume I was a guy who was just dressing up in a costume, and they'd ask me what I was dressed as. I would always try to explain that I was dressed as myself, and they never seemed to understand.
Also, the annual Halloween Street Fair in San Francisco's Castro district turned ugly two years in a row, when people showed up with guns and started shooting random people. (They didn't hold a Halloween block party in the Castro for at least a decade, but I just read that it's coming back this year after a long hiatus.)
But the main reason I don't like Halloween is pretty simple: I got hit by a minivan.
About fifteen years ago, I was walking home from a Halloween party where I hadn't stayed long and had barely touched any alcohol. I was walking through a crosswalk when a minivan ran through the intersection and hit me, knocking me onto the street. I was stunned and in pain, but after a few moments I managed to stand up, which in retrospect probably wasn't a good idea. I found I could walk, albeit somewhat unsteadily, so I got out of the way and prepared to have a conversation with the driver — except that he drove away as soon as I was no longer blocking his vehicle.
I will always be grateful to the guys from the convenience store on that corner, who'd seen pretty much the whole thing and had gotten the guy's license plate number. I called 911, and waited a very long time for a cop to show up. When a police officer did arrive, he acted dismissive and repeatedly misgendered me. (And no, I wasn't wearing a costume. See above. I think I wore a mask at the party and then took it off on the street.) The cop kept calling me Sir and then correcting himself — and after the fourth time it happened I was pretty sure that he was fucking with me on purpose. He kept asking if he should call an ambulance, but I could actually see the hospital from where I was, and it was no more than a block and a half away. I didn't want to pay a fortune for an ambulance ride when I could just limp there. (Or the cop could have given me a ride, but he didn't offer.)
Like all right-thinking people, I don't trust cops. When I was in college, I volunteered with a couple of different organizations serving unhoused people, and we had a community forum where a police officer came and spoke to us. At some point during the discussion, someone asked her about a centuries-old vagrancy law that was still being used to arrest people simply for being in public spaces. She replied that the police seldom enforced that law, but that it still shouldn't be repealed. Sometimes, she said, there were people who the police just knew were trouble waiting to happen, but the cops didn't have a legit reason for arresting them and getting them off the streets, unless they could use that ancient vagrancy law.
This was the first time I'd ever heard a police officer admit that they apply the laws selectively, depending on whom they're dealing with. The police don't enforce the law, they wield the law, to achieve whatever results they think are worthwhile. I know this sounds naive, but it blew my mind to hear this spoken out loud.
So even though this was a pretty clear-cut case where someone had run a stop sign and fled the scene of an accident, I didn't hold my breath. Weeks later, I learned that even though the cops had not bothered to follow up with me, they had spoken to the driver of the minivan and based on what he told them, they'd decided that he had done nothing wrong.
I'm sure that one reason the cops didn't think this was worth pursuing was the fact that I had declined an ambulance, which I still think was the right call. And it's true that I was lucky and escaped serious injury. At the hospital, they did X-rays, and found no broken bones. I did have a ginormous and scary looking contusion all over my leg. (I thought about including a photo in this newsletter, but I don't want to squick people who might be eating as they read this.)
I guess I shouldn't blame Halloween for that horrible experience -- except that this is one of the deadliest nights of the year for pedestrians. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the risk of pedestrian fatalities is 43 percent higher on Halloween as compared to "control evenings." There are kids outside wearing masks (which reduce visibility), and people tend to keep trick-or-treating after the sun starts going down, when visibility is for shit. But also, people tend to drink too much and get behind the wheel, and it's a night where everyone is encouraged to cut loose.
There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the absolutely unreal rate of pedestrian deaths and injuries on America's streets. People always try to claim that the main cause is pedestrians looking at their cell phones instead of watching where they're going as they walk across the street — except that other wealthy countries also have cell phones, and still have much lower pedestrian death rates. Other causes suggest themselves, including federal policies that encourage people to buy bigger and bigger vehicles: light trucks, instead of sedans. And the terrible design of our streets and intersections.
But I feel like I had a personal experience of one of the main reasons why so many Americans get mowed down by reckless drivers: the cops don't see this as worth their time. Especially if the pedestrian is a noticeably trans person (hi!) and the driver is a straight white dude who is probably a pillar of the community. Here in San Francisco, the nonprofit Walk SF found "an astonishing 96.87% decline in traffic citations" between 2014 and 2022. (Full disclosure: I ran a fundraiser for Walk SF, and I support their mission of making San Francisco more pedestrian-friendly.) As that cop more or less told us at that community forum when I was in college, the cops use the laws to control troublesome individuals and protect property-owners, including car owners.
Americans have an utterly bizarre relationship with the automobile, seeing it as a signifier of independence and rugged individualism rather than one transportation modality among many. Cars are useful sometimes, but often trains and buses are more efficient and more pleasant. (Even if you might personally find it more pleasant to be behind the wheel of a car, it's less pleasant for the community if everyone drives.) During the pandemic, we had a taste of how lovely our cities could be, if we emphasized pedestrian spaces and kept cars to a minimum, and it's hard to go back to a world of death machines barreling down the streets and expecting us to get out of their way. (And my sense is that people have become much worse drivers since the pandemic, for whatever reason.) Car culture is bad for all of us, but it's especially bad for cities, leading to pollution, sprawl, and streets where nobody can hang out.
So yeah, I associate Halloween with America's deadly car culture, for reasons associated with statistics and my own personal experience. Sorry to be a buzzkill — I hope you have a lovely night, and if you do go out trick-or-treating, please be careful out there.