Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

October 28, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 0 Comments

Halloween is something of a national holiday in my neighborhood, to the extent that I consider my neighborhood to be a separate political entity.  The holiday celebrates the mix of queer and family values that made this place so comfortable.  Walking down the street, I would feel waves of unconditional love.

In other words, people who were different from me weren’t scary.  Instead, they were opportunities to discover new worlds.

Stephen King, in Danse Macabre, says that horror stories work because they reinforce our desire for normalcy, even while providing the excitement of the strange.

This year, more than any other I can remember, I’ll find it comforting when my neighbors dressing up as monsters and demons. The horrors of the current news cycle make me even more grateful to live in a place aspires to accept lots of different kinds of people.

Here are some things that are way more frightening than Frankenstein’s monster:

• Apparently, in some parts of the country, they’re fine with letting people with guns travel thousands of miles to take over public space.  No crime, no treason, no problems here, folks!  We didn’t want to see those birds anyway!  I mean, it’s not as if those people with guns were non-violent, swarthy folks trying to defend their own land.

•  Terrorists are tougher to wipe out than zombies.  No matter how many times one thinks they’ve been wiped out, more spring up.  It’s almost as if there are no military solutions to the problem of fundamentalist nutballs.

• My insurance options are getting smaller and smaller.  You’ve no doubt heard that the premiums  are going up for those of us who get our coverage through the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act.  This is nothing new.  My premiums have always gone up, no matter how I got my insurance.  If anything, they’ve gone up less since Obamacare became a thing.

No, my real problem is that the plans available to me include fewer and fewer choices of doctors and hospitals.  This isn’t something caused by the government.  This is the insurance companies squeezing every last cent out of the system.

As a self-employed person, I’m one of the small percentage of Americans affected by these changes.  For now, I can afford the increased premiums.  What frightens me is not having a choice if I need anything more than an office visit.

* You know what’s really scary?  Being a woman in the world of 2016.  It might be okay if you keep to yourself and live the life that others expect: look pretty, get married, have children, and defer to men.  If you’re someone like me, who isn’t a ten, or even a five, there is even more pressure to shut up.

Although shutting up isn’t really an option for me, I’m not a prominent person in a position of power.  Those women are threatened constantly, and it’s terrifying.  The threats often focus on rape, which shows us that those making the threats especially despise women.  I’m sure men in positions of power also get threats, but I’m willing to bet those threats have nothing to do with gender.

So this Monday, when the streets are filled with zombies, vampires, witches and ghouls, I’ll feel quite comfortable among my own kind.  Together, we can fend off the real horrors.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, sincerely hopes that she has not offended anyone with the word, “swarthy.”  She finds it so much more poetic and inclusive than “people of color.”