Halloween 2021 (last part)

So the big day came, and Johanna (he was a chick that day) said she wanted me in the makeup chair in Maya’s bathroom at 3:00. I had no idea how long it was going to take to transform me into a green-faced witch with a fake nose and chin, but that seemed awfully early. Turns out, it took Johanna over two hours to transform me. It wasn’t just giving me one coat of green paint and sticking on what I now know is called putty. Several coats of green makeup were necessary, and then, Johanna explained, you wouldn’t be able to see any of my features if all he did was paint me green. So there was need for all kinds of other shit on my face, including eye makeup and even – this I hadn’t bargained for, but Johanna was clearly on a roll – false eyelashes that (you guessed it) glittered some.

Y’all know that I don’t mind it when gay guys flirt with me, as long as they don’t touch me. So you may wonder why I was cool sitting there for two yours while Johanna painted me green. Maybe because Johann doesn’t come on to me, even if he calls me “handsome” when he’s being a she.

The boys kept coming in to check on me, but they wouldn’t tell me how I looked. Maya’s hair stylist was there too, to take care of, not only my wig, but also Maya’s and Matteo’s. There was a lot of traffic in Maya’s bathroom that afternoon.

Finally Johanna was done, and she turned me around in the chair for the first time so I could see the result.

Ok, so I was fuckin blown away. It was so weird looking into the mirror and not having your reflection look back at you. I wasn’t sure how anyone was going to recognize me under all the makeup, but Johanna assured me they would. Certainly everyone on TV would, since they were filming my transformation. Maya’s got a fuckin huge bathroom, but it was crowded and pretty hot with everyone in there. Johanna warned me not to sweat under the makeup…like I had any control over that.

“It’s so gonna suck having to put a mask over a masterpiece like that,” Johanna said. “And it’ll be a total waste of black lipstick.” Then he pulled out a disposable mask with a hole cut in it for my fake nose. “This should at least allow some of my work to be appreciated.” He looked at the result. It was kinda funny, but I looked a thousand times better without it. “Maya honey,” Johanna said, “He’s gonna have to take the mask off when they go trick or treating for the camera. Otherwise no one will be able to tell who he is.”

“You’re right,” Maya said, looking at me thoughtfully. “I think we can bend the mask rule for when you’re over at your friend’s, and if anyone complains online…let them. We’re not putting you through all of this so that you can hide behind a mask.” Then she added, with a big sigh, “I am so sick of COVID.”

Next step was the wig, which Maya’s stylist Fabio was in charge of getting on me…without messing up the makeup. (Johanna still had to do a touch-up around the hairline. This was the first time I even saw the wig, and it certainly was scraggly and scary looking.

“Try not to flatten out the hair when you put the hat on getting out of the car,” said Fabio in his super thick Italian accent. “Otherwise all my hard work getting your hair to stick out is going to go for nothing.”

“I’ll…um…try,” I said, not really sure how I was going to do it.

They (that’s Cassandra and Belen, who’d come upstairs to help) then had to get the dress on me without messing up the makeup or wig. (That’s when Maya got in the chair so Johanna could do her makeup.) Luckily – or maybe it was planned that way – the dress was designed that you stepped into it and pulled it up over you.

The one thing I was spared was having to wear high heels. Nobody felt that I could possibly learn to walk in them in time for Halloween, and, remember, I was going to have to be able to drive in them, too. I didn’t even bother asking where you got size 12 high heels, although I’m sure there are drag queens out there who have big feet lol. So I just wore a pair of black sneakers I already had. They looked kind of lame, but Maya assured me that the dress was long enough to hide them, since it was all the way down to the floor and then some. Cassandra and Maya gave me walking lessons earlier in the week, and, as it was, I was still scared of stepping on the front of the dress and either ripping it or going flying.

Let’s say that this experience taught me that women really go through a lot when it comes to makeup, hair and clothes. No wonder we’re always waiting on them.

Speaking of waiting on someone, I did have to stand around a few minutes while Fabio got Jacob’s wig on, and he looked amazing when it was done. With that and the glasses he really looked like Harry Potter – more like the Harry of the books than the actor who plays him in the movies, if you ask me. Jacob was ready before either of us, but he had the easiest job. He probably wasn’t going to win any costume prizes with his baseball player outfit, but he looked good, and we were ready to leave just around the time that the kids showed up at the door to get filmed getting candy from Maya and Robert in their costumes. (Robert was the one who got into getting dressed up the least. He ordered a dinosaur onesie off the internet and that was his whole costume. He did make a silly looking pair with Maya’s Mistress of the Dark outfit when the kids came to trick or treat. I’ve seen the footage; it came out real nice.)

It was actually super busy around the house, since there were two camera crews, each with its own director, cameraman and assistant. There was plenty of room for them in the house and at the front door, of course…but we had a problem when it came to the Maybach, since there wasn’t room for six of us and all the equipment. The only solution was for Ethan to follow in his car behind the Maybach.

We’re all used to driving with the camera in the car by this point, and I think me and the boys were pretty natural as I drove them to a street in San Marino that we knew was trick-or-treater friendly. The deal was only a shot of us getting out of the car and then walking down the street, which was tricky as we couldn’t catch any other trick-or-treaters in the frame. We managed that, though, and then the boys got to have their normal trick-or-treat experience. I got a lot of looks from the people who opened the doors, including a couple people asking where my bag for candy was lol. The boys had fun for about half an hour, and then we had to pile into the SUV for the trip to Keaton’s and the staged trick-or-treating.

I was in a dang good mood as we pulled up at Keaton’s: I couldn’t wait to see his reaction to my costume. They were all expecting us, of course, but we told them to stay inside until we knocked so there’d be an element of surprise when they opened the doors. (They didn’t know that the big element of surprise was going to be me and not the boys’ costumes, although they didn’t know what those were, either.)

I said we should start at Keaton’s apartment, then go to Travis, then Juan Diego and then to the Ramirez’ next to Juan Diego.

So Jacob rang the bell and Keaton came to the door, holding a big bowl of candy. He was in a tshirt and jeans and I could tell he’d cleaned up for the camera.

“Trick or treat,” said Jacob.

Keaton looked at the newest Dodger and smiled.

Then Matteo stepped forward. Keaton looked puzzled.

“I’m Harry Potter!,” Matteo said, a little disappointed. “Can’t you tell?”

“Of course I can,” Keaton said. (I was pleased he admitted he knew who Harry Potter was. I’m sure his parents read him the books when he was a kid.) “I just wasn’t expecting a wig like that. You look amazing.”

That visibly pleased Matteo.

Then I stepped forward.

“Trick or treat.”

Y’all will get to see Keaton’s unedited reaction on the show, so I don’t have to describe it exactly. At first he had no idea who the witch was with the boys.

In fact he asked the boys:

“Where’s bubba?”

The boys kept perfect poker faces until Keaton realized who the witch was.

He was actually speechless for a few seconds as he took in how I looked.

Then came the inevitable F-bomb….which of course they’re going to have to take out for TV. Since it gets bleeped, I’ll give you the full text of what Keaton really said:

“The fuck? That has to be the most fuckin gayass thing I’ve ever seen.” Then he burst out laughing.

Ethan was a little pissed, since he’s warned Keaton about language for the show before. Keaton’s usually good about it, especially in front of the boys, but, ok…these kind of were extraordinary circumstances.

Once he began to laugh, we all began to laugh (the boys too), so loud that Travis, who was waiting behind his door for us to knock, came out. Ethan signaled for the camera to move to Travis, who took the whole thing in…and I could tell he couldn’t figure out who the witch was either.

Finally, he said: “is that you, Hunter??”

We all got a laugh out of that, too.

Meanwhile, Keaton couldn’t get his eyes off me and my getup.

“What did they do to you, bubba?,” he finally asked.

“Whatever it is, it took two hours of sitting in the makeup chair in Maya’s bathroom.”

The cameras were on us so Keaton couldn’t say what I knew was on his mind. But, I mean, hey…it was Halloween. You can be a little gayass on a night when you’re supposed to dress up, right?

Keaton and Travis followed us as we went downstairs to knock on Juan Diego’s door.

He recognized me right away, but burst out laughing. Lucinda and Señora Ramirez came out to see what all the noise was about, and didn’t really get what was going on until Keaton explained it to them in Spanish. Then they started laughing too.

I’ve seen the footage the cameraman got of us all, and, believe me, it looks amazing. I know some people are gonna say the whole thing was staged, but it wasn’t. I mean, yeah, they knew we were coming with the cameras to trick or treat, but their reactions (especially Keaton’s) were all spontaneous.

We hung out a little longer, but I didn’t want it to get boring for the boys, since it was mostly adults and Halloween’s supposed to be a kids’ holiday. Before we got into the SUV, we stopped (without the cameras) at the other building in the complex (the one I used to live in), and the boys got to add to their candy haul. (I didn’t get a good look at the person who was living in my apartment now. I reckon it’s natural to be curious about that, though.)

Then we packed back into the SUV and headed home. The boys were a little too excited to get to bed (I also wasn’t sure how much of their candy they’d eaten lol), so they came and sat in Maya’s bathroom while Johanna took off my makeup. That didn’t take nearly as long as putting it on did.

It was a school night, or I’d have suggested that we watch a movie – Joyce wanted us to watch the old black and white Dracula with that dude she says I look like (no…he’s not the one playing Dracula lol), but there just wasn’t time. So Maya went with the boys to their rooms (they don’t usually need help brushing their teeth and putting on their pajamas, but they were still a little wired and needed someone to make sure they get into bed) while the crew and me (back in a tshirt and jeans and still a little green makeup left behind my ears and places like that) went outside for another segment they wanted me to film.

This was actually the first segment that was just me, and, yeah, kind of a dry run for the segment starring me that I’ve mentioned but haven’t given y’all the details about. I still had Ethan calling the shots, but now it was just me talking to the camera and that felt a little weird.

But it was a great idea for a segment, so I went along with it. They didn’t want the boys around for what some viewers would see as teaching them bad behavior…but they did want me to flash back to when I was 12 and tricking was a whole lot more interesting than treating on Halloween.

So the segment I was filming was an instructional video on how to TP a tree and the front of a house lol. We used the pool house rather than that main house, since TPing a house that big would have been impossible for one person, and, well, the technique is the same. I wasn’t totally sure how to talk to the camera, but Ethan told me just to be natural and concentrate on what I was saying. And of course I had the toilet paper to keep my hands busy.

I had the tree in front of the house – the one by the base path we built for sliding – and the front of the house (as opposed to the back which opens onto the pool) elaborately covered in TP before Ethan told me to stop. I didn’t realize that I’d been at it for fifteen minutes, but it’s a hard job if you’re doing it all by yourself.

When I was done I asked Ethan:

“How’d I do?”

“Terrific,” he said. “This is almost as good as your friend’s reaction to seeing you as a witch. There are some parents who’ll probably say that we’re trying to teach their kids to be delinquents, but how many kids watch the show? Not counting your teenage girl fan base, of course. And stunts like this are usually boys’ work.”

He was right. I’ve never heard of girls TPing a house lol.

“You’ve only got one problem,” Ethan then said.

“What?”

“Look at your house, dude.”

I did. Let’s just say that I did a much more thorough job than I thought I was doing.

“Oh shit,” I said.

“Hey, it made for great TV. Maybe the gardeners can help you clean it all up.”

“Yeah, but they don’t come until Tuesday,” I said. “It’s ok, I’ll take care of it tomorrow. Do you want film of that?”

“Naaah,” Ethan said. “It’d be anticlimactic. Knock yourself out tomorrow.”

“I reckon I will,” I said, before going around to the back and letting myself into the house through the sliding glass doors everyone uses to go into the pool house anyway. I was pretty exhausted from all the adventures and makeup and shooting and I couldn’t decide between a beer and some ice cream. Much as I love them both, they definitely don’t go together lol. I finally opted for the ice cream, as I was pretty hungry, since, although I did have a little candy, I really hadn’t eaten since before they put the costume on me, since Johann told me that I shouldn’t eat with all the makeup on.

So I had a big bowl of strawberry ice cream with sweetened condensed milk and (what the heck) a shot of whipped cream. Then I headed to shower off the rest of the makeup (there was still enough to turn the water in the shower green) and got myself into bed.

It had been quite a Halloween, and a dang fun one.

But you want to know my favorite thing about Halloween?

It comes 9 days before my birthday!