It’s the Saturday before Halloween, and Charlie’s Ale House near DePaul is stuffed with humanity–wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. Cuddly critters, retro archetypes, ethnic stereotypes, cultural icons, sexual fantasies, seasonal monsters, celebrity cartoon characters, and anthropomorphic household objects have climbed tables and chairs to escape sweating onto each other’s greasepaint. It isn’t working.
Tom’s exhilarated. People have been buying him gin and tonics all night. “They love me,” he says, and they should: he’s spent uncountable hours sculpting this costume. His face, covered by a George Bush mask, juts out of the space where Teddy Roosevelt should be. No special fondness for the president is intended, but if it wins him the $200 first prize, Tom will take it.
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But Tom’s a man, a shy man, a man who, although he realizes sexism and inequality cause many problems for women, still envies them because, he claims, “they can just sit back and enjoy the attention.”
They just might, too. They’re the only contestants bold enough to climb onstage with the disc-jockey emcee, grab his mike, and promote themselves. When the DJ finally points out Tom–whom he calls “the rock of Gibraltar,” the hairstyling queen is shaking her booty directly in front of him, blocking the crowd’s view.
This is not the first time Tom’s won a contest with this costume. Two years ago he was Mount Rushmore at the South Loop’s Cotton Club. The ambience was reminiscent of a high-society costume party–the kind you’d see in a Marx Brothers movie. Women dressed as flamenco dancers, flappers, and eighteenth-century royalty while men found any excuse to wear a tuxedo, crown, or cape. The only contestant–besides Tom–willing to look less than gorgeous was a heavyset dude dripping blood and wielding a rubber knife. He approached Mount Rushmore, stabbed Washington between the eyes, then went down the row and methodically knifed each president–a gesture of conceptual genius that worked on many levels. It made no difference. Tom won first prize anyway–$300.
Tom’s approached by a gorgeous, six-foot-tall woman swathed in leather.
Tom’s other rivals are both statues. A white-skinned, white-robed woman with a humongous plastic bowl on her head representing a birdbath is accompanied by a gold bust of Thomas Jefferson sitting on a column. The bust is a guy wearing 18th-century garb and spray-painted gold. His body is the column. He looks good. Too good.
