Another day, another bizarre intersection of quals reading and real life.
This afternoon I was sitting in a coffee shop in Pac Heights, doing reading about literary violence. The cafe was crowded; the only available table was tucked tightly against another next to it. Sharing intimate quarters with strangers while we pretend we’re not sitting on each other’s laps — this flips some animal switch in my brain, and makes me want to jump up on the table, hiss at my attackers, and run out on all fours. But I was waiting for someone, so, in an effort to concentrate, I found myself reading and re-reading the following quote from Bataille:
“I believe that there is nothing more important for us than that we recognize that we are bound and sworn to that which horrifies us most.”
The couple sitting next to me had seemed pretty standard Pac Heights: older thirty-somethings styled by the Gap, sharing a quiet moment over their mutual, rapt interest in their respective iPads. The woman seemed to know the waitress well; a cookie was brought over on the house, and they chatted. The woman joked with the waitress about her children’s Halloween costumes; what kids want to be bats? Then the waitress asked whether the woman had any Halloween plans herself. I personally suffer from obsessive Halloween glee, and hoping for some vicarious pleasure, my ears perked up. Here was her (surprising) answer:
Woman: No, I don’t have any plans. I… I don’t like Halloween.
Waitress: You don’t like Halloween? Why not?
Woman: Well, first of all I’m scared of it–
Husband: (Not looking up from his email) She’s got a lot of problems with Halloween.
Woman: I’m scared of it, and I don’t like getting dressed up–
Husband: Her house was broken into on Halloween when she was a kid.
Waitress: Oh my God, really?
Husband: Yup.
Woman: He, um, came in through a window. He was wearing a Halloween mask. I didn’t even like Halloween before then, but after that… It was really terrifying.
When this exchange started, I thought to myself, “What kind of horrible breezie hates Halloween?” Then I thought, “I strongly dislike you, business casual male spousal unit.” By the end of it, I was trying to imagine what life would be like if I too had 1) had my home broken into 2) when I was a child 3) by a guy WEARING A HALLOWEEN MASK 4) presumably, given that I was frightened by his mask, while I was in the house. And as much as I love Halloween, I had to exonerate that woman, because goddamn.
But, of course, when I looked back down at my book, there was Bataille telling us to acknowledge that we are inextricably linked to the things that most scare us. And maybe, in some version of reality, I should have turned to the woman and told her that her story, which she tried to laugh off, sounded genuinely traumatic, that I totally understood why she would be frightened of a holiday I adore, and that (this is the fun part) it is therefore all the more important the she “recognizes that she is bound and sworn to” Halloween. Go trick-or-treat, lady; embrace the flashbacks.
I kept my mouth shut, but I did think twice about my own “bounds” with the holiday. I can’t say Halloween horrifies me — but it is pleasantly Bataille-ian to love something that revolves around fear.
