11. Two nights as Guy Fieri
Halloweekend in Flavortown
I’ve never been a big Halloween person. Usually I dig up a low-effort costume and reuse that for several years until I can’t find some essential element of the getup and I have to think of something new. I was Piper Chapman from Orange is the New Black all through college (orange scrubs + printed name tag + Dr. Martens) and Ruth Bader Ginsberg after graduating (commencement robe + white lace collar + wooden gavel from Michael’s). But 2021 was my first Halloween with short hair, and neither Piper nor RBG quite fit the vibe.
My costume idea began in jest. When I’d surface from a swimming pool over the summer, or emerge from the shower any regular day, my bleached hair would stick straight up in wet spiked points. I’d joke, “It’s my Guy Fieri hair!” And then all of a sudden it was less of a joke and I was ordering a flame shirt online, buying sunglasses at Sunoco, grabbing “hair glue” at CVS, and drawing a goatee on my face with a brown Crayola marker.
I took a selfie in my new persona, and it was unsettling find myself barely recognizable. Other people didn’t recognize me either. My mom forwarded a photo to a family friend, who responded “Great photos...who is the dude?” and then proceeded to invite my sister and her “mysterious boyfriend” for Thanksgiving dinner, following shortly with: “Omg…I just realized Kate IS Guy Fieri…very convincing beard when looking on iPhone 8!!!”
I’m not a Guy Fieri superfan. The last time I watched Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, I was having a pretty miserable day, so my boyfriend tried to cheer me up by turning on an episode of molten cheese and sizzling meat, which didn’t really work for me as someone who was then a vegetarian and actively in treatment for an eating disorder—but hey, he was trying to help.
And sometimes Guy Fieri does help. He’s a sort of a populist hero who has spent a lot of time and money trying to resuscitate restaurants hit by the pandemic. He gives publicity and screen time to small businesses. He just announced he’s going to officiate Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer’s wedding; in 2015 he officiated at 101 gay weddings in Florida. One vote for the mayor of Flavortown.
But, much more powerful for me on an individual level, is the way Guy Fieri allowed me to step out of myself more completely than I have in a while. It seems like everyone in the Twitterverse is dissociating these days. Sometimes I am too, but if I can’t be present in my body, I sure as hell felt present as Guy Fieri. I became instantly recognizable, yet no one knew who I was.
I spend most of my days working at the front desk of a physical therapy/chiropractic office. I know each patient’s name because I have a printed list of the day’s agenda, but few people know mine. It’s a demoralizing, monotonous anonymity. It makes me feel like I should apologize for existing.
The anonymity granted by my flame shirt was, in contrast, electric. It gave me a kind of permission to do things I normally have trouble giving myself permission to do, like staying out until 1am or taking a jello shot from a syringe—small potatoes, I know, but the experience of becoming Guy Fieri made me feel like I was living a little bit larger than I normally do. Outside the boundaries of myself. Guy took me on a “road rockin’ trip down to Flavortown, where the gravitational force of bacon warps the laws of space and time.”
Psychologists call this phenomenon deindividuation, where people’s behavior changes when they can’t be personally identified, such as in a crowd or in disguise or on the internet. When I hear this, I often think of malicious intent, cyberbullying, even violence, but it could also be an opportunity for experimentation, individuation with lower stakes.
The costume was a hit. I didn’t have to explain who I was—people got it. And it felt like they got me. Suddenly I was a person who had a funny costume! A person who is good at parties. Is quirky yet bubbly with interesting things to say. All these characteristics I wish didn’t matter to me, but do anyway, and which I can try on like a flame-printed button up bowling shirt and then print out a return label a few days later when I realize it isn’t something I want to keep.
The next morning, Halloween proper, I woke up just early enough to hear my front door close, my friend who stayed the night heading back home to Portland. I drank a full water bottle and took ibuprofen, then returned to my listless state of not wanting to get up, Sunday Scaries already in out in full ghoulish force.
Maybe it’s the changing of the seasons and living in what feels like perpetual darkness while I give all of my hours of sunlight to a job that I don’t love even a little bit. Maybe it’s taking the costume off and feeling so bored of my regular self, frustrated with my life and envious of other people’s. (And then being hard on myself for feeling that way.)
I’m in one of those weeks where I don’t like anything I write and I desperately miss people who are no longer in my life. I think up better versions of myself and play dress up: borrowing Guy Fieri’s lack of inhibition, trying on a big personality, posing with my friends back, with everyone back.
Both nights of Halloweekend I forgot my gas station sunglasses at home. Nobody but me missed them. And it’s a small relief that I never quite got into full costume. Regardless of how I felt dressed as Guy, I never was Guy, marginally comforting when I feel better pretending to be him than I do pretending to be myself.
I found solace in coming home late and returning to the sunglasses, but it was also consoling that I had twice forgotten them in the first place. Holy moly, Stromboli—it’s a sign.
More writings
A piece I’ve been working on for quite a while was just published and it would mean a lot— at least the value of a $2 bill—if you read it. It’s my first longform, but not my last.
Two Dollar Bill, Befuddled Brendan, and the currency of a story
