Key West: Masquerade March at Fantasy Fest 2009

Fantasy Fest in Key West is the grandmother of all Halloween celebrations. It’s wacky, spirited and light hearted but not for the faint of heart. If you’re opposed to nudity and risqué antics, better trick or treat somewhere else. If you’re open-minded and want to experience it, plan ahead because the town’s lodgings are booked months in advance of the last week of October.

Back in 1978 a member of the Tourist Development Association wanted to add a spark to the dry tinder of the town’s autumn economy with a festivity before the tourist season began in earnest. Thirty years later, Fantasy Fest has the wallop of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the sizzle of Carnivale in Rio de Janiero. Ever heard of a bonfire?

While the rest of the town remains in business as usual mode, Duval Street becomes ground zero for ten days of intense partying. From the Goombay street fair and Coronation of 2009 Fantasy Fest King and Queen on Friday October 23 to the “Fat Lady Sings” Tea Party on November 1, every day is filled with entertainment.

Ordinary diversions like the wet T shirt, Home Made Bikini contests, and Toga Parties and originals like The Third Annual “Pinking of You” Decorated Bra Auction, Captain Tony’s Party in Plaid, the 27th Annual Headdress Ball (this year’s theme was Hedonistic Heroes and Vexing Villains with Prizes for Best Headdress), Dress In White Night, and The 9th Annual Living Art Airbrush Expo (using the human form as a living canvas for artistic expression). Then there’s the Dungeon of Dark Secrets and Fetishes, hmmmm.  Straight, gay, or somewhere in between, there is something for everyone. And everyone is having a good time.

 pt at large returned to Key West the day before the Friday October 30 Masquerade March, a clothing optional promenade of Disneyland proportion. Good idea.

The tropical sun ricochets off bleached tombstones as over a thousand paraders and spectators home in on the front gate of Key West Cemetery. Where else would anyone begin a Halloween March? It is 5 P.M. 

Marchers with a drink in one hand and camera in the other yak it up and admire each other’s attire. Gallons of body paint, pounds of sequins, yards of taffeta, not to mention latex, leather, and lycra, have been deployed creatively.

Key West has issued a giant permission slip to participants to dress up (or down) as vampires, vixens, villains, pole dancers, kinky kings, naughty nurses, tooth fairies, monks, gladiators, sailors. Wizard of Oz characters - the list goes on. 

Fantasy Fest spins straw into gold when an amalgam of levity and nudity commingles as accountants, teachers, librarians, lawyers, idlers, retirees, engineers. layabouts, - whoever- shrug off the fetters of convention and load up on body paint, Halloween costumes and an insouciance that’s contagious.

One woman walking topless down Main Street USA would end up on the evening news. Hundreds of undraped men and women walking over a mile from the cemetery to Duval Street during Fantasy Fest cause nary a ripple in Key West.

Before long, I’m looking people up and down and saying, “You look fabulous!” and snapping photos. This is a parallel universe.  These people haven’t become unhinged, just liberated for a few hours from the norms for the rest of the known world.

Look around. See men and women who’ve been getting mail from the AARP for years. They look their age and egads are they whooping it up.

Someone in the crowd remarks that some participants would be better off with their clothes on. NO, I say, This is democracy in the buff. What makes this festival fabulous is that people with soft, flabby, too big, too small bodies are flipping the bird to the conglomerates that fill glossy magazines with images of airbrushed perfection. And aren’t ashamed to bare it all right next to the hard bodies.

Free punch and beer are served along the route on tables outside neighborhood guest houses and inns en route.

Mardi Gras beads, flung by celebrants on balconies and porches, rain down and end up in tree branches, phone lines and in the hands of the happy.

No one appears intoxicated. I haven’t heard one catcall or crude remark.  The drag queens are sassy. Everyone is jovial.

When a knot of people forms up the street, you know a spectacularly painted body or cleverly designed costume in the middle of it.

“Nothing is free in Key West. Don’t rely on inaccurate self-exams. Have one here from an experienced hand!” shouts a man wearing a box with two chest-high holes carved in it. He’s drawn a crowd and a several women accept the offer, much to the delight of the crowd.

By 7 PM, thousands of people have descended upon Duval Street, where several blocks have been cordoned off. Music pours from bars and saloons. Merriment prevails.

Masquerade March is a good-natured bawdy spectacle so far outside the pale of ordinary celebrations it defies explication. 

I’ve never seen such light hearted displays of flesh and costumery, refreshingly void of self-consciousness and filled with laughter and joie de naughtiness.

I know where I’ll be trick or treating next October.

Comments

[Suzanne]

Sell your house and move there!

[Joanne]

No wonder we never see you in Westport!!!! Lots more to see elsewhere, apparently!!! I was disappointed to see pt in shorts and tee...........expected something more fitting for the occasion!!! Even those shorts and bare chest that you flaunt in Westport would have sufficed.....Hope to see you soon.

[Richard]

Thanks for including me in your KWF letter. Nice bit of memory lane for me having walked in the Friday parade a number of times--it brought me right back.

I checked out your blog and enjoyed looking through some of your recent entries. Didn't realize you were so creative. We've covered a lot of the same ground and in fact you remind me of me!

[Marie]

Enjoyed your wild tales from Key West!