My Joker Origin Story: The Halloween costume That Changed My Life. (aka How did you get here Jae?)

How you get to certain places in your life can be really weird. You want to believe it is some grand narrative with satisfying arcs and set ups and payoffs but that’s not true. Mostly, it’s the dumbest stuff imaginable that get you where you need to be. Sometimes it can just be a long series of awkward butterfly effects, random things leading to one another. Looking back, it feels as if every part of my life led to me being here, like it was all the obvious conclusion. Many things got me here, but I feel the point that changed everything because I did the classic gay move of falling in love with my friend. Of course, I wanted to do anything to get her to like me, which included but was not limited to, dressing up as the Heath Ledger Joker as part of a couples Halloween costume in hope that would be the thing to make her fall in love with me.

Yeah. You can laugh. It’s funny.

I’m not saying that was the only thing of course but it was the most important. Everything else more shaped who I am and my predisposition to a lot of this stuff. That stupid Joker costume was the thing that shifted the direction of my life. However, I want to talk about all those other things first. It’s a good way to build suspense start and a way to stall from telling you about the mountain of cringe that was my Joker origin story.

Fashion was something that always played a big part in my life. My mother grew up as a black woman born in Mississippi in 1960. She was raised by her mother, had 11 siblings, and of course was very poor. However, one thing she always took pride in was her clothes. It would be the thing she spent all her money on once she got a good job in her adulthood. She loves to remind me that she was best dressed in high school, would by mink coats and riding glove, and all sorts of things. So, when she had me that obviously cared over.

There are photos of me in designer baby clothes and coordinated outfits and everything. I was the child who could not go on the playground because I was wearing nice expensive clothes that my mother did not want me to mess up. Of course, she was a sales maniac and was never going to pay full price for something, but her focus on getting nice designer clothes really affected me. Because when I was seven, she was putting me in, I will never forget as long as I live, a baby blue velour Juicy Couture jumpsuit that said juicy on the butt, and I just wanted a T-shirt with a Dora on it like everybody else. It actually did bring a nice bit of tension into the relationship between my mother and me. I would tell her I hate the clothes she put me in, and I don’t understand why I didn’t get a pick, because I was the one who had to wear them. I actually got to properly even start picking out my own clothes until I was like 13 or 14, which is kind of embarrassing.

So, when I got to dress myself, my interest came through. I was an only child who did not get to go to friends’ houses a lot because my mother would not let me, so a lot of my time is spent online. I was looking at people online which is how I got into a lot of the fashion subcultures that permeate my style today. I got super into anime which meant all Japanese street styles got jumper cabled into my brain.

At the same time, I was entering the emo phase that I still haven’t left. Starting to dress in alt/emo style, I felt good about myself; I thought I looked cool for the first time. I was comfortable with what I was wearing and therefore comfortable with how people perceived me; that was something I didn’t realize I hadn’t had before.

So, things continued like that with trying to express myself. I finally get my mom to be comfortable going in the Hot Topic; we ended up going there very often the managers knew us by name. Many of the articles of clothing I bought from 2012- 2016 in Hot Topic are still in my dorm room to this day as I type.

Now with all that set up, it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for: the Joker.

Everybody knows it is a queer rite of passage to fall in love with your best friend in high school and mine was a friend that I had for a couple years but because we had both gotten in March gone to the marching band together our freshman year of high school, we got much closer.

 A whole semester of homoerotic tension goes forth and Halloween comes around. She wanted to be Harley Quinn for Halloween and I thought “oh this is my in”; I can be a lady joker, we can have a couples costume, and bam instant romance.

That was the first costume I ever fully put together. I remember it was my first purchase from Ada wigs a hot topic of all places had a base for the outfit that I made modifications to. It was the costume that sparked my love of dressing up, making things, styling wigs, and all the stuff that would lead me to being here. All because I was having a gay panic moment that made me go let me let me be the joker for Halloween so I could try and make my friend fall in love with me. Since then, I just was making costume after costume after costume until I got to the point where I was like I think I just want to do this because before all of this I had very different plans.

In school I was one of those dreaded gifted children, so I was expecting to do something big do something important; have some big stem job.  Since the time I was in fifth grade one of the counselors said “You should be an engineer. You’re a black woman, you will make money.” My parents came from not rich families, and both had to quit their dreams and drop out of college because I didn’t have the money; they essentially sacrificed so much for me to be able to do the stuff that they couldn’t, so that felt like a good way to make them proud. I stopped creative pursuits. my dad was an artist he wanted to be an architect, he has abandoned oil paintings all around, and would always by me art kits, but I never stayed with it. I didn’t take art classes even when I could because I figured I should be taking a computer class or something more important. I just didn’t develop those skills as much as I wanted to, so I spent all of middle school and high school preparing and trying to get into a good college. Club after club after club after club; going to leadership conference after a leadership conference; doing speech competitions, doing poetry competitions, doing writing, and all sorts of stuff in order to make myself look good enough on paper to get money to go to school to be an engineer. After a certain point however, it just came to my all clicked into place for me, and I had to admit I hated it.

So eventually that all culminated in me changing career paths. The only thing that was making me happy were my costumes. Ever since that Halloween I had amassed a nice collection and I didn’t know how I would make that my career but learning how to sew proper felt like a good way to go. I took a bunch of my cosplay I made, had my mom take pictures of me in them, and sent them to Drexel University in Philadelphia, one of the best fashion schools in the country. And you know what? I got in. I got in and I got a nice size financial aid package to go with it.

But we still couldn’t afford it sucks like that sometimes, just plain and simple. However, I did not let that stop me. I pivoted, applied to O’more College at Belmont, got in, and started my studies. I in the end I will stand by the fact that that was the better decision. IM doing well here, I’m learning everything I need and do truly love my program.

I may not have the most convenient, linear, or satisfying story ever, but I feel like few people do. Sometimes it is the long list of experiences that makes you express yourself the way you do. Sometimes it’s a dumb decision to get a girl to like you that starts the hobby that would become you career. Who knows maybe something I do today will end up changing my life again forever? Who know? Not me I can tell you that much, but I think that is what makes this all the more fun.