aren’t we all just trying to be morticia addams just a little bit
Some of us are trying to be Gomez actually
honorable. respectable. where would we be without you
An excerpt from the essay “Powerful T4T Energy in Steve Martin’s The Jerk” by Daniel M. Lavery, from his book Something That May Shock and Discredit You
You stumble across a diner, it is storming outside and you’re a bit hungry but more than anything you need a place to get out of the rain.
“Come dine with us!” Gomez shouts from across the room. It isn’t so much the diner is empty as that he has invited everyone in the establishment, including the staff, to feast.
Thing is cooking with Lurch.
Gomez bought the diner upon entering it a few hours ago. Wednesday and Pugsly are waiting tables, which is less taking down orders and more attempting to poison each other, while ladening up every available surface with improbably delicious food.
Your mustache, drawn on, and has melted in the rain.
Morticia places a red-nailed hand upon yours, you look up at this impossibly tall woman with the softest, coldest-yet-most welcoming eyes you’ve ever seen. The coldness is not winter. It is a welcome breeze on an unforgiving summer day.
Morticia Addams is ice water at your thirstiest.
“Come,” she leads you to the men’s room. “I will tend to this as I did with his when he was your age.” Turning, “Gomez, mon amour, pencil s'il te plaît.”
“Tish!”he shouts, throwing his rapier and skewering a pancake Lurch, who growls and groans and enunciates his joy, was flipping. “That’s gender non-conformity, querida! Concealer, vests, binders, more, more!”
“Our guest, darling, and I have business to attend.” The tips of her pointed hellfire nails trace down her husband’s cheeks, drawing along his chin, so sharp they could shave.
“You tell me what you need,” Gomez Addams says, his shifting from his wife to you. He has the off kilter look of a man in whole possession of his entire soul, “and it is done. For starting tonight, you are an Addams. And when you’re an Addams, you’re an Addams for life! Ha-haa!”
“And longer yet,” Morticia charms, sotto voce, three words only heard by yourself and the moon, a spell, three words welcoming you home.
This pair cosplayed Gomez & Morticia for one glorious day at Arisia 2019. Wherever they passed, they dragged the center of gravity to their world, and everything else seemed appalling normal in a way that made you twitchy.
Cosplays are something I encounter fairly routinely as part of my job and let me assure you, cishet guys rarely take the time to get the nuance, the body language, the madcap glee that comes with being Gomez Addams. It’s theoretically possible, but I’ve never witnessed one.
