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Childhood Memories: “We have such sights to show you”

Childhood Memories: “We have such sights to show you”

cenobites

It’s only very much in retrospect I realize the dark things that still compel me (horror, metal, general ‘sploitation), which I’d always felt had found me by accident, had actually been calling out for many years.

There’s a photo of me and my older cousin Ian. I’m standing RIGHT next to him, the biggest badass in my life, at his birthday party. I’m looking pleased and “tough” in my Styx ¾ sleeve shirt. Ian played drums in a band; I saw them rehearse Judas Priests’ You’ve Got Another Thing Comin‘ once; that’s seminal stuff. I once heard Dark Side of the Moon with him. Or, rather, some of it. The sounds, coupled with the Rush poster image depicting a naked man plunging into the 2112 pentagram had me literally running to my mom.

At around the same time, a guy I was buddies with for a time had an older brother with a very dark bedroom, where I was shown, among other things, the cover of Iron Maiden’s Killers.

Not a lot later, my dad made the inexplicable decision to rent Hellraiser (in the superior Betamax format) for the family. We made it to the five-minute mark (for the other aficionados, where the face is being reassembled) before one or the other of my folks turned it off and my mom told my dad off a little bit.

I see now that I hadn’t quite been ready for it before. Now, like a jaded pleasure-seeker who opens the Lament Configuration, I sought more and at last answered the calling: “We have such sights to show you.”

When everybody else went to bed, I watched it. I was terrified. I had recurring Cenobite-themed nightmares. Such sights. This was my perverse anti-baptism.

I think this was mainly a way to drown out the mind-numbing, real life fear that had gripped a chunk of my pre-adolescence: Nuclear annihilation. In a moment that must’ve made coming clean on Santa Claus seem benign and uncomplicated, my dad explained the concept of mutual assured destruction. That was fine, I guess, but wondering how it even came to that would lead to some additional sleepless nights before I could make peace with it all.

Hellraiser’s visceral thrills were enough even if the sadomasochistic elements were initially over my head. The influence would manifest itself in a brief goth phase that was ill-conceived but did lead me to some great music that still matters to me, including metal which, as I would learn, often walks hand-in-hand with horror.

Most importantly, it triggered the realization that fear is inescapable. There may be no greater a fear than that which comes to children when they begin to understand the myriad dire realities that even their parents can’t make right. The horrific realization that Kirsty’s Uncle Frank is literally wearing her father’s skin felt just like that. Fairy tales weren’t always about escapism, and my experience with Hellraiser is an example of why children need to be scared: To begin to understand and process the many ways this world is an inexplicably terrible place.

[wpchatai]