Children Of The Damned

(I grew up obsessed with vampires from a very young age because of the movie “Queen of the Damned” — my favorite character being the beautiful and alluring Queen Akasha. As a result, my mom had offered to make me — and later, my best friend — costumes based off the character’s two iconic outfits, complete with blood and various bite wounds for Halloween. Mind you, my friend and I were at the tender young age of six or seven, and while my mom in all her visually-impaired, duct-tape-and-cardboard glory made the costumes a little more modest than the original outfits, the costumes still showed off enough skin to be deemed “sexy.” When my friend and I won a huge costume contest, apparently, the other parents had an issue with this. Years later, I find pictures of the costume contest with my friend and me holding up our buckets of candy prizes.)

Mom: “Yeah… the other parents didn’t like me because, apparently, I just let you dress like a slut all the time. One mom even tried to get you disqualified, which didn’t work since the judges were actually teenagers and they loved it!”

Me: “Seriously? Did they not see that I even took the costume off to skate and that I was wearing jeans underneath? Did they not know that little girls have belly buttons or…?”

Mom: “Oh, no. I let you express yourself a lot growing up and God forbid I let you believe that you were beautiful and have confidence. I even laughed in the face of a parent who told me you were going to be a teen mom. It’s a good thing I’m blind. Ignoring the angry looks I apparently got made them even angrier.” *wistfully* “I’m such a bad mommy.”

(My asexual self, thinking back to my cringy cosplay days in high school and how I never cared to even date until I was 21, “Oh, if only they could see me now…”)