When You Dress Up Like Wednesday Addams but Get Mistaken for a Porn Star

by Matthew J.X. Malady

People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, writer Larissa Pham tells us more about what it’s like to get on the subway dressed like a member of the Addams Family and then have other passengers think you are a porn star.

oh also last night i got mistaken for a porn star on the A train. like, they thought i was a porn star IRL, dressed as wednesday addams

— larissa pham (@lrsphm) November 1, 2014

Larissa! So what happened here?

Okay, so you should probably know that I have a really recognizable face, but like, never as myself. I’ve been mistaken for Awkwafina and like six separate guys’ Asian girlfriends. No need to make a racist joke; I’ve just made it for you. Also, when I was at school people kept telling me they’d seen me at events I had no recollection of, and one guy got into this really long, involved narrative about how he watched me spread cream cheese on a bagel or something. And I had to tell him it wasn’t me. It might have been me at all those parties though, because I was crossfaded for most of college and don’t really remember it.

So, yeah, I was on the A train headed to Bushwick to meet my friend at a party. I was dressed as Wednesday Addams because my soon-to-be-ex bae and I were going to go as Clark Kent and Lois Lane, but then I decided not to visit him that night and also, how heteronormative. So Wednesday Addams, because I already own all the accoutrements of a sulky Victorian child.

There were these two cute black lesbian pirates across from me on the train, and I was checking them out, I guess, because queerness and femininity are marvelous and I was really into the spectrum of butch/femme vibes I was getting from their costumes. One of the pirates was all ringleted and sultry and the other pirate had braids and a leather lace-up vest — they were a very striking pair, very satiny. Like that store-bought Halloween costume vibe, but they worked it. Also, they were hot. It feels important that you should know they were hot.

Anyway, I hate Halloween, the same way I hate New Year’s Eve and pretty much any other holiday you’re supposed to go out and have fun on, because I hate fun. I mean, I LOVE fun, I am so fun, but I hate feeling like I’m supposed to be fun all the time, because that is exhausting and drugs are bad. I told myself I’d go out though — I just moved to New York like two months ago and I still need to make new friends (please be my friend), and I’m a person with a lot of social anxiety, so I was like, come on Larissa, do the thing. And so I was sitting there with headphones in, chillin, checking out these pirates.

It’s an animal thing, right, where you can tell that people are looking at you? This is how I make sure that I don’t die. Anyway, so I animalistically became aware of one of the pirates looking at me, and I was like, should I join your crew, unfriendly black hotties? in my head, and then they had this very not-quiet, not-subtle debate:

Pirate 1: It’s her, it’s her right?
Pirate 2: What?
Pirate 1: There . . . over there . . .
[Lots of glancing around at me while I play dumb and bop my head to Purity Ring]
[Incomprehensible muttering]
Pirate 2: Huh . . .
Pirate 1: She looks just like her.
Pirate 2: Nah, no way that little girl could be a porn star.

From which I surmised:

1. I look like a porn star.
2. I could never be a porn star.

Fair enough. Every so often I do think about sex work, and I have the utmost respect for sex workers, but it’s not in my temperament.

After the pirates reached a consensus that I was not, in fact, an adult industry performer whose oeuvre with which they were presumably familiar, they leaned back and kissed up on each other, and I giggled a little, because New York is a city where everyone comes from somewhere else and everyone looks like someone else, or is.

Then I got stranded in Williamsburg later that night, and it took me two hours to get home because Halloween is terrible.

What was the inspiration for the Wednesday Addams getup? And in what universe could Wednesday Addams be mistaken for a porn star?

My friend Austin and I decided that the worst thing you can say about someone’s Halloween costume is to call it, sigh, derivative, because lol all Halloween costumes are derivative. You are supposed to go as someone, so if you want to go as an asshole, say that and you will be the life of the party. Halloween costumes are also supposed to be easily read — this is a problem I’ve run into before, not being legible enough — and so you have to really get the signifiers of the character down in order to have a successful costume. Wednesday Addams is a very legible character with lots of easy signifiers, and I do happen to own a black velvet dress and knee socks and little black shoes, so it seemed like a natural decision.

I did not work the center part. But I do look really cute in pigtails. And I’m dark and sad.

The thing that tickles me about this story, though, is that the pirates didn’t think I was dressed as a porn star, but that I was myself the porn star IRL, who happened to be on the subway dressed as a sulky Victorian teenager. This requires a certain kind of familiarity with adult entertainment that I find a little funny and charming. Like, “Hey, really enjoy your work, love the costume.” Big kisses. XOXO.

I wish I knew which porn star they had confused me with. I missed that part of the conversation. I would have looked her up! Compared our moves! Do you ever wonder about all the possible lives you could have lived? I’m a narcissist, probably, so it would have been fun to think about an alternate future.

Lesson learned (if any)?

The next day, brutally hungover, I went to Connecticut and my Clark Kent broke up with me, for a number of reasons that I won’t get into here. I spent a lot of time on the train home crying and thinking about other ways it could have turned out. But there weren’t really any other ways, and after all, I am only one person, even if I look like a thousand others, but I am also me, so I guess I am special, I hope. I look like a porn star. I am lovable.

Just one more thing.

The world is full of fictions. Nobody is actually the famous person you think they are, but everyone wants to be famous and everyone wants to be loved, probably. But stop staring. It’s creepy.

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Matthew J.X. Malady is a writer and editor who was in New York but is now in Berkeley.