Ballad of the Friday the 13th Part 2 Jason
I watch them party from afar. I am alone. Why?
Because I am the Friday the 13th Part 2 Jason at the Jason party.
It was a friend of a friend’s idea. On Friday the 13th, throw a costume party where people dress up like Jason. Now this friend of a friend’s apartment abounds with hockey masks. For some, the costume is nothing more than the mask. For others, it is much more involved, with moldering jackets and tattered pants and film-ready masks. I’m talking about distressed, yellowing goalie masks with triangular markings on the forehead and cheeks, strapped on with big-buckled, belt-quality leather. Some of the girls have donned gray sweaters and graying wigs to play Jason’s mother. Some of the girls have treated this as an 80s party, dressing up as the generic, big-haired, body-count fodder.
And all the single ladies love the other Jasons. They clamor to be crushed in the embrace of the Kane Hodder Jasons from Part 7 and 8. Their fingers trace the scar tissue of the Jason who went to Hell. They love to run their hands across the barrel-chest of Jason circa Part 6. They seek out Part 4’s stealthy potency. They adore Part 3’s knuckle-dragging traipse. They gravitate to the Jason X Jason, willing to forgive him for the horrid movie. They even love the trim, strapping Part 5 killer and how he fills out a work suit, and he’s not even Jason. These women are suckers for the hockey mask, as it turns them all into common rink rats.
But I chose to be different. I sit here with this burlap sack over my head, watching it all through the singular, ragged eye-hole over my left eye. All the partygoers lack depth and dimension. I’m alone on the couch, twiddling my pick-axe, feeling so small. I want to dissolve into the walls and disappear. The partygoers dance and wrestle playfully as “Man Behind the Mask” plays yet again. Two girls are grinding Jason X now, and I can no longer watch. I slip away, totally unnoticed, into shadow.
I find what looks, at least to me, like a door to the bathroom. It opens instead onto stairs and the chill of the naked night. I drag my pick-axe up the steps and find myself on the roof, looking out onto the city. Light from tiki torches plays gently atop a swimming pool. A single figure cuts through the water.
She covers the length of the pool and back and then emerges from the water. Water cascades down her body, and her hair hangs down in a mop. As she takes the three steps up the ladder and out of the pool, she whips her hair back. She’s wearing a hockey mask, and, incongruously, a bikini top and bottom to match. She sees me seeing her. She picks up her serrated machete and uses it to wave me over. I shamble over to her.
“I love your costume,” she says.
“I love yours, too,” I reply. Each of her breast plates is a hockey mask. The same goes for her bikini bottoms, a hockey mask hugging her mound of Venus.
“Really?” she says. “Personally, I think the hockey mask is a bit overdone. But thank you. Come, sit.”
She guides me toward plastic pool chairs and we sit down.
“I just love Friday the 13th,” she says. “I think I like the movies as much as I like sex.”
“Excuse me?” I say.
“In fact,” she says, “the Friday the 13th films are actually sort of like sex.”
“In what way?” I say.
“Think about it for a minute. Don’t you remember your first one?”
“I do,” I say. “Jason Takes Manhattan.”
Her eyes are a lovely hazel green, and I can see a smile form in them. “The first one,” she said, “is like your first time. You’re young. You’re a bit scared. You imagine all kinds of ways it could be. You think of what could be good, bad, horrible. You think of what might make you feel uncomfortable. You survive it, and it’s okay, though it may leave little scars. And even if it’s not bad, it still might not be very good.”
“I can see that,” I say.
“Of course you can,” she says. “Your first time was Part 8. But then, with subsequent viewings, as in subsequent sexual encounters, you gain experience. You start to learn about what you like. Each movie is like a new partner, each with its own set of positions. Part 1 is the missionary. Jason X is akin to butt-play, maybe even pegging. After a while, you get to know what you like. You start to realize that it’s not such a big deal. It can actually get to be quite enjoyable. With more and more viewings, you start to feel comfortable. Eventually, you’ll move on to harder movies — I Spit on Your Grave and A Serbian Film. You have to spice things up now and then, after all. But you have confidence with these new partners, all because of the times you had with Friday the 13th. And no matter how much experience you get, you’ll always remember your first.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I say.
“And eventually,” she continues, “you’ll find your way back to Friday the 13th. Maybe even your first one. It’s like coming back to an old fling, an old summer love. You know each other, and there are no surprises. You’ve learned to love their flaws, but you can always see new wrinkles. You come to find a beauty in their shortcomings — a beauty in how they’ve aged. You feel comfortable with them. You see your old fears and how they’ve been allayed. You measure yourself by this old lover. You feel young again in their glow.”
“That’s beautiful,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says. “And for me, I always come back to Part 2. That was my first, and still it’s my favorite. It gives you Jason before he’s too far gone, before he became a commodity. You could still find tenderness and vulnerability in him.”
“I can see that,” I say.
“He’s also the sexiest,” she goes on. “He’s smaller, certainly not the behemoth he’d become. He’s also a bit simian. There’s something of the primate in him when he moves. He’s more lithe and more flexible. He’s also the most phallic.”
“How’s that?” I ask.
“He’s literally a one-eyed monster,” she says, “with that singular eye-hole in this hood. There’s a vulnerable beauty there, a nakedness just waiting to be uncovered. That’s why I love Part 2 so dearly. I want to just reach out and touch Jason from Part 2 and embrace him. He’s still salvageable. But I may be the only one who sees that. So I here I am in these hockey masks, trying to be like all the rest.”
“I see it,” I say.
I can’t tell if she hears me. “But still,” she says, “I can only watch the movie so many times. I think the only way to really spice things up would be if I could touch him for real.”
Her hand moves over mine.
“You don’t mind if I touch you, do you?”
She thumbs my palm for several seconds, and then she touches my face through the hood. I reach out to caress her mask and my pick-axe clatters to the floor. She picks it up, standing it up against my thigh. With one hand still touching my face, her other hand kneads the tip of my pick-axe handle. I touch her mask. Beads of water cling to the plastic, and I let my fingertips absorb them. I draw her mask toward my hood. Our foreheads meet, and I rub my nose against the plastic nose of her mask. I can feel the little droplets of water sinking through the fabric of my hood. I can feel her breath, too, and soon our mouths align underneath our masks, exchanging hot gasps. I can taste honeysuckle on her breath. I caress her bare shoulder.
“May I see your face?” I ask. “You can see mine.”
“No,” she says. “You are perfectly Part 2 as you are.”
I stammer and I gasp, kneading her shoulder. She stands up.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Back to the party.”
“Can I come with you?”
“You’d better not.”
“But wait — I want to watch all the Friday the 13ths with you!”
She shakes her head.
“What’s your name?” I ask. “Your number?”
“No,” she says, stopping. “There can be no sequel. We’re going to leave.”
“We?”
“My boyfriend and I. My boyfriend Jason.”
“Which one is he?” I ask.
“He’s Jason X.”
“Oh,” I say. “I see.”
She touches my face again through the hood. She wraps her other hand around the strap of my overalls, the one overtop my heart.
“Never change your costume,” she says. “You are the best one.”
She releases my shoulder strap and pads off in her Friday the 13th bikini, disappearing down the stairs. I hear the brief hiss of the party, and then the door closes again. I can’t go back. I stare at the pool water for a long time. I stand up. Then I grab my pick-axe and drag it along the tiles at the edge of the pool, taking the three steps down the ladder, wanting to become one with the water.
