Hello there, lovers, what did you dress up as for Halloween?
A few weeks ago, R and I planned on dressing up like Howie Mandel and one of the briefcase-holding models from the TV show Deal or No Deal (respectively), but then we kind of dropped the ball and didn’t do anything about creating our costumes.
Well.
He came over around 6:15 last night carrying his usual backpack but also a black suit. In my infinite gullibility I believed his “I have a job interview tomorrow” explanation, and I didn’t even notice that he’d trimmed his goatee down to a soul patch. And that he was wearing a hat. I know, I’m terribly self-absorbed sometimes. Surprise! He had gone out and bought all of the supplies I needed to make a cardboard silver briefcase, and even shaved his head! I put on a pretty dress and used mascara to darken his soul patch to look more like Howie’s and we were the perfect Deal or No Deal duo. All we were missing was the manic contestant trying to do math – my briefcase even opened up and we used Velcro to switch up the dollar amount it contained. Sure, I still have silver spray paint on my trigger finger, but it was a terrific surprise for someone like me who, as a rule, hates surprises. I even like the shaved head…
We took the subway down to the Village and watched the insanity that New York City calls a Halloween Parade. No matter how many times I see it, I seem to forget in the ensuing 364 days just how crowded and crazy and naked it all is. I grew up thinking that Halloween was a night for clever, creative costumes; walking around Westgate Hills collecting candy in a pillow case; and watching The Blair Witch Project in basements with my cross country teammates. Not so in New York. Here, Halloween is the night where the notion of public decency is utterly trampled by the two million people crowded along Sixth Avenue, where the sale of fishnet thigh-highs reaches its annual peak, where trick-or-treating involves riding the elevator around one’s luxury high rise building or going door-to-door at the bodegas and Chinese laundries. Halloween is the chance to play out fantasies because it doesn’t really count: girls dress as slutty cops/childhood icons/superheros/angels/devils/felines and guys dress as girls dressed as slutty cops/childhood icons/superheros/angels/devisl/felines. The next morning you’ll wash the glitter out of your hair, trade your platform hooker heels for more conservative footwear and maybe put a shirt on over that sequined bra, but for this one night your indiscretion is beyond reproach. With R in his suit and me in a dress that wasn’t nearly short enough, we looked like a pair of Republicans out for nice dinner who found ourselves instead at a seedy burlesque show.
Then again, on our walk to the bar where we were meeting friends we took a detour and stopped in an ice cream parlor for a root beer float and an orange creamsicle cone. Really, I far preferred sitting there in the window enjoying my dessert to getting my ass grabbed by a gigantic dude in a frighteningly uncanny Dee Snyder costume at the crowded bar. Ah, if only I had dressed like a slutty cop, then I could have hit him with my nightstick.
There’s always next Halloween.
A few weeks ago, R and I planned on dressing up like Howie Mandel and one of the briefcase-holding models from the TV show Deal or No Deal (respectively), but then we kind of dropped the ball and didn’t do anything about creating our costumes.
Well.
He came over around 6:15 last night carrying his usual backpack but also a black suit. In my infinite gullibility I believed his “I have a job interview tomorrow” explanation, and I didn’t even notice that he’d trimmed his goatee down to a soul patch. And that he was wearing a hat. I know, I’m terribly self-absorbed sometimes. Surprise! He had gone out and bought all of the supplies I needed to make a cardboard silver briefcase, and even shaved his head! I put on a pretty dress and used mascara to darken his soul patch to look more like Howie’s and we were the perfect Deal or No Deal duo. All we were missing was the manic contestant trying to do math – my briefcase even opened up and we used Velcro to switch up the dollar amount it contained. Sure, I still have silver spray paint on my trigger finger, but it was a terrific surprise for someone like me who, as a rule, hates surprises. I even like the shaved head…
We took the subway down to the Village and watched the insanity that New York City calls a Halloween Parade. No matter how many times I see it, I seem to forget in the ensuing 364 days just how crowded and crazy and naked it all is. I grew up thinking that Halloween was a night for clever, creative costumes; walking around Westgate Hills collecting candy in a pillow case; and watching The Blair Witch Project in basements with my cross country teammates. Not so in New York. Here, Halloween is the night where the notion of public decency is utterly trampled by the two million people crowded along Sixth Avenue, where the sale of fishnet thigh-highs reaches its annual peak, where trick-or-treating involves riding the elevator around one’s luxury high rise building or going door-to-door at the bodegas and Chinese laundries. Halloween is the chance to play out fantasies because it doesn’t really count: girls dress as slutty cops/childhood icons/superheros/angels/devils/felines and guys dress as girls dressed as slutty cops/childhood icons/superheros/angels/devisl/felines. The next morning you’ll wash the glitter out of your hair, trade your platform hooker heels for more conservative footwear and maybe put a shirt on over that sequined bra, but for this one night your indiscretion is beyond reproach. With R in his suit and me in a dress that wasn’t nearly short enough, we looked like a pair of Republicans out for nice dinner who found ourselves instead at a seedy burlesque show.
Then again, on our walk to the bar where we were meeting friends we took a detour and stopped in an ice cream parlor for a root beer float and an orange creamsicle cone. Really, I far preferred sitting there in the window enjoying my dessert to getting my ass grabbed by a gigantic dude in a frighteningly uncanny Dee Snyder costume at the crowded bar. Ah, if only I had dressed like a slutty cop, then I could have hit him with my nightstick.
There’s always next Halloween.
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