"In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."*

   Okay, so I know Halloween weeks away, but I’ve been trying to brainstorm an amazing costume idea for two weeks already because a. I have a fun Halloween party to go to and I already know about it so I am obligated and at leisure to plan and 2. I want to have a great, non-slutty costume all ready to go so I don’t get caught with my pants down (literally or figuratively).

   I tend to lean towards movie characters or Golden Age movie stars—I was Holly Golightly last year (and ended up having the sluttiest costume at that particular party, ironically).  But I would like to shoot for the stars this year, since Halloween really does matter to me. But I’d also like to avoid buying a wig, since, having disposed of my handy wig collection many years ago, I don’t really feel like heading down that road again. Wigs are expensive, so you end up keeping them, storing them, thinking you’ll use them again. And the next thing you know you’re a senior in college with a box full of wigs and no place to put it so you bust it out at dinner parties after you graduate and your landlord drops by unannounced and thinks you’re some sort of “dominatrix” weirdo when all you were trying to do was put your hair pieces to some good use. For an example.

   So I’ve been doing some scrolling through the Interwebs and hoping for inspiration to strike me. I’ve considered 80’s icons (Cyndi Lauper, Prince [Prince, Prince, Prince!], Freddie Mercury, and Pat Benetar). I’ve thought about 80’s movie characters (Baby from Dirty Dancing, Mrs. White from Clue). I’ve even considered revisiting some of the classic horror films (Regan from The Exorcist, Rhoda from The Bad Seed, Jane Hudson from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Melanie Daniels from The Birds). 

Scary Rhoda from The Bad Seed.

   It was when I started really thinking about scary movies that it occurred to me that you SHOULD be scary on Halloween. If at all possible, your costume should have some element of horror or science fiction or thriller about it. And the more horror films and SCI-FI classics I thought of, the more I realized that most of those evil women characters, or even the female victims in those movies are BLONDES.

   Maybe you’ve already thought of this yourself, but if you haven’t, consider this:

REGAN, The Exorcist (Blonde—and later greenish, but mostly blonde)

RHODA, The Bad Seed (Blonde. Very, very blonde.)

JANE HUDSON, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Scary, haunt-your-nightmares blonde.)

NELL, The Haunting (Annoying, hope-she-dies-soon blonde)

LAMIA, Stardust (Gorgeous and also hideous blonde)

CLAUDIA, Interview With a Vampire (Still blonde)

THE CHILDREN, Children of the Corn (Holy god, they’re blonde)

HITCHCOCK, Separate category (yeah, I know, he was obsessed with blondes)

Joan Fontaine (Suspicion, Rebecca)

Grace Kelly (To Catch a Thief, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window)

Doris Day (The Man Who Knew Too Much)

Eva Marie Saint (North by Northwest)

Janet Leigh (Psycho)

Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie)

Blonde. Melanie Daniels.

   What the what? Why are all these scary ladies (or leading ladies in scary movies) blondes? Admittedly, blondes have more fun, but I thought being a brunette was supposed to be especially awesome because we are the embodiment of evil (you know, dark forces and what-not…and aren’t witches usually brunettes?). Cinema is saying otherwise, however, and unless I want to go as a Disney version of a bad lady (Malificent, Ursula, Snow White’s Stepmom—most recently portrayed in the movies by Charlize Theron, a blonde—or one of the Wicked Stepsisters), I’m stuck buying a blonde wig.

   Which bums me out a little bit.

   I should quit complaining. I guess as long as I don't dress like a whore, I'm okay. Unless I decide to go as an actual whore, in which case I can (and should) dress as one. They're usually not as pretty as you'd think, though, from my own personal experience.

   But I'll probably just go buy a wig.

   And, if you want to know the truth, I do look pretty scary with blonde hair. 

*Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004).

"Oh but the kisses are a long way off yet. Well, we just started a'courtin, and next month we start the walkin' out, and the month after that there'll be the threshin' parties, and the month after that--" "Nope."*

    My parents raised my sisters and me rather strictly. We had to go to Mass each weekend (despite having already gone at school during the week: lame). We had to do chores and be in bed on time. We couldn’t do anything fun until homework was finished. And we were not allowed to watch TV during the week. On weekends, we were allowed television on Friday nights and on Saturdays and Sundays after noon.(If I ever have kids they'll be allowed to watch TV all the time. Otherwise I'll probably have to entertain them myself.)

    But my parents were decidedly nervous about the things on television, so they took additional precautions. Anything on prime time was probably rife with sexual content and curse words (things like “blast it!” and “gosh darn it!” and “tarnation!”), so they pushed us to watch the things on Nick at Nite and American Movie Classics. It is probably telling that the first song I learned in childhood was the theme song from Cheers, but that I never got to see an episode of Cheers after the age of three. (Mom also let me watch Moonlighting until I had some sort of grasp of the English language.)

    As a result, Ouisie and I (and eventually Penelope, when she came along) wound up loving shows like Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. We didn’t realize these shows were thirty years old; we just knew they were cutting-edge and hip.

Don Adams and Barbara Feldon as 86 and 99 in Get Smart.

    What is even stranger is that my parents would rent Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies for Ouisie and me when we were barely out of diapers, and we LOVED them. We’d practice for hours trying to get the dance moves down, and it never seemed to matter that the films were entirely in black-and-white and featured hit tunes from the 1930’s.

    Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about those squeaky-clean films of the ‘30’s, ‘40’s and ‘50’s. I’ve been thinking about how, for instance, in Easter Parade, when Fred Astaire says to Judy Garland, “Why didn’t you tell me I was in love with you?” she hugs him really hard instead of kissing him. Or how at the end of the same movie, when he puts an engagement ring on her finger, she just smiles at him.**

Fred and Judy get engaged in Easter Parade (Charles Walters, 1949).

    I used to think that romance could be (and most likely was) utterly bereft of sex, and that people in “olden times” didn’t ever do it until they were married. They didn’t and couldn’t! Some examples:

1.     In High Society (the 1956 remake of The Philadelphia Story), Mike (Frank Sinatra) sings a song to Tracy (Grace Kelly) while they’re both intoxicated. The song is called, “Mind If I Make Love to You?” If “make love” meant “have sex” in 1956, then how could they write a song about it in a major motion picture? Imagine a song that went, “Mind If I Have Sex With You?” I don’t think the studios would’ve gone for it, especially with all the censorship at the time. By the way, “Mind if I have sex with you?” is not a romantic thing to say to someone. It kind of sounds like the second party isn’t really going to be involved.

Frank Sinatra asks Grace Kelly is she minds if he makes love to her (High Society, Charles Walters--again!--1956).

2.     Let’s fast-forward to 1959, when Cary Grant says to Eva Marie Saint in North-by-Northwest, “The moment I meet an attractive woman I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.” Now the idea of sex is sort of out there, but is it really? Because what follows is one of movie history’s longest make-out sessions (beaten in length only by that between Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot) but no one actually goes to bed with anyone. Or do they?

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint do everything but in North-by-Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959).

    My parents were quite clever: they showed us movies where people talked a lot, kissed occasionally and NEVER HAD SEX. At our sleepovers at the Meisingers’ house, we were only allowed to watch the final dance number from Dirty Dancing, and not the movie itself (a quite innocent movie, if you ask me, because I’ve seen the whole thing now).  But having re-watched these films as an adult, I’m realizing that people did, in fact, fornicate prior to marriage prior to 1967.

    Do you remember Scarlett and Rhett doing “it” in Gone With the Wind? Of course not. But do you remember him carrying her up the stairs, kicking and screaming? Yes. Yes, you do. And you knew what was going to happen. You never saw a thing, but you were a little turned on, weren’t you?

    Same goes for The Quiet Man. Once Sean (John Wayne) throws his wife Mary Kate (Maureen O’Hara) in the bedroom (after valiantly proving to her entire village that he doesn’t want her for her money), you know things are going to get sexual. But you don’t see a goddamn thing. And my parents were in love with that film and we watched it countless times (you know how the Irish feel about Ireland).

    So see, sex had to be implied once upon a time. And for some reason, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that implied sex is much more enjoyable to watch than the blatantly “realistic” sex that’s becoming increasingly available on HBO and Showtime. Sometimes I think the actors aren’t even “simulating” sex but actually having it. I’m sorry, is that acting? I think that’s just pornography. (Which is funny, because I used to stay up past my bedtime in junior high to watch "USA Up All Night" because I was convinced something dirty was going to be shown at some point.)

    And if the numerous golden age movie star biographies I’ve read have proven anything, it’s that people did, indeed, have a lot of sex outside of marriage in “olden times.” But the movies had to have a code, and so they tried to give you just enough to be exciting without ruining your day with close-ups of actors’ genitalia. Let's face it: genitalia ain't so attractive.

    I’m truly grateful for my love of classic films. Because I don’t want to look at movie stars’ naughty bits any more. 

*The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952). Probably one of the sexiest movies of all time. No sex shown.

**I've read in numerous "classic" era movie stars' biographies that Fred Astaire preferred not to kiss his costars out of respect for his wife. That's sweet, but kind of silly at the same time. 

"We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change."*

        I know I’ve stressed on numerous occasions how much I love living alone. I can watch whatever I want, wear whatever I want, and there’s no one to answer to if I leave a mess in the sink, or on the counter, or on the couch, or on the floor. That sounds bad—I’m really not THAT messy—but truly the freedom is comforting and truly different than any I’ve ever known.

        I’m not a “naked person” but if I wanted to go into the kitchen and make breakfast in the buff, I could. But though I’m not a stickler for hygiene, that seems pretty unhygienic, not to mention cold, and my windows are at least cracked almost all of the time.

        That said, the other day I went into the kitchen in just the t-shirt and underpants I’d slept in, and poured myself a glass of water.

        Mid-pour, it occurred to me that the man smoking a cigarette on his back stairs might be able to see into my apartment. It was the middle of the day, so it’s hard to say how much of my kitchen was visible, but I immediately crouched behind the refrigerator door. Sure, I wasn’t naked or anything, but still: no one gets a free show from this gal.

        That got me to thinking about the movie Rear Window.

        For those of you who don’t know (a precious few, I’m sure: all of my readers are similar in their incredible taste and sophistication), Rear Window is a supremely awesome Alfred Hitchcock film about a professional photojournalist (Jimmy Stewart) who’s relegated to a wheelchair due to a broken leg sustained on the job. Because he’s bored and possesses several superb camera lenses--and because he lives in a unit that faces the courtyard of his large apartment complex—he spends his days spying on his neighbors. All of the spying is moderately amusing until he witnesses what he is convinced is a murder.

Rear Window, 1954.

        The rest you can figure out when you watch the movie.

        What I started wondering is what, if anything, would Smoking Man think of me in terms of Rear Window? The back of his building faces the back of mine and my kitchen window looks at his back stairs.

        Does he think I’m like Miss Lonely Hearts, the woman who entertains imaginary dates in her single apartment and then breaks down in heart-wrenching tears when she considers how she’s going to die alone and be eaten by rats?

Miss Lonely Hearts has an imaginary date for dinner.

        Maybe he thinks I’m like Miss Torso, the ballerina who has all kinds of men making passes but is clearly waiting for Mr. Right. I don’t imagine he thinks that seeing as how most of my male guests are my male friends—-all of who either have girlfriends or (in most cases) have boyfriends—-or exterminators/Robert T.L.W./installing blinds.

Miss Torso dances in her underpants. Don't we all?

        I’d like to think that Mr. Cigarette thinks that I might have murdered someone, if he sees me taking out the garbage late at night, but I’m pretty sure he’d need more evidence of foul play than the fact that I’m a night owl who likes to wait until two weeks have gone by to dispose of waste.

        There’s the pianist in Rear Window who’s constantly composing at his grand piano (once with Hitchcock in attendance, in one of his cameos). Sometimes he gets caught up and frustrated by his inability to achieve what he wants. That could be me. Maybe he sees me typing and thinks I’m writing my magnum opus and I’m constantly frustrated by not finding the mot juste! Ha ha, Smoker-man! I’m just writing this blog, dumb neighbor. 

The composer thinks best in his underpants. Don't we all?

        If I’m being perfectly honest, my biggest fear (at least within this particular realm) is that he doesn’t really think anything of my daily activities. He’s bored to death by my singularly mundane existence and watches not with pity or disdain but with complete indifference.

        “Well, there goes that chick making breakfast. There she goes washing dishes. There she goes folding laundry—wait! What’s on that suitcase? Is that blood? Where is she going with that down the back stairs? Holy crap! She’s killed someone!”

        That’s how he’ll narrate my life once I show him a thing or two.

        But if, on the off chance I decide against making it look like I’ve killed someone, I might bust out a fake party a la Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. That’ll shut him up thinking I’m boring.

*Thelma Ritter as Stella in Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954).