"Gracious! Do you think she's handsomely paid?"*

   Well, Halloween is upon us yet again and this year I dressed up and went out for the first time in…well, in a long time. And I went over to Tom and Jess’s for a Halloween party. And I dressed up like Holly Golightly.

Cigarette holder made of paper and a hard plastic straw that I spray painted. Then I had to tape the base of the straw so I wasn't eating paint all night long. Sexy? Slutty? Stupid? Who knows?

   Problem was, I think I was at the wrong party. Most of the other people were dressed like characters from King of Thrones or Adventure Time or some other obscure and/or fantastical TV show I haven’t seen and don’t know anything about. 

What other people wore.

Tom and Jess as Finn and Princess Bubblegum. 

   I didn’t know I was even going to the party until two days before and I figured I had a black dress and could make a long cigarette holder so I would be what I like best: a character from an old movie. (I’ve gone as Sugar Kane, Dorothy but also the Wicked Witch of the West (green face paint included), Sherlock Holmes, Dr.Frank-n-Furter and Wayne Campbell. Okay, Wayne’s World doesn’t really count as an “old” movie, but try telling that to anyone born in the 90’s.) I had no idea that I would end up looking like the one thing I was trying NOT to look like: the girl who dresses up like a slut because it’s Halloween. And I’m pretty sure I was the slut at this Halloween party. I was wearing a dress and heels and jewelry. Granted, my ass wasn’t hanging out and my boobs were fully covered, but when you’re standing next to a chick in full body armor or one in a monster suit made of felt, you feel a little slutty. Or maybe like you didn’t try hard enough. 

   I remember walking to a Halloween party when I was at USC. I was dressed like a pregnant nun and every other girl in the universe (especially the girls at the frat houses) was dressed like a slutty version of something. A slutty nurse. A slutty bumble bee. A slutty alien. I felt really unattractive, but I didn’t realize that Halloween had become a slut holiday. My mind raced back to previous costumes: Antigone, Cleopatra, Velma from Scooby-Doo, late-night waitress at crappy diner, Norman Bate’s mother. It became clear to me that I’d always dressed as a strong, fully clothed, independent and decidedly un-sexy lady (Cleopatra and Sugar Kane were kind of sexy, I guess; and Dr. Frank-n-Furter was a sexy man dressed like a sexy lady...so who knows where that one falls?). I felt like Lindsay Lohan’s character in Mean Girls who dresses like “an ex-wife” while all the other girls put on lingerie and animal ears.

   Side note: at the party I was drinking a beer when a slutty firefighter approached me and said, “You really shouldn’t be drinking while you’re pregnant. It’s bad for the baby.” Dead serious. If she’d been joking, we’d be best friends to this day.

   So at this party I felt like I was the slut and it wasn’t deserved. There were two awesome girls there dressed like a slutty devil and a slutty Ghost Buster (Egon? Venkman? Even she didn't know), so that helped a little bit. But they were only dressed that way because they were going to a “booty party” afterwards. So when they left I was alone again, feeling a tad too "attractive" for a Halloween party. 
   But mad props to all the people that went all-out Halloween at this party. It was truly impressive. Special mention has to go to Eric and Kelly, who were dressed as Walter and Jesse from Breaking Bad. That was pretty dope. And not at all slutty, though I did tell Eric he should be in his underpants.

   Next year I’m going as either Thriller-era Michael Jackson or any-era Freddie Mercury. That way I can be sexy but definitely not slutty. I am a lady, after all.

*Quote and costume inspiration courtesy of Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961).

**I also went to a pumpkin carving party at Chad's on Friday where I ate copious meat pies from Porto's, watched Worst Witch (hooray Tim Curry!) and Club Dread (excellent) and made this:

You can't tell from the picture, but this is a white fairytale pumpkin. I had to throw it away today because it started rotting in the extreme heat. It wasn't pretty anymore.

"I think that carrying on a life that is meant to be private in public is a breach of taste, common sense, and mental hygiene."*

She-Ra, Princess of Power

            Sometimes showering and putting on clean clothes is a task to which I don’t feel equal (why is it so hard to end sentences without prepositions without sounding like a pretentious ass?). There are days when lying around in my pajamas actually feels like not only a good idea but the ONLY idea.

            I went over to my friends Tom and Jess’s house the other night, and we all sat around their fire pit in the back yard and had a few too many cocktails and caught up on life and all that good stuff. And then I ate a bunch of their Thanksgiving leftovers and slept on the couch—where their two Boston terriers and long-haired cat (Hammy, Ribs and Frankfurter/"Furtie" respectively) like to relax— in Jess’s pajama bottoms.

            I’m so glad that adulthood doesn’t preclude me from going to sleepovers.

            But this whole hygiene thing can be a real bitch.

            So I lay around most of yesterday in my own filth, reeking like pork products (and pets named for pork products) and not feeling up to the job of washing the fur and the smell of fire smoke out of my hair or trying to make the skin around my mouth stop peeling off my face (I think that was a combo of Retin-A and flames flying at my face; not, like, old yogurt or something).

            But then I did it. I showered. And it felt great. I even flossed and shaved my legs for the first time in a couple of weeks (the shaving, not the flossing—though the flossing could happen a little more often). I was further inspired to wash my sheets for the first time in...we'll say, "a little while."

            And then I felt like Wonder Woman or She-Ra, Princess of Power. Like I could take on the day (or what was left of the night).  And I did a little bit of writing, cleaned some dinner dishes, and read a bunch of pages of a book that many consider to be an important work of literature.  

            It was Twilight. (I'm kidding! Or am I?) 

            So, here’s to hygiene! It lifts you up, rescues your day (even if your day is almost over) and makes you feel less like an unemployed jackass with syphilis or one of those weird diseases no one talks about anymore, like Hansen's (the cute name for leprosy).  

*The above quote is courtesy of one of America's finest film actresses, Myrna Loy.