Last year I was Piglet. Two years ago, I was the blonde one. The year before that, Holly Golightly. Tonight, we’re hanging out with Shana and watching the freaks disband in Chelsea after a good dinner and a rousing game of Clue, but Saturday night’s festivities were the part with the costume dilemma.
In college, I mostly ignored Halloween. In high school, I was a cat, a gypsy, and a cheerleader. As a kid, mom usually made my costumes because we were living in Africa so there wasn’t much to go on. I remember being a little red devil with an adorable foam trident, a southern belle in a yellow silk dress with matching parasol, and one year, a little Indian girl. Feathers and all.
When I was about seven or so, we were living in New Jersey. Mom must have had a cold or something, I remember knowing she wasn’t feeling well, so I presume she went with the luxury of being in America and able to buy me a costume. That year, Dad trick-or-treated me around the neighborhood, holding me by the paw of my Pound Puppy costume. I remember with some hilarity the solemn fear I had that my mother must have been deathly ill indeed, to not be able to sew me a costume. She laughed when I recalled it for her, pointing out that it must have just been a little cold or something. For me, it was devastatingly serious, though.
This year, it was four PM and I couldn’t decide what to do. Stuart landed on Arthur Dent as the path of both least resistance and most applicability, what with being English and obsessed with Douglas Adams. I still didn’t know. I was going to give up and just go as a photographer when the idea struck. We’d found this little pin at a thrift-store weeks back that said simply “Nixon’s the One”.
I got dressed all in black, blow-dried my hair stick-straight, lined my eyes in dramatic black liquid-liner, grabbed a black flashlight, affixed the pin, and went as the Watergate Burglary.
I had to explain my costume to exactly everyone at the party. About half of them laughed. It may not be on par with Holly or the little red devil, but I think it at least wins my most esoteric costume ever award.
Happy Great Pumpkin day, everyone.

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