Last Minute Halloween Party

Trolley and Steph

Thumbnail: Sushi platter
Thumbnail: Halloween hallway
Thumbnail: Halloween pirate
Thumbnail: Kitty
Thumbnail: Living room
Thumbnail: Me and Trolley
Thumbnail: Halloween pimp
Thumbnail: Pumpkin lights
Thumbnail: Gathering
Thumbnail: Raggedy drink
Thumbnail: Dog skull-and-crossbones cape
Thumbnail: Spooky drinks
Thumbnail: Taking shots
 

Last minute Halloween par­ty means last minute cos­tume.

I’m walk­ing down the con­sol­i­dat­ed aisles of Walmart at 7:30 on Saturday night. The cos­tume pack­ages are all 50% off, and the mod­els on the labels are all pre-teen. I don’t think I’ll fit in the tights of this Batman cos­tume, and this vam­pire cape only goes down to my waist.

I’m sud­den­ly struck with a fit of nos­tal­gia. Remember that time when I was at that par­ty with Becky, who was wear­ing a witch­es mask, try­ing to engage her in a con­ver­sa­tion after we met at the Honest Lawyer1? Remember when we went as Supertroopers to the par­ty at the girls house? Remember when I got drunk off that bot­tle of Earnest and Julio Gallo?

I hur­ried­ly grab a black cowl and bloody knife, and walk to the check­out line. With my full-length leather trench coat, I’m hop­ing it’s enough to gain accep­tance to the par­ty, but not too much to stand out.

As I leave, I won­der if Halloween still exists for those of us past our trick-or-treat­ing days.

So the plan is to get there ear­ly. That way I don’t have every­one look­ing at me when I walk in the door. Bail when it gets too loud, or the peo­ple too drunk. But every­one invit­ed through Facebook was told eight while I was told nine, and I’m almost last one there.

This is not going accord­ing to plan. I remind myself that I’m in con­trol, and can leave when I want. This is enough to get me through.

Greeting me at the door is Ramsey, Trolley’s six-month old pup, who already knows how to sit and play dead. Too shy to look around and make eye-con­tact, I pre­tend to play with him until Trolley picks me up in the hall­way.

Princess Leia offers me an orange vod­ka Jello shoot­er. I take one, my first taste of alco­hol in over two years. It burns in my stom­ach with­in sec­onds, and I fight back my anx­i­ety. Successfully. For good mea­sure, I eat anoth­er California roll to absorb the vod­ka.

Downstairs, we watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. Strange how hor­ror movies are…humourous when you’re sit­ting on the couch with a mafioso, a fairy god­moth­er, and Raggedy Anne and Andy, while a group of girls dance upstairs. Everyone’s pick­ing apart the plot holes, includ­ing Jordana Brewster’s anachro­nis­tic low-rise jeans.

It’s all cliques and cou­ples here. I’m the only one by myself.

To hide this fact, I walk around tak­ing pic­tures. A pirate offers to take a pic­ture of me with my cam­era, but only with the girls danc­ing in the cor­ner. I feign com­plex­i­ty of the cam­era so I don’t have to sidle up to a bunch of female strangers, and ran­dom­ly break into their dance cir­cle.

Before long, I notice that I’ve been there for longer than I planned. But I’m get­ting old, and nine is too late to start a par­ty. I real­ize that Halloween still exists dur­ing the qui­et dri­ve home. It’s not about the can­dy, or the youth, or the trick-or-treat­ing. It’s the spir­it.

And if that spir­it means dress­ing up, dec­o­rat­ing your house, and get­ting drunk if nec­es­sary, then that’s fine by me.

  1. If you ever read this Christine, I will deny every­thing. []

9 comments

  1. I love the hon­esty in this post.

  2. Both an easy and hard post to write.

  3. That pic of you and Trolley is real­ly engag­ing. You usu­al­ly shoot things so crisply and in high light; I like this; it’s dif­fer­ent. I also envy the hell out of who­ev­er owns that house. Ah, space.…..

  4. The par­ty was a chance for me to play around with sec­ond-cur­tain sync on my flash, and try to bal­ance fill-in light with ambi­ent light. In order to do so, I had to use a high ISO, which intro­duced a lot of noise. Normally I try to adjust for noise, but after watch­ing the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre pre­quel and see­ing the way noise was used in that movie, I was inspired to keep it, and added a lot of con­trast to give the pho­tos a dif­fer­ent (but con­sis­tent) feel than my oth­er ones. I use tech­niques like this spar­ing­ly, but it works for themes like Halloween. Glad you picked up on it.

  5. @Jeff I hope you had fun! I did. I real­ly appre­ci­ate you com­ing.
    @Xibee It’s my house, and thank you :)

  6. Nice post. I stum­bledupon your site a long time ago and love your pho­tos and insight. I share you anx­i­ety and reflec­tion in awk­ward social sit­u­a­tions. Very nice post.

  7. @Trolley — Yeah it was an awe­some time, and a very much need­ed par­ty. Felt like I was back in uni­ver­si­ty again.

    @BrianR — Thanks. It’s always nice when some­one can relate, whether it’s me or a read­er.

  8. I loved the cos­tumes! Great photos.…and I’m glad you had a chance to relax and have a good time. I went to a Halloween par­ty at my usu­al Friday hang out spot but I did not dress up. I had been (and unfor­tu­nate­ly still am) sick all week and could­n’t bring myself to use my brain to come up with some­thing genius. I still enjoyed myself though.…the cos­tumes were great! Four full grown Teletubbies and Amy Winehouse were my favorites of the night. The things peo­ple come up with.….

  9. Yeah, I’m real­ly impressed with how all-out peo­ple went with their cos­tumes. It’s always nice to see peo­ple real­ly in the spir­it of Halloween.

    Amy Winehouse must be a lot hard­er to do, now that her style is all wacked and cracked out.

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