i only wear white when it rains

If we just skipped right over Halloween and collapsed into the drooling narcoleptic comas of Thanksgiving, I really wouldn’t care. Frankly I’m not into bones and bloody skulls, whether they be on your front porch or Ed Hardy T-shirt (which is arguably way scarier). I like chocolate, but am convinced that the mini Halloween Milky Ways and Snickers are some cheap, barely edible version of the real thing. I only can tolerate orange when it’s paired with Gator blue, and there is only so much candy I can consume without honestly debating the benefits of bulimia. Sure, I like trick or treating. But carrying my 44-pound child after two houses? I need more than a pumpkin full of Laffy Taffy for that. Even more exhausting is trying to dissuade her from wearing a purple plastic dress and red wig scrunched up in a sandwich bag from Party City.

“No one’s going to know you’re Daphne from Scooby Doo,” I tell her. “They’re just going to think you’re from Pinellas Park.”

Fortunately for children, they know what they’re going to be for Halloween in July. I make this decision loosely based on how bloated I feel two days before I need to attend a costume event. This year, after realizing my breasts probably won’t hold up for many more Halloweens, I decided the funny costumes can wait until my nights out consist of spaghetti dinners at the VFW. Not that my epiphany matters because costumes today are so skimpy, I’m not sure funny is even an option. If you are a female over the age of 14 and buying your costume off the rack, you can pretty much add “stripper” to whatever character you choose. Last year I attempted originality by ordering a handmade costume from etsy.com, but it was four weeks late and marinating in swine flu when it arrived. I ended up being your standard iParty Stripper Shortcake. So today I took my 50 cents in alimony support to the former Sound Advice store in the Kmart shopping center on Dale Mabry in Tampa. It is rented out seasonally by “Costume Craze” to house the mother lode of costumes and other vile Halloween decor I will not buy.

Because I gave up on originality and was going for more of the: I’m-not-sure-I-give-a-shit-but-this-is-kind-of-a-cute costume, I was drawn to Little Red Riding Hood (Stripper). So small this ensemble was it was folded into a silver dollar stuffed in a snack bag. That was when the store clerk asked me if I needed help. Damn. Forgot my iPod. He told me they had a dressing room where I was welcome to try anything on, and then took it upon himself to grab a few more hand picked costumes off the flimsy wire racks, including an Alice in Wonder(Stripper) and Gretchen the Beer Wench (Stripper). He offered up some more as well because apparently I was to keep his dressing room occupied until they moved in the artificial Christmas trees.

Happy with the three options, I followed him back to the plastic shower curtains and cardboard partitions that comprised the makeshift dressing room. It was there that I noticed Senor Helpful wasn’t bad looking at all. He spoke in a sexy Latin accent and was rocking a 5 o’clock shadow that was approaching 8 pm.

Assuming he left me to the confines of my cardboard box, I quickly disrobed and threw on my (Very) Little Red costume first. At no point did I mind that my tattered, nude-colored, discontinued Intimissimi bra was poking out the top because I didn’t expect Senor Helpful to be staring in my direction when I parted the shower curtain to check out my leg fat in the room’s only mirror.

But there he was. Waiting for the fashion show I didn’t exactly sign up for, and leaving me to wonder: is this hot or creepy? Should I give him my number or call 911?

Two costume changes later, “Orlando” is telling me how he owns tattoo parlors on the heels of showing me childhood pictures of himself in Catholic school sweaters complete with leather patches on the elbows. Maybe I was swept up in the romance of being surrounded by bleeding appendages and flashing skulls, but I found myself toeing the delicate line between do I want to find out more about this guy or just find my mace?

He’s from Spain and adores his mother and two teacup Chihuahuas. But he’s prone to using 14-gauge needles to drain the fluid out of his ear cartilage after MMA fights. When I asked for a paper towel to clean my splotchy aviators, he said, “Here, let me,” and rubbed them on his t-shirt so they wouldn’t scratch. Um. Thank you? Is his consideration of my Ray-Bans nice, or is the unintentional transfer of dermis onto my lenses just plain gross?

I was so confused. For way longer than I ever planned, Orlando told me story after story. Possibly in Spanish, because I’m not sure I was listening. I was just getting acquainted with the brand new notion that when marriage and children and forever are off the table, it opens up a whole new world you’d never before consider. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be with someone like Orlando.

In the end, I walked to my car convinced it probably would involve hepatitis B and some bruising. But if you need a good deal on your Halloween costume, just tell him that “Little Red” sent you.

Costume idea: douchebag