Friday, December 17, 2010

Playing Dress-up

Halloween was just around the corner (I know, I am sooo far behind on posts!). We were invited to the party, my sister was right on her way to recovery from surgery so she could join us and everyone was buzzing with “top secret” costume ideas. There was just one problem: SG#1 and I didn’t have costumes. We had plenty of ideas such as bee and bee-keeper (SG#1 would have to be the bee), fish, mermaid and merman (that one was quickly vetoed)…but nothing seemed to stick.

We went out to breakfast the Saturday before Halloween – T-minus 7 days before costumes were needed – and asked the waiter if he had a costume idea for us. Well, let’s just say he had plenty, but apparently the wait staff at 13 Coins have their minds deep into the gutter. So deep, the costume idea will not be mentioned here.

A week later, T-minus 8 hours before the party, and still no costume. We dragged ourselves over to a temporary Halloween warehouse resurrected in Fremont. Everything on our idea list was represented and more! There was a bee – a sexy bee – with mini-dress and wand (I didn’t know bees had wands), and a fish – a sexy fish – with mini skirt and bikini top, and Alice in Wonderland – again a mini dress with cleavage-revealing bustier – and there was Dorothy and the tin man, the lion, princesses and princes…why did everything have to be the sexy, mini version?! And why were the male counterparts full-body suits with very little skin showing? And you got such a tiny little piece of fire-retardant fabric for $75.

We started to panic.

SG#1 kept circling back to a chicken hat and naughty nurse was starting to look like a good option – YIKES!

And then we cracked. If we were going to a toga party, we would definitely wear togas, so why were we so opposed to the Americanized Halloween idea of being your sexy self? So we decided to take Halloween to its sexed up limit. And where else do Americans fully embrace their inner slut than in Vegas?!

All day long we were asking each other, “Who came up with this holiday anyway?”

Women dressed up as sexy kittens and men in Top Gun flight suits. I looked up the origins of this strange holiday on Wikipedia, the most reputable source of historical information for sure, and there is a mish mash of theories about why spend an evening donning costumes and eating candy. Some believe it comes from the Roman Catholic All Saints Day, a celebration of those who have left us but have not yet reached heaven, but ninja costumes, bobbing for apples and spooky ghost tunes don’t really evoke the sentiment this holy holiday aims to accomplish. One historian, Nicholas Rogers, proposes that the origins of Halloween can be found in multiple celebrations such as, the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in Parentalia, the festival of the dead, and it may be that Halloween is simply a marker of “summer’s end” from the Celtic word and festival, Samhain.

Interesting.

So we’ve come from seemingly benign celebrations of saints, fruits and nuts and the end of summer to slut-fest 2010. Perhaps Freud was right, we are all a little repressed and Halloween is the one night we can let our inhibitions scatter to the wind and embody our inner desires.

Well, SG#1 and I let our inhibitions scatter so far I’m not sure we could find them again if we tried.

Together we were, “What happens in Vegas.”

We embodied the stereotypical Las Vegas couple. They meet in a bar on a Friday night and wake up Saturday morning with a crumpled marriage license, a sparkling wedding ring in the shape of a money sign and a matching set of fresh tattoos.

We arrived at the party and our costume reviews went a little something like this:

“So you’re dressed up as a married couple?!”

Oh.

Wait.

Well, yeah. We dressed up as a married couple. I guess there was nothing to hide. Deep down inside our repressed selves SG#1 and I just wanted to be a slutty Las Vegas married couple. Oops.

1 comment:

  1. Bwahahaha! You dressed up as a married couple! No seriously tho the pix... the pix... were amazing!

    ReplyDelete