Ghetto Fabulous

I am 28 years old and am supposed to be dressing up for Halloween ... twice. This makes me uncomfortable.

It is not as though I haven't had to do this before so much as it is the reality that I'm doing it again. I promised myself this year that I would treat myself by not forcing myself to endure a mask while waiting tables, nor would I spend any needless time or money on a costume. Everybody wins.

Plans to purchase a costume with some co-workers also forced to play dress-up this weekend didn't go off without its own little hitch. A seemingly easy pitch of going to Goodwill after a shift for some cheap but creative hand-me-downs quickly became a fiasco requiring the involvement of their boyfriend's companionship or hair needing to be done.

In the end, I stopped in the Goodwill a few days later and purchased a wig and a predominantly red flannel, like the type you'd imagine Paul Bunyan wore. The cashier looked at the prebagged wig with a picture of a man with a large, wide smile modeling the wig. It looked as though he might be retarded.

"You'd look good in a mullet," she told me. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to a comment like that.

The last time I dressed up for Halloween at work was while employed at the country club. There was a costume store on the other side of the river, and I once again purchased a prebagged item with the label "Shiek." When I drove to work on Halloween morning, the front page of the New York Times had a full-color image of Osama bin Laden from a recent video release and I spent the rest of the day having the strictly Spanish-speaking employees constantly giggling to themselves while repeating the "Osama" line aloud.

And it had been hard to take orders with my ZZ Top fake beard covering my mouth. It caused my the lenses of my rainbow-tinted hippie sunglasses to fog quite quickly. Not this year, though. Seeing as I had to abide by the dress-up code for this morning and Tuesday's day of recognizing a children's holiday, I simply donned a decade-old profession wrestling T-shirt, some tattered blue jeans, the flannel, wig, and a "Jim Beam Racing" ballcap. Voila: White Trash.

It wasn't the most imaginitive costume, to be sure. Nor the most extravagant. My boss opted to purchase an all-white jumpsuit a la Elvis Presley. He also had glasses with fake lamb chop sideburns attached when he wasn't busy loading up trays with food and shouting random employee names.

There were a few strange looks from customers of mine, but perhaps none more so than a curious lad in a highchair who leaned back and looked straight up at me in some upside-down perspective while I scribbled down his parents' breakfast order.

"Denver skillet ... scrambled ... cheddar ..."

While jotting down that his father did not in fact want onions in his selection, out of the corner of my eye I saw the child raise its hand in the air and proceed with the beginning stages of an innocent, playful slap at my genitals. I took a step backward and avoided any contact while the parents apologized for their son's curious manner. But I just waved it off, knowing that to a child being sat down in a restaurant, a Halloween costume and the daily uniform aren't all that different. Both are forms of costumes to kids, which kind of makes me wonder when I go back to the white dress shirt for a day tomorrow if I'll get sick of wearing that costume too.

It smells like syrup. Everything smells like syrup. And I don't even like syrup.

Men Of The World: Unite!

Have you seen them? Or, even worse, are you one of them?

You know the couples I'm talking about; those ones who are just so completely in love with one another that they couldn't fathom the thought of sharing an entire meal while seated on opposite sides of the booth. Yeah, sure, sharing a seat next to your significant other was pretty sweet in, say, the high school cafeteria. But the general public without the company of your three or four ugly chess club friends is quite another thing. Stop proclaiming your love of being in love in the public square ... please.

I say this knowing full well that women, for the most part, get the free pass here. Very rarely does it ever appear that it's the female who takes her seat and genuinely asks her boyfriend to take the open space beside her. Sure, it can happen; and if you're a dude who follows through with her shameless call for attention, well, you're a giant tool. Congratulations.

Not that any of that excuse makes you any better than the douchebags I all too frequently see performing what I'll refer to as the "insecurity trap." It becomes nauseating.

Nine times out of 10, some hostess at any given restaurant shows a young couple to their booth, the lady sits first, and then the male—as though he were a predator on some wildlife documentary—dives in to sit right beside her ... leaving the other side of the table empty.

This is an empty gesture in many ways, but a telling one about the male in the relationship.

Watch him put his arm around his girl. Watch the girl occasionally squirm and look around in a fascinating state of panic. Watch as the female is then trapped in a date situation in which she can:

A) no longer escape

or

B) welcomes the gesture as a sure sign of commitment

Option B is popular among uglier couples. That's who love to flaunt it the most, after all. "Hey ... We're fucking ... And you're not."

They need to tell themselves that. It's always a saving grace that no other employeee in the restaurant is envious at this point.

Option A is particularly saddening, however, because I tend to shake my head and try to think of the best subtle way to remind the poor fellow how uncomfortable he may have made his date feel. Suddenly, there's a spotlight cast upon her that the rest of the patronage sees, but only he does not.

Treating your date, your girlfriend, your "we-should-get-back-together" as a caged animal is a heartless, shallow manuever that I'm sure guarantees you more failure in the long run than you think it ensures in the here and now. But, you're oviously smarter than me, Mr. Pimple Face seated with Mrs. Double-Chin. Best of luck to the both of you.

For the rest of us that are smart enough to realize there are times when allowing some physical space isn't just necessary, but also productive, please pity these poor souls.

And then please tell that couple to get a fucking room if they really think we're into watching them be more in love with pretending to be in love than they are with actually being in love with one another. You can put it off for another couple of weeks, and we'll forget about it in about twenty minutes. Everybody wins ... Kind of.

One more viewing of behavior like this for me is enough to make me vomit, and hence, leave one unfortunate female who didn't realize how cornered she was, trapped in an entire room where she might not be able to stomach the smell of what I puke up.

Relationships succeed by knowing your boundaries; exploiting them to remind others that you're in a relationship ensures nothing but failure. It's too bad freckly-face will have to learn that the hard way.

We all know the rest of the world is having sex, but feeling the need to remind us that unattractive or overly sheltered goonies get to have it to doesn't impress anybody. To be honest, it's downright frightening.

(Another Edition of:) Adventures In Housesitting

I have just as much cash in my wallet as I recall leaving with before the previous night began, one cigarette left from that moment's fresh pack purchased following work, and now ... now I'm staring at the same sheet of itinerary I saw the last time I was at this place.

The instructions are the same, but I'm only now separating which directions the most attention be paid from those of lesser importantce. This is difficult in that the two pages are prited entirely in capitalized letters.

Early lessons in "nettiquette" taught me that the effect of writing a simple, innocent statement like—:

"HEY! HELLO! HOW ARE YOU?!"

—when entirely capitalized is the equivalent of shouting out every word that comes out of your mouth. If somebody came up to you on the street and trying to shake your hand, you'd turn and run as though they were a lunatic who'd mistaken you for a different N.R.A. buddy of theirs. That or a locally campaigning Republican. Same difference.

Point here is that these following days will not be as fruitfully rewarding as the times of the past.

Why?

Well, let's look at one warning about fucking Cosmo's seemingly constant battle with constipation:

"AUNTIE FROM SAINT CHARLES WRITES: 'SIGNS HE'S PLUGGED UP—HIDING UNDER THE BED, SQUATTING AND TRYING TO POOP OUTSIDE THE KITTY LITTER. IF NO POOP FOR 3 DAYS, CALL THE VET—'..."

The bastard child I'd rescued as a young, still-believing-Jesus-mighta-happened teenager has come back to haunt me. Not only is he crapping (all over the house, actually), but he's also HIDING UNDER THE BED, and SQUATTING AND TRYING TO POOP OUTSIDE THE KITTY LITTER.

So, there's reasonable belief for conern. But there's also reason for hope. Call uncle or vet first?

Phone lines NOW OPEN . . . (I'm screaming it, by the way, if it isn't already evdient.)