jim beam, tequila & navel displays

it's that time of the year when you dress up as wonder woman or the invisible man (personally i can't see anything in that one) or long-dead cultural icons (like champion the wonder horse, the helicopter from the whirly birds or the millenium dome) and parade around the dark autumn streets with russet-coloured leaves swirling round your stockinged, high-heeled or platform-soled feet in the biting wind, wondering why you didn't have the foresight to bring a coat and trying to remember how many bloody parties you've been invited to, carrying with you the equivalent of a wheelbarrowful of boxes of dodgy cheap red wine and cardboard crates of miller light, thinking to yourself how much easier it was when you were a child and all you had to do was go trick or treating with only the threat of being sexually abused by seemingly normal surburban inhabitants, who were secretly running a child-porn and white slavery ring under the cover of a quilting bee, to worry about - and promising yourself that you won't get as drunk as you did last year and end up sitting in the middle of a fountain, half naked and giving a spirited rendition of 'how do you solve a problem like maria?' while you moon the policemen who are coming to take you for a little lie down at the local jailhouse

so with k. off in boston for the weekend, and with my crate of miller light grasped in my hand, i attended the first halloween party i'd been to for twenty years, minus fancy dress due to my current uninsured driver's status, which prevented me from driving out to a party shop in one of the many suburban strip malls surrounding us and renting my traditional big-hairy-monster-of-no-fixed-identity costume - a look, some might say, that i could pull off without the need of a costume...

myself and a lot of similar-looking large hairy people gathered in the home of d. and g., a couple of our kansas city friends we have had the pleasure of hanging out with since we arrived in america - d. told me that it would be more of a beer drinking evening, which didn't prepare me for the various bottles of tequila, vampire blood vodka and black-label extra-strong jim beam (a spirit very dear to me) which seemed to be placed strategically round the living room - and so it wasn't long before we were doing down-in-one tequila shots and loudly criticising the acting prowess of the various participants in 'scream 2' and bitching about courtney cox's extremely ill-advised hair-do and the rather inept attempts of the skeleton-masked killler to overcome obstacles of soft furnishings and various household objects in order to get to his screaming bimbotic victims who were obviously unaware that a swift kick in the balls is the most effective way of stopping any man in his tracks, serial killer or not

at some point i reached for the jim beam and a shot glass and from then on it was goodnight vienna to my sobriety (was there a twist in my sobriety? no just a twist of lemon in the whisky) - at some point i recall the room getting hotter and tequila shots being poured into various people's navels as they sprawled out over easy chairs while other enthusiastic people drank the said shots from the said navels - i remarked that the room seemed to be getting hotter and that it was probably a trick of the alcohol - although by this time the house had filled up with the arrival of superman, marilyn monroe, three very large, bearded and deep-voiced cheerleaders, with britney spears-style 'stronger' video pony tails, wonder woman, a vampire and buffy the vampire slayer dressed up in the little red riding-hood costume she wore in the halloween episode from the fourth season

later with a lot of the costumed party-goers having moved on to other parties and more tequila shots, more jim beam and, to slow down the advance of the alcohol, bottles of miller light having been consumed, the core members of the party were left sitting round the lounge having removed their shirts....

and so i will leave the story there - the hangover keeps coming at me in waves and for a much needed sugar-rush, i now have to eat a bag of chocolate covered gummi bears, which along with a lot of happy memories, is a souvenir from the party