I'm not a huge fan of Halloween.  I can't really say why, since my first experiences with cross-dressing weren't particularly traumatic.  I haven't done it much as an adult, because, frankly, shaving your legs is a lot of work.  I had a female math teacher in junior high who used to wear short skirts and hose over very hairy unshaven legs.  That was pretty traumatizing.  I vowed never to do it myself.

The truth is, even as a child, I didn't entirely see the point of Halloween.  It was one of those things I accepted, of course, but I suspected that it was mostly for the secret amusement of the adults, who were using candy to entice us kids to make asses of ourselves. 

Because I was that kind of kid: ceaselessly turning over the mystery of adulthood in my head. I would study them, thinking all the while:  they're hiding something.  Something really big.  And they're enjoying it.  Dressing up for Halloween (which was, needless to say, different from dressing up for myself) always felt a little sordid to me, like I was the butt of their inside joke.

How could the other children not see this? How could they be so blind to their own subjugation and humiliation?  Why wouldn't they listen? 

Because they were high, of course.   

I mean, try reasoning with a kid on a sugar high. 

Part of my problem was I was not obsessed with sweets, or with hoarding and trading them, and I didn't need special inducement to dress up or make an ass of myself then any more than now.  My brothers, on the other hand, and our little band of neighborhood urchins, were very competitive when it came to collecting holiday loot, whatever the holiday. 

I was much more interested in being complimented on my beautiful cocktail dress and creative accessorizing.  You can keep your swizzle sticks.  I longed to hear the lady of the house gasp and demand of me, "who does your hair?"

Like I said, once I entered adolescence and my legs got hairy that was the end of my cross-dressing days.  There was that one time in college, but I wore an imitation Louis XIV ball gown and lace-up combat boots so I didn't have to shave my legs.  Frankly, I don't know how you ladies do it. Respect.

Nowadays I love to see the wee ones and domesticated animals dressed up as whimsical little creatures, but the cut-off for kids is about five years old.  That's when they start getting all strategic about it.  They've got an angle, and they always think they're outfoxing you.  They no longer dress up because it's fun to dress up.  Now they do it because, well, you do what you gotta do to get that candy. 

Some of them you feel like if you don't have the kind of candy they're accustomed to they're going to rage out, hose you down with Nair, and light you on fire.   For me, it ceases to be fun when you feel like you're being hustled, threatened, or mugged.  They're even embarrassed about having to go through the formalities these days.  The seven year olds barely mumble "trick-or-treat!" which is the least they can do, if they're going to get you up out of your la-Z-boy in the first place.

I'm always like: "OK... once more, with feeling."

And they're like: "Look, you and I both know why we're here.  Just give us the damn candy, bitch."

There were an alarming number of little boys in those stuffed steroidal muscle suits — you know, with the fake pecs and abs built into them.  Which scare me. 

I'm also leery of kids dressed as political figures.  We had a little Sarah Palin come to the door last night, and I thought to myself, "now, that's just wrong."  I mean, (a) why would a six year old want to dress up as Sarah Palin, or any other political figure, for that matter?  And, (b) why would a parent want to dress them up as one? 

I told our pint-sized VP wannabe I was sorry but Sarah Palin doesn't get any free candy.  She shoots wolves from helicopters.

She didn't seem fazed in the least.  I'm sure she'd been getting all manner of abuse all night.  And she'd obviously been coached.

"All righty, then!" she smiled.  "I didn't want any of your cheap Mexican candy anyway."

"It's from Brazil, you little bitch," one of my housemates corrected her.  "And you're gonna lose so bad on Tuesday, you're gonna wish you'd dressed as Hillary."

It's true though.  About the candy.  In a stroke of pure genius, one of my housemates had gone to the dollar store and filled up her plastic pumpkin with Si Mas Christmas candies — Bolas de neve, gellada emoção, Bub-O bubble gum.  All looking strangely, socialistically shrunken and Latin Americanny in comparison to even  the least "fun" of our "fun size" candies.  These are the kinds of candies you'd find in an O. Henry Halloween story.

I still wasn't sure our supply would last, but she knew as soon as they saw the chintzy foil wrappers with strange characters and nineteen-fifties looking graphics on them, they would recoil instinctively, little capitalists that they are.  And she was right.  Turns out even the greedy ones have standards.

"What are we supposed to do with this shit?" one six year old Batman raged.  "We can't eat 'em, can't trade 'em!"

"Worthless!" growled his Superman sidekick.

At the end of the night there were left-overs.  I'd never heard of such a thing.  I wasn't exactly thrilled about it, either.  Can't eat 'em, can't trade 'em.

We blew out the candles in our jack-o-lanterns by eight, and decided to hit the square, maybe drop into the Burren for a beer.  But while my housemate was in full vampire regalia, I had nothing.  I had meant to pick up seventy pounds of steak for a meat suit, but had totally forgotten to stop at the butcher's on the way home.  I didn't want to pass up the one opportunity in the year I could walk around in public with a bag over my head without causing a stir — so that's who I went as: Baghead.

And it was strangely liberating.  Kind of like the whole world was my own private peep show.  Until it was time to imbibe and I realized I'd forgotten to cut out a mouth hole, which had just seemed slightly lewd to me when I cut out the eye holes before leaving the house. 

Suddenly, the liberation of the peepshow gave way to the horror of being trapped in a paper bag with no way to drink beer but through one of my eye holes.  But then Halloween was made for nothing if not such horrors as these.