My original idea for a Halloween costume was to use a children’s Easy Bake Oven, cut a hole through the bottom and stick my head through it – Instant Sylvia Plath. Would anyone get it? I didn’t care. But finding an Easy Bake Oven that someone is willing to let you cut up turned out to be more time consuming than I thought it was worth so instead I broke down and went to a costume shop on South Congress. It was last minute costume searching on Friday afternoon and the best I could do outside of a tacky rubber mask and without looking slutty was a nun’s costume. But I cheated a little – I wore fishnets.
     I arrived in costume, habitually, at about six. Gina’s roommate Soo was getting ready to hit a party with her boyfriend, whom I met for the first time.
     He was rail thin with thick glasses and spiky hair. His name was Tan. Tan and Soo were dressed as matching devils, red capes and pitchforks, but the two of them smiled and held hands so much I began to believe that the only Hell they might preside over was the one for single people.
     I made a little show of fending them off with my cross and they played along gamely, shriveling into little screaming piles on the floor.
     They were on their way out when I arrived, but Gina was still getting dressed, putting on the finishing make-up touches in her Cats-but-not-Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-Cats costume. She had on a skin-tight black body suit, black high heels, a red collar with a tiny jingle bell and kitten ears on a band in her hair. She’d hair-sprayed her curls back and it looked suitably tousled. She’d painted a small black dot on her nose and was drawing thin whiskers on her cheeks.
     "Hey, Heather! You drove away the demons."
     "I think I did," I said. "I forgot to bring you Friskies. Will a communion wafer do?"
     "I’d rather have cat-nip," Gina said. "Rolled up in little papers that I can smoke."
     She picked up her purse, a small leopard-skin bag, and we left. Gina drove us to Hula Huts on a beautiful, cool evening perfect for Halloween. It wasn’t too cold to wear a revealing costume and not uncomfortably warm under my habit and robes.
     We arrived at Hula Huts in time for an hour-long wait for a table. The mix of people waiting outside by the water and near the parking lot was a motley assortment that was just the sneak preview of what we’d find on Sixth Street. There was a mummy, one of the South Park kids (the fat one?), a pirate, and three, yes, three Monica Lewinskys with stained blue dresses.
     Gina and I waited in the cool breeze. I made little cross gestures to people as they passed and when Gina saw a guy walked by that she liked, she made a throaty purr. If he was really off the charts, she meowed loudly, always getting the man in question to turn her way.
     Two guys dressed as women (not in drag – this was the clumsy "raid the girlfriend’s closet and use balloons for boobs" kind of effort) came and started talking to us. One of them mentioned a frat party going on. He handed Gina a little card-stock flyer and then their table pager started flashing its little red lights and they went inside.
     "Try to come if you can make it!" the shorter, less womanly-endowed of the two said as they walked inside to claim their table.
     Our table was ready sooner than the hour we’d been told it would take. We sat, and I ordered a fajita tube taco while Gina went for enchiladas. We were both tickled, watching people inside and outside on the pier in their costumes, drinking lots of drinks, acting out their characters. Halloween, at least at Hula Huts, was not a kids’ holiday.
     The food was fantastic and far too much, but it was washed down well with two rounds of strong margaritas. I was woozy by the time we finished eating and I had to whip my little calculator out of my purse to figure out the tip. My brain couldn’t grasp the numbers, and even as I tried to enter them into the little solar-powered Casio, I kept screwing up the decimal point.
     Gina was driving and if she wasn’t sober, she didn’t show it. I didn’t think about it then, but a good many of our nights together revolve around dining, drinking, then driving. I don’t think there’s a twentysomething in Austin who hasn’t driven drunk. They city’s public transportation isn’t exactly suited to getting the drunks home safely.
     We navigated through the heavy traffic toward downtown and had trouble finding a spot even in the pay lots. We ended up a good many blocks from Sixth Street and had to pay four dollars to a withered old lot attendant.
     "You ladies have a good evening," he rasped. We passed the warehouse district on our way and I was disappointed to see so few people running around. It wasn’t too much of a step up from the average Saturday night.
     As we crossed Congress, however, I started to notice the different. Many more people were dressed up in elaborate costumes including Naked Guy, wearing a body suit with extremely anatomically correct equipment hanging near to the ground. There was also a fully decked out Borg from Star Trek and a Xena complete with sword.
     As we hit Sixth Street and started heading East, we hit the multitude. Thousands of people were milling, a few feet at a time. It was a kind of impromptu parade – the people walking walked and many of them were in costume. But there was an almost equal number of people keeping off to the side, standing still and occasionally taking pictures of people with good costumes, or in the case of Gina and I, a pretty face. It was a great opening line for some guy: "Let me take your picture!" and he could hide behind his camera, shoot the snapshot and brag to his friends later.
     Gina was popular among the amateur photographers.
     Police barriers separated the middle of the street creating two separate sides. People came and went, east and west, some waving to the other side – costumes passing in the night.
     The sheer number of costumes and the energy of being pushed around in a mass was exhilarating for us, but also a little tiring. We finally retreated to one of the dozens of bars open for business. They had drink specials on well drinks and Gina and I went right down to it. I was getting hot under my robes, so I took off the habit as we drank.
     "Mother may I?" someone behind us yelled as I removed it. Gina laughed and patted me on the back.
     The guy and his group joined us and began buying us drinks, making idle conversation. Gina didn’t seem to mind letting them pay for drinks, and I followed her lead. We continued consuming: I counted (between the two of us): two Long Island Iced Teas, three kamikazes (one for me, two for Gina), three buttery nipple shots (two for me, one for Gina) and the Shiner Bocks that started us off on the magic journey.
     I got up to go to the bathroom and stumbled off the stool as I did so. Inside, in a plain and dirty stall, I nearly lost my balance and brained myself. I imagined what would have happened if I’d fallen, cracking my head open against the side of the toilet. Halloween, I thought morbidly, would be a perfect night for something like that. Nun dies on the can.
     Gina was ready to go when I emerged. I put my arm around her for balance and we again braved the outside crowd.
     We headed back the way we came, music from a dozen different clubs and bars providing the back beat for the costume parade. I laughed loudly at a couple dressed in Elizabethan glory. A round white head from the Jack in the Box restaurant mascot passed by and by then I knew I didn’t have to be drunk to appreciate the surreal, but it certainly helped.
     "I was gonna go to the frat party, but I think we’re both too drunk," Gina said. "Do you agree?"
     I nodded sickly, still leaning on her as we walked through the throng of people. We saw a fight begin and kept on walking as people began to push in all directions. The police looked on and didn’t move, then came in at full force, holding back a woman who was screaming and spitting at another girl.
     By the time we reached Congress Street, twenty minutes later, the crowd was almost non-existent and we could walk freely. I looked at my watch and was amazed to discover it was after 2 a.m.
     We walked to Gina’s car and she took me home, driving by some miracle that helped us both from getting killed.
     She took me straight to my apartment and I didn’t think about my car or how I would get it in the morning. Sleep, or just lying down and keeping the swimming world steady seemed more important.
     We wandered into my one-bedroom apartment. I could hear the loud thump thumping of the upstairs neighbor playing reggae music. I offered Gina beer from the fridge that had been leftover from a long-ago party. It was pretty much the only liquor I had in the house. She took a Shiner and began guzzling it down. I abstained, preferring to avoid tempting fate.
     "Music!" Gina said. "And not reggae."
     She thumbed through my CDs and put on my Janis Joplin Greatest Hits disc. She hadn’t head all of it, but we both scream/sang "Piece of My Heart."
     We lay together on the futon and the ceiling with its mottled specs drifted lazily above me, the world spinning at several thousand miles a second as I tried to stop feeling it.
     "Heather, you drank a lot," Gina said, turning toward me.
     "I know," I said, defeated.
     "You gonna be okay?"
     "I feel okay, Gina," I said. "In fact, let’s go out again. Let’s go back. I’m more sober now."
     "You’re crazy," Gina told me. "We were lucky to get home. I don’t know how I made it back."
     "Are you still drunk?" I asked.
     "I don’t’ know," Gina said. "A little buzzed."
     "Do guys always act that way?" I asked.
     "What way?"
     "Buying you drinks, talking to you, just giving you all this attention."
     "I think I’d be very unhappy if guys didn’t give me that kind of attention," Gina said, sounding very serious. "I crave it. Maybe just because I’m used to it, but I expect men to give me total attention. To desire me, even if they can’t have me."
     "I can’t do that," I said. "I mean, I’m not you. You know that."
     "Why, because you’re not attractive?" Gina asked.
     "It’s not about being attractive, it’s about how you carry yourself. And yes, some of it is beauty. I don’t look like you, Gina," I said. I didn’t know why I was saying all this. It wasn’t exactly unfamiliar territory.
     "You have your own look," Gina said. "That doesn’t mean more or less attractive. You’re a different person."
     "I’m not a knockout," I said. "And I accept that. It’s fine. But guys don’t look at me the way they look at you."
     "So make them look at you," Gina said. "It’s all just attitude."
     I shut up. I was a little angry. A statement like that is an easy one to make for someone who has a body and a face to back up that attitude. I was too woozy to argue. I didn’t want to keep talking about this.
     "Heather," Gina said, getting my attention back.
     "What?"
     "You’re pretty. Do you not believe that?"
     I shook my head. "It doesn’t matter. I never made it a priority to be pretty."
     "You have good lips and beautiful eyes," Gina said.
     "Uh huh," I answered.
     "And you’re smart. And you’re a good writer."
     "Yeah, whatever," I said.
     "How come you can’t take a compliment?"
     "I can. I just… I don’t know. I’m drunk, Gina. I can’t, you know, think right now. It’s just, they’re just words. Doesn’t mean anything in the real world."
     "Oh," Gina said.
     And it happened. I was turned away, listening and responding as I faced the ceiling and I saw her move toward me. I turned and she was there, her face next to mine.
     She moved in slowly, inexorably, her eyes wide open as I froze in surprise. She leaned to me, the fragrance that laced her neck cutting through my drunkenness. Her lips pressed against mine and it was soft for just a moment as they met mine. Then the pressure was harder as her teeth bit my lower lip. I responded, maybe mechanically, but responding just the same and unsure why. It was just… nice, like falling asleep or coasting on cruise control. Just giving up my presence and letting this warmth take over. Her tongue touched mine and then the world returned, suddenly, sickeningly. I jerked back, as if waking, and rolled away.
     "Gina," I said, my thoughts jumbling and multiplying. "What was… what did…?"
     She was getting up and going to the bathroom. I heard the door close and the running of faucet water. I buried my head in the cushion. The sudden motion had made me feel queasy. I took deep breaths and soon I began to drift.
     Even as I was aware of the muffled sound of the bathroom door opening and footsteps coming toward me, I knew I was losing this world. The sounds of the room followed me down the rabbit hole, and I was surrendering again, this time to sleep instead of a kiss.