Captain Morgan And His Wench

Aargh! Here’s a pic of The BF and I before Meg & Mo’s Halloween Party/Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.  It was quite the affair, and people really pulled out all the stops in the costume department. I think ours were the most fabulous, but I am biased.

I will forever be grateful to my parents for teaching me to be resourceful, and to my grandmother for teaching me to sew. With the exception of the skull-n-crossbones eyepatch, ring, choker and bag (Party City $20), and of course my sword (on sale at Joann Fabric for $6!), my whole outfit is repurposed or clearance items. I took a “Victorian Vampire” costume from 3 years ago, cut off all the pointy black chiffon vampire-y bits and replaced them with ivory lace (also on clearance at Joann for 50 cents a yard!). I added “cuffs” to my favorite boots with brown felt sewn into tubes and tucked into the boot tops (25 cents per sheet of felt!). My kerchief is actually a discontinued upholstery velvet sample ($1.99!). I had the tights and the belt came from some long-gone dress.

And how handsome is The Captain (again, biased). He managed to keep the wig on almost all night without melting. The hat he bought on Amazon had been smooshed in the mail, so he disassembled it, ironed out the creases, and put it in a safe place until I sewed it back into a tricorn. Zoe kept an eye on it for him:

“yo, when it’s not a pirate hat, it’s my pimp hat”

“What I really need are a pistol and a sword” and other random Halloween statements

One night last week while I was in Chicago on biz, The BF called me and we had a very serious conversation about our costumes for Meg & Mo’s Werewolf Bar Mitzvah/Halloween Party this weekend (we are going as Captain Morgan And His Wench). Right about the time that I realized that anyone overhearing this earnest discussion about eye patches and boot covers and the sewing of jabots and hats matching coats would think we were crazy, The BF says “What I really need are a pistol and a sword.” Now I had been having a very trying time at work, the kind of week where you think maybe if I blow something up or throw something out a window, I’ll feel better. So my new mantra has been “What I really need are a pistol and a sword.” It seems to be working for me.

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Someone in my apartment building keeps leaving bowls of Halloween candy by the elevator, and it's the highlight of my day.

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The other night I went shopping for the aforementioned eye patch and assorted Wench-like accessories, and overheard two young men who were quite dismayed over the inaccuracy of the insignia on the Star Trek costumes. Dude, you are buying a $35 polyester costume at Party City. Did you really think it would be authentic?

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My favorite Halloween costume as a child was 1977, 5th grade, Princess Leia. White turtleneck, white long-sleeved dress that my grandma had sewn out of a sheet, and a gold chain belt of my mother’s. I wore my hair in two buns that were more like munchkins than the coffee rolls Carrie Fisher sported, but there was no doubting who I was. We went trick-or-treating with some family friends in a nice development of endless cul-de-sacs in the next town. One of their neighbors was dressed as a tomato and she kept losing her newspaper stuffing, so by the end of the night she looked like a sun-dried tomato, only it was 1977 and no one knew what those were yet.  When we were done, our dads “inspected” our candy. Funny how the Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups were always “suspiciously damaged.”

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On one of our early morning walks, Meg and I were discussing how all the commercially available costumes for women are always “sexy”. Sexy Vampire. Sexy Nurse. Sexy Angel. You can even be a Sexy Detective. It’s all so very wrong. Mariska Hargitay is a sexy detective. A grown woman in a miniskirt, crop top, white knee socks and a Sherlock Holmes hat is just pathetic.

We thought it would be a great feminist statement to buy 6 “sexy” costumes, cut them up and sew them back together as one patchwork outfit of misappropriated identities (you can take the women out of the women’s college, etc.). It never happened, but this text exchange did, a few days later:

Meg: I think I am going to be a Flight Attendant for Halloween

Me: Regular or Sexy?

Meg: Stop that!

Me: I don’t think you can buy a non-sexy flight attendant costume

Meg: I found one on Etsy!

So now I am going as a Pirate Wench and she is going as Joan Halloway from Mad Men (insert slight jealousy here). We’re going to be sexy without baring our midriffs, exposing our boobs or hiking up our skirts.

And we will inspect our own candy, thank you.

And by candy, I mean cocktails. Happy Sexy Halloween.