Once Upon a Midnight Bleary

An excerpt from the latest issue of Margin Mouth:

It’s pretty common-place for men to feel clever on Halloween by donning a dress and an idiotic, ironic grin. It is as though by wearing a dress the man feels that he is doing something absurd. “A man in a dress?! Inconceivable!” But just like Inigo Montoya said to Vizzini, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

It was the fall of 2005 the last time I decided to be clever on Halloween. Arlen, Aaron, and I went to go visit our friend Evan in San Francisco to make sure he was doing alright in his new city. The trip started routinely enough, with me and Arlen snuggled on my bed watching Willow. We departed at dawn to pick up Aaron and then made the eight hour journey to ‘Frisco* with bellies full of gas station coffee. The drive was uneventful and we were soon parked in front of Evan’s loft with excited, albeit sleepy, faces.

Evan showed the three of us around the ridiculously charming hipster-hole that he now called home. We ate vegan Chinese food and drank cheap champagne in an unusually well maintained park, then purchased revolutionist literature at an anarchist collective with our credit cards†. The day lingered on like a garlic rich meal until our collective spidey-sense began to tingle with the approaching possibilities of the night. Unexpectedly, there was already attrition, Aaron couldn’t stay awake and left the rest of us to whatever the evening would bring. It was sad to see him go, but we knew we had to keeping moving҂.

There were several options for the night’s entertainment and we decided to do them all. However, since it was Halloween weekend, we would need costumes. Evan directed us to the local Goodwill and we got lost in the racks of discarded identities and fashion faux pas. We made a group decision to all go in drag. Arlen found himself a schoolgirl outfit with an alarmingly short skirt and Evan draped his tender figure in an old lady dress and pearls. Your humble narrator went out in a lovely flowing black number with a form fitting floral top: We were all foxy and full of moxie.

Our --now granny clad-- friend Evan was a social firefly and already well established in San Francisco’s punk and hipster circles. This meant that we were going to ‘party hop.’ The first bash we went to housed two gentlemen costumed as Quail-Man (of Doug fame) and one lovely lady dressed as Carmen Sandiego. Arlen was all legs and chatting up the locals while Evan appeared to be in a heated debate with a six foot Ladybug. I was out back on the balcony doing my best Lester Bangs impersonation for an unamused Courtney Love and an amorous Cowpoke. After about ten bud lights, Evan ran in from the other room and yelled, “Let’s get out of here! There’s a cool party on the other side of town!”

There was a brief discussion as to who should drive, considering I was too drunk to effectively operate my vehicle. Arlen appeared to be sober, but I was a little dubious§. We all crawled in my Buick and motored into the foggy midnight of San Francisco.

It began to rain rather heavily as we tried to find the street we were looking for. My windshield wipers weren’t the best and it was becoming difficult to see. Evan was in the back seat on his cell phone trying to get an address as we blindly turned in the directions he was pointing us in. It was as we were making one of these blind turns that my car hit something solid and stalled out. We weren’t going fast so there obviously wasn’t damage, but we were a little shaken up nonetheless. It took us a moment to realize we had hopped a curb and were parked on the side walk. At that moment a cop’s spot light shot through the driver’s side windshield and illuminated the sign of the business whose sidewalk we had hopped. It read: San Francisco Police Department. We had crashed into the fucking police department.

A voice over the loudspeaker told us to keep our hands visible and on the steering wheel while another officer made his way towards the car. As Arlen rolled down the windshield the cop noticed we were all in dresses and shook his head.

“Have you boys been drinking tonight?” asked the cop, staring at me and Arlen’s creamy thighs.

“No,” we all responded in unison.

“Because it smells like alcohol in here,” continued the cop.

“Well, yea, I mean I’ve been drinking,” I stammered.

The severity of the situation hit Arlen at once and he put on his most collegiate voice and said, “Sir, we’re from out of town. The rain confused us momentarily and we hit the curb here. I apologize, Sir, my friends here have had a bit to drink and I’m trying to get them to where they need to go. --Officer, we’re just three guys in dresses trying to find our friend’s house.” The cop gave no response and said to keep still for a moment while he grabbed his partner. All I could think about was how inopportune it would be to get arrested in a dress. The other cop sauntered up to the car and had us roll down the window again. We were going to jail; there was no question about it.

“So, here’s what you’re going to do…” began the cop as he proceeded to give us directions to the next party**.

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*The locals hate it when you call it that.
†Hip!
҂I mean drinking
§Everyone seems suspicious to me when I’m drunk
**Which was lame and featured the musical stylings of Interpol.