First, I need to clarify that Jolie also had a kick-ass costume.

Second, Erica and Jolie had a shitty shitty time of it, being that they were stuck outside my house on Halloween night due to a series of unfortunate accidents. Despite that they were accidents, I feel responsible because I was a hostess and the Castro Halloween was my party and I wanted you all to have a good time (as opposed to having to fight off drunken clowns with your bare fingernails). So if this blog can offer anything in the way of virtual aloe vera to your neglect-and-clown-burned skin, here it is.

As with high school dances, I enjoyed the getting ready more than the actual event. I liked the part where my apartment was packed with people throwing wine on each other (okay, really just on Erica, who gets her props right now for being an incredibly good sport about it) and glitter on themselves. But after that it was all crowds and about sixteen thousand Japanese tourists with video cameras. There were some rocking costumes – Big Bird and Cookie Monster come to mind – but there were also way too many people in street clothes roaming around just gawking. I mean, come on. Is it hard to paint yourself a color at least? I mean even Jason threw body paint all over himself and went as Arts’n’Crafts.

So, okay, I skyed out early, which was actually a fortunate impulse since I had a passed-out Kimmie in my apartment. Not that she particularly needed me – my favorite thing about drunk KJ is her absolute calm. “I think I’ll throw up now.” And then she does, once, in the correct place, and it’s over. No fuss, no muss. Perfect for her busy lifestyle.

Anyway, getting all that sleep and taking good care of my hangover this morning means I get to go see the buffalo in GGPark today. Which…is a nerdy thing to prefer over the drunken masses. But it can’t be helped.

Excellent costumes, all y’all that I saw, especially KTV, KJ, Erica, Jacob, Brian and Lily.

It turns out SF State has a Halloween Dance. Capital letters included.

Come on! I have a chance to go to a school dance! Screw you people. I’m getting a corsage and a pimply date and a spangled handbag and hitting the decorated gym with my whole soul. You can all find yourselves someone else’s apartment to ransack.

…

…

Okay, just kidding. I guess. Sigh.

I guess it was inevitable, being that I work near his house, I’m friends with his friends, I take bart near his work, I hang out at his hotspots…

I ran into the Sicilian today.

To be honest, it was so anti-climactic that the sentence hardly deserves its own paragraph. We walked, we talked, I made fun of him. He didn’t make fun of me, and that was really the only thing that might be called a reference to the whole issue of our relationship/breakup – not mocking me, because I am the Wronged Party.

I have such a nice life. I’m doing stuff all the time, instead of waiting for him to get home. It felt wrong to have him in it now, in my neighborhood, or sitting across the table from me; like if a Saturday morning cartoon bought you a cup of coffee. We even talked about our friend in common, Frank, who I went out with for a while post-breakup.

Where is the pain? Where is the shouting? Where is the china plate flung at his unsuspecting head? I didn’t even feel my teeth get kicked in, except for that first unpleasant jolt. And now it’s over, and now I’ll stop talking about it, I promise. Upon cautious examination, I have determined that none of my teeth are broken, and my smile is exactly the same.

What I do have: a Halloween party in three days.

What I don’t have: a costume.

Help! I have a devil wig, sort of, so I could use that I guess…but what else does the devil wear? Preferably something not big and stifling so that I can undergo my usual drink-induced full body blush without misery and pain. Also, I’d rather not carry a prop if I can help it.

I need a costume, like a hole in the head, except that would be lame. Best idea gets a prize.

Every so often I see someone who has one of the Sicilian’s features, like the beard or the crazy hair or the eyes, and it kicks my teeth in with a sound like air being sucked out of a plane.

I am so very happy to be through it. All I can remember is the wicked winter cold and the feeling of being in his life on sufferance. I have a slew of saved emails from Allen saying “Doll, I hate to see you waiting around all the time…I hate to see you stuck up in your house like a tower…”

The last month, when I was living in his room, there was a day I spent lying in bed. I couldn’t move; no energy. He hung around reading and playing on his laptop and watching movies and all the stuff he usually did, and I just laid there watching him or the ceiling, not thinking about anything. At 4:00 he went to work and I hugged him from the bed and stayed there. Finally, about four hours later, I got up and went outside. I walked around campus for a while with no sense of where I was going, and finally ran out of steam and just stood at a fork in the path for a good ten minutes with a head completely devoid of thought. Sat down for another fifteen minutes, I think. People would come by and stare and I didn’t really register much. Finally I climbed a tree just to be doing something. Stayed up there for a long time, in the cold with no shoes on. When my nose was too clogged to breathe, I went home.

I moved out a few days later, we broke up, things got better. I don’t know why I’m even thinking about it, except that it’s starting to get cold again and I walk by that tree most days after work and my office is still two blocks from his house.