HALLOWEEN HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY FAVORITE HOLIDAY. Ever since my parents divorced when I was two and they both turned into big-haired, low-cut shirt wearing excessive freaks from a David Lee Roth video, I wanted to be someone else.
Throughout the year, I’d take every opportunity I could to assume another identity. When my sister and I started getting allowance in the second grade ($2.50 a week), she’d go to the store and buy Lee press-on nails while I’d buy paper masks and make her pretend I was the Chinese foreign exchange student that was only temporarily living with her. A simple disguise gave me the freedom to do and say all the things that the real me couldn’t. Like, “You’re not my real mother,” and “Dad, your jeans look like leggings.”
As I got older, I did what all disgruntled kids with a penchant for avoiding real life do: I became a theater major.
I went to college at UCLA where I met my dear friend, Mike. Mike was six months away from earning his Masters in Playwriting and busy casting his thesis, a play about Iowa that involved a superhero and a young girl. I won’t bore you with the Commedia dell’Arte influences or the Freudian undertones but suffice to say Captain Blasto Comes to Iowa was an Aristotelian masterpiece… Or at least that’s what he told me. Looking back, I’m pretty sure we were just doing a staged reading of his Dawson’s Creek spec script. But regardless, I got the part and we became the best of friends.
“As I got older, I did what all disgruntled kids with a penchant for avoiding real life do: I became a theater major.”
Mike’s birthday is on Halloween, making dressing up and going nuts almost a moral obligation. Every year since meeting him (minus the year I was dating a Serbian warlord and moved to Germany), I’ve spent Halloween with Mike. He usually throws a dinner party/costume contest where everyone goes all out — he always dresses as Van Halen. Over the years, I’ve donned a myriad of outrageous looks hoping to win the Van Halen CD he autographs at the end of the night (as Van Halen, of course) and presents to the winner. But until last year, I came up short. In 2009, my Michael Jackson was boxed out by an overly zealous Nipple Slip and in 2010, My S&M Lego Fucking Another Lego came in second to a Chilean “Minor.” But last year, everything changed.
The week before Mike’s party, I was pretty convinced my husband and I were going as Casey Anthony and sexy Duct taped baby. I loved the idea of Jason’s mouth being sealed shut but I wasn’t particularly thrilled about spending the night in a less than flattering pink button down. The more I thought about it, the more I started to doubt our decision. Just as my husband was about to purchase his extra large corset from Trashy Lingerie, I called him.
“I’m over our costumes,” I said bluntly.
“Do you have anything with red lace?” I heard him say to someone in the background.
“Jason! Are you listening to me?” I shouted.
“Jenny, I’m just kind of in the middle of something. Do you think garter belts actually work?” he went on.
“Baby, we are getting different costumes. Put everything back and come home now,” I said calmly, as if I were talking to a monkey waving a handgun.
“But I found so much cute stuff!” he whined. I promptly hung up the phone.
Mike’s party was in less than five hours. In order to win the costume contest, I needed an outfit that would speak to Mike personally. I needed something that would strike a nerve, something relevant, something hilarious, and something scary. There was only one real option: Go as Mike’s mom.
Mike’s mom, Sara, is your typical sweet, good-natured, overly involved parent who everyone who isn’t related to her absolutely loves. She can light up a room with her personality. She is personable and more than a little outgoing. But from time to time, like all parents, Mike’s mom can drive Mike crazy.
Last year got particularly bad when she tried to insert herself in the planning of Mike’s wedding. Mike has no sisters and his only brother had eloped three years prior, so this wedding was going to be Sara’s one chance to throw the party of her dreams. Yes, she took Mike and his future bride’s wishes into consideration, but in the end, she was hell-bent on having things her way. Mike joked about his mother’s wedding fever and alluded to the fact that she was driving him insane, but never did he badmouth her in the way I would my mom. Mike was too PC to admit that his mother needed to be tranquilized. But having known Mike for as long as I did, I was able to read through the lines. Mike’s mom was becoming a monster. There was no Halloween costume on the planet that could get under his skin more.
“Baby, I am going as Mrs. Freedman!” I exclaimed as Jason walked through the door with his hands full of shopping bags.
“Wait, What? Noooo! I just bought my entire outfit!” he cried.
“I told you to put everything down and come home!” I said, annoyed.
“I thought you were kidding,” he lied, taking all his lingerie out of the bag and pulling it on. “How cute are these?” he asked as he fastened two satin bows to his hips.
“Fine, you can still be a sexy Duct taped baby and I can be Sara Freedman,” I said rationally and I walked upstairs to go through my closet.
Upstairs, I found an old house smock that belonged to my grandma, a black wig I rocked the Halloween I was Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction, and a pair of spectacles Jason wore before he had Lasik surgery. I sprayed the wig with white shoe polish to give myself some age, stuffed my house smock with bigger tits, and popped out the lenses of Jason’s glasses so I could see. When Jason walked in to ask if I’d do his eyeliner, he was stunned. I looked Just like Mrs. Freedman. We pulled out some old photos to compare and the resemblance was truly uncanny.
In costume.
“You look just like Mike’s mom!” Jason gasped.
“I do, right?” I said, staring at myself in the mirror realizing my husband in drag looked more fuckable than I did.
By the time we arrived at Mike’s party, I’d cut the house smock in half and added fishnets and added stripper heels to my ensemble.
“So I don’t get it, now you are slutty Mike’s mom?” Jason asked as we walked into the party.
“Jason, you’re a baby. You don’t have the ability to judge.”
We made our way through the crowd to Mike who was already three Midori sours deep. Horror washed across his face when I caught his eye.
“Are… Are you my mom?” he stuttered.
“Yes!”
“In fishnets?” Mike continued, looking me up and down.
“I wanted to sex her up a bit.”
“And what is that?” Mike said looking at Jason.
“Oh, I’m her slutty dead baby.” Jason explained.
“Wow,” Mike managed to spit out, before handing over his Van Halen CD without hesitation.
“Are… Are you my mom?” he stuttered.
We won the contest before all of the guests had even arrived. An hour later, Mike was huddled in a booth in the fetal position sobbing, but I like to believe that had little to do with seeing his mom in Lucite heels and more to do with the fact that he was turning 35.
Six months later, Mike was saying his “I dos.” The wedding was spectacular and everyone looked beautiful. After the ceremony, guests were invited to a pre-dinner cocktail hour in the adjacent banquet hall. Mike and his mother looked happy as they gabbed in a corner by the hors d’oeuvres. When Jason excused himself to the bathroom, I snuck over to give them both a quick kiss.
“Mazel tov!” I said, excitedly.
“Thank you!” Mike’s mother replied as if she and Mike had just wed.
“Oh, Mike, did you tell your mom about my costume this Halloween?” I asked, innocently.
Mike’s eyes popped out of his face. He scrambled, under duress, for something to say.
“What happened on Halloween?” Mrs. Freedman inquired as Mike slammed his glass of Champagne and braced for the worst.
“What happened on Halloween?” Mrs. Freedman inquired as Mike slammed his glass of Champagne and braced for the worst.
Oblivious, I continued talking. “I went as YOU!!!!!” I said proudly.
“What?” Sara asked, not following.
I clarified: “Well, like a sexy you.”
Just as Mike was about to stab me in the neck with his empty champagne flute, Jason returned and started praising the floral arrangements above the urinals. Mrs. Freedman blushed and immediately went into a long diatribe about orchids. Mike pretended to see someone waving at him across the hall and took off.
I haven’t seen Mike’s mom since his wedding. I seem to miss her every time she’s in town and find out about later it only through Facebook.
This year, Mike made a note on the bottom of his Halloween invites that simply said: “Try to refrain from coming as anyone’s mom.”
So Jason and I are going as sexy Mike’s dad.
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Jenny Mollen Biggs is an actress and writer living in Los Angeles with two poodle angel muffins and an asshole miniature pinscher. She also has a husband. Keep up with her at IMDB or on Twitter @jennyandteets.
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