halloween

What a crazy weekend. I have to give a disclaimer here: this is going to be purely a long recollection of events. I have no thoughts about anything other than it was all hilarious. I also know I’m going to use millions of superlatives because everything this weekend was the best.

Friday night was Adams House’s annual Drag Night. For weeks we’ve been looking forward to our tutor, Chris, performing Crazy in Love as Beyonce. Right before the show he knocks on our door and asks Melkis to be his Jay-Z. We convinced her that she couldn’t miss out on dancing on stage with Beyonce. So she frantically borrows some baggy clothing from guy friends and practices not cracking up while trying to look ghetto. She and Chris were set to perform in the middle of the show, so we had a few acts to watch before theirs. Before it started we saw baby Ethan in the most adorable pink outfit! He even had a little barrette in his cute wispy hair. The best part was that he was oblivious to it all and was as happy and charming as always. Oh, Ethan.

So Richard started the show with a gown whose slits were quite scandalous. Then a guy with better moves than most girls danced to Nina Sky’s Move Your Body. After him, the guy who was Catherine Zeta Jones-singing-Mariah Carey last Halloween came on as Christina Aguilera-singing-Celine Dion, and was even better than last year. Now I’m starting to forget the order of performers, but soon Chris came out as Beyonce with his tiny tube top (Melkis: Is that a bandanna?) and short skirt. I was getting really anxious to see Melkis go up and watch/hear everyone’s reactions because no one else knew she was performing with him. Then the Jay-Z rap started and she ran up to the stage; it was so so funny because Chris is about 20 inches taller than her, and at one point in the dance he whipped her around so that he could dance in front of her and she looked so tiny and fragile next to him. But she pulled it off really well and none of us could stop laughing.

After that there were some other really good performances, including our house masters singing A Whole New World as Aladdin and Jasmine (Melkis kept shrieking that it was her favorite Disney song). Their costumes were beautiful, and they sprinkled glitter onto the audience. It was so sweet; they are the most wonderful couple in the world. Afterwards we mingled with the other beautiful ladies, including Michael, our senior tutor who never fails to wear the best red dress; Bert, an awesome tutor from Claverly; and Bernard, who is the sweetest person ever. He’s our security/mail/everything man in Adams and he knows everyone’s names and is never not smiling. He also laughs at everything; I love people like that.

After Friday I tried to get as much work done as possible on Saturday so that we could celebrate Halloween. Instead, I slept in and took sporadic naps between lunch and dinner, and after dinner we went last minute costume shopping. We went through all the typical stuff—nurse, Marilyn Monroe, schoolgirl—before Melkis grabbed a fuschia wig and convinced us to get wigs instead. We couldn’t afford much after choosing wigs (Steph got electric blue, as you can see, and I took lavender) so we just got super long and gaudy fake eyelashes (Steph got blue to match her wig, Melkis got silver, and I took black with silver studs) and decided to wear our new stuff with all black outfits. Getting ready is always half the fun. We helped Steph bobby pin her super long hair under her wig, and she helped us put on our eyelashes. Jackie, as a quite bewitching witch, and Yonina, who also went the way of the wig (Amy: Yonina, I like your wig; it’s so messy. What were you doing?!), dropped by and after the obligatory camera-clicking we met up with Amy, Jen and Andrea.

Amy looked so fabulous; she was the self-described femme fatale from Chungking Express and was decked out in a tan trench coat, shiny knee-high black boots, sunglasses (which she wore all night, indoors and outdoors) and curly blonde wig. She completed the costume with a garter gun (I didn’t even know that existed…Amy: Wanna see my gun?) and a cigarette that she carried until the end of the night when it broke. I think she was already somewhat tipsy because twenty minutes after she first commented on our matching wigs, she exclaimed, “Oh! Matching wigs!” She’s hilarious.

We took the five minute trek over to A-entryway where the Heaven and Hell parties were. Hell was on the first floor and you pass Purgatory as you ascend the stairs to Heaven (I’m taking this description straight from my memory of Schmooze emails). We went to Hell first and stayed there for awhile; it was pretty fun except that the music wasn’t loud enough and I kept thinking that we could have compiled a much better mix. We stopped by Purgatory and Heaven but didn’t stay at either for very long. So after we left Hell Theresa helped us find the Crimson (I think I was heading in the wrong direction) but we didn’t get into the party because there was a guest list. It was worth it, though, to see Melkis tugging on the closed door, crying “I don’t have my ID!” and a guy coming up and simply knocking on the door to have someone open it. Melkis’s laugh is normally funny and prolonged as it is but she was pretty hysterical on Halloween; she just could not stop laughing. Then we ran into a guy dressed as Scooby Doo on the street, and for some reason I got into an argument with him about how he wasn’t the real Scooby Doo. And everyone else started singing the theme song. By that point we’d had enough of Adams’s Hell so we thinking of going to Currier (yeah...the Quad...) for their Heaven and Hell. On our way out we ran into some of the house tutors, who apparently told us to go home and I apparently said to the girls that of course they were going to tell us to go home because they were tutors, which I don’t remember saying at all, and apparently I kept insisting that I was sensible…which I think came about because everyone kept saying to me that I made sense. Which is a weird thing for people to keep saying to you, if you think about it. Anyway, in the end Melkis convinced us to go back to our room because it was too cold outside to make the trip to the Quad.

So then we had a mini-party with the five of us in our room, and I doubt I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. Jen and Amy requested that I blast Weezer and we were singing on the top of our lungs, with Amy impersonating Rivers at one point. I told them to take off their shoes because it was more fun to dance barefoot and Jen and I had to help Amy take off her boots, which was quite the difficult task. If there was anyone in the room below us, they probably hate us now. Then Melkis put on Beyonce, at which point I think we reached the height of our craziness.

[Amy dancing strangely but happily]
Melkis: Amy, what the hell is that dance move?
Amy: Oh, I'm frolicking in a field.

Throughout most of this Steph was so serene; she had the cutest floating, dreamy expression the entire night. I would put up photos of all this but there’s too many good ones and also I think I’ve embarrassed us enough.

Oh, an aside: Amy and I saw Rivers Cuomo today. Just walking along on a lovely, warm fall day. Sighs.