Halloween party prowling: 'I got a rock'

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

I’m on the dance floor, dead in the heat of an intense “Monster Mash” groove, when I remember my costume and get back into character.

Partygoers see the ‘50s-era grey suit, white shirt and skinny black tie, the glued-down hair, the cigarettes and scotch glass. They know Don Draper doesn’t dance. And he certainly doesn’t mash.

I straighten my lapel and clink ice into my cup before approaching a girl standing by a cauldron of dry ice.

“Nobody lives forever,” I tell her, pouring myself another glass of poison. In high socks, cargo shorts and a Palm Coast shirt, she’s supposed to be a tourist.

“Not much of an imagination,” I say, looking around the room at the wrestlers and witches, the referees and ninjas, the fighter pilot, Cleopatra and the bunny-headed bank robber. “Aren’t we all just visitors here?”

I must have laid it on too thick, because she hightails it, and I’m left looking for my Midge or Betty, or maybe Gertrude or Ethel, some lucky lady to receive the patented Draper charm before the night is up.

I didn’t spend $12 on this tie for nothing.

After hours of hard liquor and harder luck, a face catches my eye, and I glide toward the snack table. I extend my hands and snap on my Zippo.

“You look like you need a light,” I say, leaning down to Jaci and Ryan’s dog, who sniffs the lighter, then licks my fingers. I sneak her a pita chip and she slobbers around her snout, a move I interpret to mean she thinks that I look handsome.

When it’s late, I leave the party, tipsy and alone, just like Draper. Last Halloween, I dressed as a displaced college graduate, who dressed as L.A. Lakers’ center Pau Gasol. But no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t dunk to save my life. The jersey didn’t work. I wasn’t any taller or faster. I was still broke. Not once did someone ask me for my autograph.

Everything felt the same as it always had. It was Halloween in my hometown, and I knew exactly what to expect.

Outside my parents’ house, there would be a doormat that cackles whenever kids step on it. Some of the older neighbors would hand out those terrible black and orange-wrapped peanut butter chews to disappointed tick-or-treaters. And later in the night, “The Great Pumpkin” would air on TV, and everybody everywhere would be reminded that, despite their misadventures, nobody has it quite as bad as poor, bald Chuck Brown, with his lame spotted-ghost costume and his bagful of gravel.