Adventures of a Tofu Slut

I once won third place in a Hallowe'en costume contest at the CD store where I used to work. The funny thing was that I won even though very few people actually got my costume concept. I was supposed to be running with the stereotype and going as a Wagnerian opera singer, complete with the blond braids, viking helmut, spear and shield. Most of the people there thought I was Helga, from the Hagar comic.

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My first Hallowe'en costume that I can remember is from when I was 5 or 6, and I went as a Fairy Princess Ballerina. As you can tell, I was a very indecisive girly girl who pretty much only ever wore pink. I had a shiny satin pink tutu, fairy wings, a tiara and a beautiful stained glass wand that my dad made for me, which, because it was glass, was too heavy for me to carry in just one hand.

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My parents live on a small dead-end street in a very residential part of Victoria. When I was young, the street and the surrounding areas had lots of families with small children, so we used to have a street Hallowe'en party every year. Everyone who came would contribute some fireworks, we'd put a pot of hot mulled cider on the stove, the neighbours to the right would make caramel apples, the picnic table would get pulled out on to the street, the kids would all get sparklers, and we'd eat Hallowe'en candy and watch fireworks for what felt like hours. My favourites were always the ones that had more colours than you could count.

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October on the West Coast is a pretty mild time of year, so we never had the problem of having to wear winter clothes over our costumes. Instead we had to worry about the rain: my friend Jessie, going as a witch one year, had a black pointy hat covered in crepe paper, which bled copiously in the rain, leaving her with green streaks all through her hair and over her face.

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My last Hallowe'en trick-or-treating was when I was in grade 8. I went as a bride, with a dress that my mom made from a sheet, and a veil made of the remnants of a cape from an earlier costume where I was a princess (the normal kind of princess, which meant I could wear a cape because it wouldn't get tangled up in my wings). The cape had been made from some old kitchen curtains. The bride's dress has been used at least 4 times since, for later Hallowe'ens and other costume needs.

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In university our Hallowe'en ritual became to get fully dressed in character and go see Rocky Horror. Some years we even managed to convince people who'd never see the movie to come with us, in complete costume, because we did all the work of putting their costumes together. At the time I always went as Janet, because a bra and slip required the least effort, although the last time that we went here in Toronto, I branched out and did Magenta instead. By the time I left Victoria we'd ended up as the show runners simply by virtue of usually being first in line, the highlight of which was getting to mark first-timers with the lipstick 'V's, and of course being encouraged to be the most obnoxious people at the show.

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My parents don't really get anyone coming to the door anymore at Hallowe'en. There aren't as many kids in the neighbourhood (all the same people still live there, so the kids are all grown up), and parents are encouraged to send their kids to school-sponsored Hallowe'en parties instead of walking them around. This makes my dad sad; he loves to see the little kids in their costumes, especially because he works at the local elementary school, so they all get excited when they see him at the door (this is also why it's fun to grocery shop with my dad, because we get followed by little tiny choruses of "Hi, Phil!" all the way through the store).

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I'm not doing anything Hallowe'en related this year. I live in an apartment building, so I don't even have to watch for trick-or-treaters. At work, no one in the building is dressed up, not even the design students. The only sign that it's a holiday is the basket of lollipops at the front desk. This is wrong.