That Halloween 2008

Halloween has always been my one excuse to legitimately line my eyes with makeup and paint my nails black. And like all previous Halloweens where we start making provisions for it weeks earlier but end up doing last minute costume shopping, this was no different.

The great thing was that all the guys didn’t have a firm plan on what they wanted to go as and I had already given up to go as a Catholic Priest, not because I couldn’t find a small boy to go with me, but because it came to a point that I wanted all of us to be in a uniformed theme.

1 hour at the shop browsing through costumes aimlessly, while waiting for Faith, Totti and Muthu, we finally decided to head down to Mustafa to get overalls for all of us. The plan was to go as escape convicts and orange overalls would be a good replication of the famed Fox River 8, just that we had six.

By the time we got there, the orange ones were already sold out and they didn’t have the sizes we wanted. It was close to pushing 11pm and time was fast becoming a luxury denied to us, so we went with ‘fuck it, let’s just get this’.

When we got back to my place, I realized that the moron at the store had given me wrong sizes for the overalls. I should have seen that coming. I said, “2 XL and 4 L”, and he managed to fuck that up. And I always thought building computers should be so much more difficult, guess I was wrong.

The whole makeup process was hilarious for them. For one, none of them had till Friday, ever had any lipstick or eyeliner on before. And for me, I was shamelessly powdering my face to look pale and smudging eyeliner.

Reznor: “Oh my gawd. You look like a girl.”
Me: “I think I’m damn chio.”
LB: “Dude, you either look like transvestite or you look scary. You look both now.”

By the time we had completed our abuse on the things Shisheido had strived to make glamourous, it was already past 1.30am. We were the montley crew of nail painting heterosexual men in a $20 outfit with enough eyeliner to write an essay with.

And it was off to Butter Factory.

Obviously no one really knew what we were. We planned for convicts but we ended up something closer to an air-con repair man cum painter hybrid. And we just made up the story as we got along.

Girl: “So what are you guys suppose to be?”
Me: “Air-con repair men. We got killed on the job when the air con fell on us.”
Girl: “On all five of you?”
Me: “Job hazards. Hey, I’d rather die of liver failure if I had a choice.”

The great thing was that we went as a uniformed group, so there was a pseudo-identity waiting to be thrown up. It was a crisis of sorts, because some people thought we looked like the Ghostbusters, minus the proton packs and some thought we were going as the Backstreet Boys.

Some excerpts on the people we met at Butter.

This one guy was dressed in a cloak, vampire tooth and he had a plastic knife. The cool thing was that he was totally in character, lurking behind unsuspecting people and all.

Me: “Yo, this is so not cool. Dracula needing to use a knife.”

He pulled up his plastic knife in a mock attempt to slit my throat.

Me: “Okay you can kill me, I’m running out of vodka. It’s a good time to die. Oh wait wait, let’s take a picture.”

There were a couple of cross dressers. One was this Caucasian guy in a sun dress complete with high heels and leg hair. And it was hilarious because he was evidently struggling with the heels and he was walking with his legs so spaced apart he looked like he was playing hop scotch.

Reznor: “Hey Butterfly, that’s one girl that can beat the shit out of you.”

When we got out of the club, there was this girl who had painted tattoos all round her body, which included two on her cleavage. I thought she was hot, even after discovering her tattoos weren’t even real.

Me: “They aren’t real?!”
She: “Nope. I don’t have any. Do you?”
Me: “I have, but you’ll have to lick it if I show you.”
She: “Okay!”
Me: “I’ll give you three choices, the pelvic, the butt or the back.”

Then it was Zouk.

I was actually pretty surprised that the crowd had thinned out substantially by 4am. There was actually walking space and I didn’t have to have anyone’s crotch brushed up against me while walking or standing by the bar.

The great thing was that there were tons of familiar faces, most of whom didn’t look too convinced when I said I was a dead air condition repair man.

R: “That’s not very Halloween..”

I pointed to two of my friends, one who was in some chambermaid outfit and another in what I believe to be Cheongsam.

Me: “And I’m sure housing cleaning and Ang Pow collecting is.”

Then there were the ones I guessed wrongly.

Me: “Jedi master! Nice!”
Guy: “It’s actually a Samurai outfit.”

Me: “Are you supposed to be a witch?”
She: “This is not a costume..”

I laughed so hard at that because for starters, I thought it was a guy in a girl’s dress, so to discover that not only was she not wearing a wig and a costume, but she was legitimately dressed to party, tickled me to not end.

Those were about the best of what I could remember because after one bottle of champagne and another bottle of vodka and some tequila shots slotted in midway, all I could remember about was seeing someone dressed as Liang Po Po on the way out of Zouk.

And I think everyone’s story started only after the party at Zouk ended. I know mine did.


P.S: The pictures are uploaded on Facebook. The link is on the right column.