Mixed Emotions This Satanic Holiday

I've always liked Halloween.
It's the only holiday that seems self-less- not about love and kindness and good impressions-- not that those are all bad things. But at Halloween, you can be whoever you want to be. You get to give things, expecting nothing in return. If you scare someone it's good and you can eat gobs of candy, if you want to. You get to make stuff and be creative-- always fun and there are no limits- which is really cool.

When I moved to the South-- the Baptist-laden South-- I had mixed emotions. How would my new neighbors deal with my skimpy costume selections, my creepy graveyard decor, my kitty litter party treats? Would I be able to find any women to accompany me to a haunted house- something I had fun doing every year in other states, with other neighbors?
I shouldn't have worried. We left the plastic knives and swords at home when attending church parties, had alternate costumes, one you could wear to the grocery store and one you put together with things in the bottom of your lingerie drawer and a length of black tulle from Wal-Mart, and found the best haunted house in the USA. Really.
As a creative type with a good imagination, dressing up is only half the fun of this holiday. Halloween also means lots of potential decorating. I think deep inside I am a frustrated Hollywood set designer, or a rich princess.
I've been adding to the Halloween house decor every year since 1994. Last year, we had a cobwebbed candle lit and black light shimmering spookhouse, a creepy rat- happy graveyard, screeching sound effects and Michael Jackson tunes ( oooh scary man) piercing the fog, mummies, skulls, robotic spiders and a shitload of scared kids. All in good fun.

But the best part of Halloween are the parties and the Haunted House. I found this one in 2002 and have been bringing a different group of women every year. Each year it gets better, and each year, our stories grow from:
We had beers and tequila shots at the Mexican place then waited in line for half and hour and screamed so much we were hoarse, then went out afterward and shot pool.
To: We had our DD bring us to an authentic Mexican place where the drug lords hang out, bought tequila shots for the mariachi band, and let the men buy us beer before racing over to the Haunted House where there was no line and even scarier monsters than the year before. After we ripped our fearless leader's thong, we went to a bar that was closing and charmed our way into the wigger room where we drank beer and shot pool for free, stumbling home at 3 am to sleeping husbands.
That's the edited version anyway. Let me just say, Netherworld rocks and when you get the right combination of girls together, it is one fun night out-- as long as being scared makes you laugh, like me.

Since I will be missing all the great Halloween parties this year, due to the ill-fated planning of a rather awesome writing conference, I certainly hope to get my fix of Haunted House and Ghoul's Night Out. Though this year, we'll need a new pre-spook party place, as last year the Mariachi's charged us to play and there wasn't a drug lord in sight.