Halloween and High Hair

Modern transportation was not built for high hair.

We’d been invited to an “underground” Halloween party in the east village, which was to be video taped and aired, somewhere, long before party revelers began posting GRWM videos on TikTok, years before the internet was even a thing, and video cameras were still rather large contraptions.

Costumes were required for this event, invitation only. Many of our friends were in, or on the fringes of the burgeoning punk rock music scene. My friend Janis had a band, Janis and the Bumble Bees, and her current husband was Harry Toledo. Her late boyfriend was Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, who overdosed on a concoction of methadone and cocaine, though some people speculated he was robbed of his rather large meth supply, and murdered. Another of the friends was involved with Joey Ramone, from The Ramones.

Luckily, I had begun to meet a fascinating collection of theater people who popped into and shopped at S&S since I started doing the buying for the store. We were about to expand into a newly vacant space right next door, it would be easy to break through the wall, and it would be a big step up from Schlock to Savvy-Shopper’s Secret. One of those shoppers worked at Eaves Brookes Costumes, where many of the shows stored their clothes, where they were then rented to other productions of that show, out of town, on the road, or on occasion, a Halloween party goer. Sami and I decided to be King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and we rented period-appropriate costumes.

I knew where to buy the make up and beauty supplies, I was enjoying the insider perqs of the broadway and tv business. I spent about 3 hours on my shoulder length hair, teasing the living daylights out of it with a rattail comb to make it pouffier, bigger, higher. I sprayed it with layers of lacquer, and sticky white hair fibers, and wrapped it around a floral arranging mesh. I had to duck, walking in and out of door frames.

Next was applying the whiteface makeup, clown makeup, which would be softened by brushing, a lot of brushing with a fan tail brush, and sponge blenders, from my forehead to my nipples, neck and ears, and shoulder to shoulder. I got not one, but 2 kinds of face powder: the kind that comes in a neat little compact, that you press into the skin; and another type that comes in a round little box, with a fluffy pouff, that's heavily scented, and loosely packed and dusted on. I thought, this can't be good for my lungs, as powder flecks filled my throat and made me cough. i took a drag on my cigarette.

I rouged my cheeks, first by pinching them, then by patting lipstick into 2 red dots on the apples. I painted on precisely drawn, perfectly bowed lips,and applied lipstick, blotted, lipstick, blotted, until my lips were deeply and garishly stained, and I’d managed to get all the color off my front teeth.

But woe was me.

There upon my bosom, was an angry red pimple that hadn't quite reached its head yet. I layered on Clearasil and Calamine, concealer and ever more powder, to set all those other layers. Alas, every new layer I applied to it, made it redder and angrier, until I just had to surrender to it and leave it be.

I was inclined to stay home and get out of the get up, I was miserable wearing a corset, and panier hoop, and who the hell would fit into the elevator in that dress and with that hair? As per usual, Sami cajoled me into going.

We had rented a limo for the occasion, the NYC subway was not ready for us, nor we, it. I had to sprawl across the back seat, with Sami scrunched against the door, propping up my hair, and my voluminous dress spilling everywhere there was space. Upon arriving at our destination, the limo driver helped untangle my legs and hoop, and crinolines, then grabbed my arms while Sami pushed my butt, until I tumbled out of the backseat directly into the glare of a camera.

Ooohs and whispers of “is it someone famous?” murmured through the crowd gathered on the wrong side of the rope at the club’s entrance..

The party was a lot of fun, and I looked great. We partook of the adult refreshments immediately, wearing that much clothing and makeup made me claustrophobic. Poor Sami looked more like Little Lord Fauntleroy than Louis XVI, and he parlayed frahnsay the whole night with a cute boy dressed as a sailor.

I remember seeing a tape of that party, I don't know where, maybe a rock n roll party at the Mudd Club about a year later, and my hair was unmistakable. And when I turned around, the camera had zoomed in on my big fat boob zit, and captured it for all eternity. Quel horreur

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