Single. — HALLOWEEN PARTY

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When I was twenty-two, I dressed up as a flapper for Halloween. I actually rented a costume, and because I’m tall, it was short. My hair was also short and bleached out platinum as part of the my-parents-are-divorcing rebellion phase.

The coif housed the headband with a feather perfectly. Speaking of feathers, my hair was more of a baby chick yellow color rather than what I had intended, which was an Annie Lennox bad-ass leading female look.

I truly felt like this costume was a huge step up from when my mom dressed me up as a bag of garbage when I was twelve (see image below).

My brother showed up in his everyday corduroys, a yellow cropped football jersey shirt, an Afro, and sunglasses. He walked down the stairs and struck some kind of disco pose. We all looked at one another with raised eyebrows and a stunned look of confusion.

“Um. What are you?” I was equally perplexed and pissed off that he put in minimal effort while I ran all over town completing my look down to the fishnet stockings and tappy heels.

“I don’t know. I just found this stuff in the costume box.” Great. He literally spent zero dollars. So typical. He’ll show up at the party in true Brando fashion, and everyone will think he is SO COOL.

We were all invited to a house party, hosted by a guy that my brother graduated high school with. My friend Ryan was going to pick me up, and he was bringing his friend Jack who I had a massive crush on. The big issue is that Ryan had a massive crush on me. But Jack looked like a movie star and went to the rival high school, which was really sexy in a very inaccessible kind of way.

We got to the party, and everyone had already been snacking on loads of specialty baked goods. You could hear there was an active keg stand happening with a brownie-induced audience cheering wildly.

I opted for a wine cooler because that level of class is what my costume called for.

The keg was in the garage, so I slowly made my way down the rickety wooden stairs … hyper aware that 87% of my legs were hanging out of the cobalt blue tasseled frock. When I reached the bottom, I was met face to face with Michael. Oh my god, Michael.

Flashback to seventh grade, when I accidentally left my binder in the girls’ bathroom. Some horrible pre-teen found it and delivered it to Michael, a sixth grader. All someone had to do was pop open the cover to see that the binder belonged to me, but it was the content drawn all over the front cover that had me wishing I could enter a witness protection program in Nebraska.

“I ❤️ Michael”
“Michael Forever!”
“Aly+Michael”
“Aly Krug”

I could go on, but you get the level of humiliation. So this love-letter binder of mine lands into Michael’s hands without me knowing. I was still running around school, frantically looking for this lost item when Michael approached me and simply handed over the item in question. He didn’t say a word, and on his face was a terrified blank stare.

Back to the Halloween party and ten years after “the incident”. Shit was still weird. I don’t think that situation is recoverable.

“Oh … hey Michael. (Tugging at the length of my dress) Um … how’s the party?”

Small pleasantries were exchanged and after I completely sweated through my dress, I returned upstairs to my comfort zone: The kitchen with all of the baked people. I immediately locked eyes with Jack and he motioned with his head to follow him. Which of course I did, because I was already drinking wine coolers so my good decision-making skills weren’t exactly intact.

He pulled me into the bathroom which was only lit by a Jack-O-Lantern plug-in night light.

We immediately started kissing, and his hands started to make their way up my legs. All I could hear were my flapper tassels swinging back and forth in a “she she she” kind of fashion.

I kept imaging those sex scenes in movies where the woman is sitting on the countertop, and so I used cinema to make my next move. I inched my way up onto the bathroom counter, and before I could say “kiss me, you fool”, I promptly fell into the sink with the faucet jabbing into my spine.

After wedging myself out of the sink, I heard a ripping sound, and I knew that I blew the crotch out of my fishnet stockings.

I tried to ignore how dysfunctional the situation was and began rubbing his arms with my hands. Correction: NOT my hands, but instead my full-length formal satin gloves. I felt as sexy as the lunch lady, elbow deep in some dusty pink rubber gloves with remnants of baked beans.

Just then, a massive amount of knocking rapped on the door. Turns out this was the only bathroom in the house. People were drunk and needed to pee.

We sheepishly exited the bathroom with a crowd staring in awe at the red lipstick smeared across both of our faces.

“Whoooaaaaaa! What’s happening HERE?!” An anonymous voice shouted out.

My eyes scanned the crowd and then immediately locked on my brother who shook his ‘fro head with sheer disappointment. This wasn’t the first time I had aggravated him with my dismal decisions regarding men. “Why do you always date MY FRIENDS?!”, he would shout.

Then I saw Ryan as he turned on a dime and exited the house. Shit. My spine is killing me, and my face looks like the Joker. The disturbed Heath Ledger one, not the cartoonish character played by Jack Nicholson that no one takes seriously.

Though clearly no one was taking me seriously. And now I’ve hurt one of my closest guy friends.

Jack disappeared. I guess that wasn’t the sexy bathroom sex he had in mind.

What I didn’t know is that worse things were on the horizon.

I made my way back to the kitchen and a group of folks dressed like the Scooby Doo gang were shoveling Scooby Snacks into their mouths and laughing hysterically. Rubbing my back and wincing, I decided to see if my brother was in the garage. I lost my ride, and needed to make sure I had a way home that didn’t involve walking down Ninth Street looking like an old-timey hooker.

Peering into the garage below, I proceeded towards the wooden stairs. My stupid flapper shoes reacted poorly to the puddle of substance on the top step, and what seemed to be in slow motion, my tumble started.

Time moved so slowly. For me. As a spectator, it probably looked like someone put a mannequin in a sling shot and aimed for the bottom step.

I remember thinking, “Grab the railing!”, so I did. Or I thought I did. What I actually grabbed was a rogue loose piece of wood leaning up against the railing. So naturally, I took it with me.

I continued to hit each step with a different body part and at one point I heard a thud, quickly followed by a low moan. I thought it was me, but then I realized the hitchhiking piece of wood gripped firming in my hand jammed into Michael’s ribs. He was writhing in pain on the floor of the garage, and I was laying on the ground … staring at him.

This scenario seemed impossible.

My hot face was chilling on the concrete as I took in the situation. The flapper dress was nearly over my head, and the stars of the show were the crotchless fishnet stockings and my ass. And my middle-school crush Michael who now hated every inch of my guts.

Just then, I notice my friend Ryan running over to me and he quickly pulled my dress down to its appropriate position. He helped me up and said, “Are you OK?!”. I nodded, trying not to cry. He grabbed my arm and shot it into the air like a rocket.

“SHE’S OK!!!”

A thunderous applause followed and if I had a superpower, it would have been combusting into tiny particles and floating off into space.

One of my heels broke off, so I limped my way over to Michael. “I’m so sorry. I honestly thought I was grabbing the railing, and then there was this piece of wood … and I guess I carried it with me down the stairs? I mean who DOES that (nervous laugh)”.

“Um, yeah, I’m OK.” And with that, Michael walked away, gripping his rib cage.

My body ached for days after that party, and I was not able to return the dress due to severe structural damage. It was several days before Ryan spoke to me again, and if memory serves, Jack found a girlfriend that wasn’t such a dumpster fire on wheels … rolling down a flight of garage stairs.

I ran into Michael at a wedding several years after that party. He was a raging alcoholic and chose that time to resurrect the wood in the rib situation.

Suddenly he was a real chatty motherfucker.

Now every time I see that infamous quote that says, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t end up with what you thought you wanted?”, it hits home hard. Not as hard as cracking your tail bone on a concrete pad, but close.

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