Slash: A Halloween Costume

Halloween used to be a favorite time of the year for me. Well into adulthood, I still loved to create costumes, get dressed up, go to parties or boss permitting, wear the outfits to work. It was great fun, as was decorating the house. One year I made a headless man to sit on a lawn chair on the front porch. I stuffed old a pair of jeans, old flannel shirt and gloves with newspaper. The jean legs were stuffed into a worn pair of work boots with straw sticking out of the neck of the shirt, to complete the headless man. Over the flannel shirt, I put a t-shirt that said: Be nice to me, I've had a bad day. Too bad our cat, Puff, was white. Puff loved jumping on the man's lap for naps, startling the trick or treaters who came calling.

Somewhere along life's highway, I lost interest in the make-believe of Halloween. A co-worker, Millie, at a small glass factory where I worked as a Sandblast Artist, mandated that we all were dressing up for Halloween that year. Millie got busy telling everyone she had a great idea for a costume for them. She loved sewing and offered to make each person a perfect outfit. I had already heard about what Millie did the year before, so declined the offer. In fact, I told her, I was not going to get dressed up at all. What Millie did the year before when anyone took her up on the offer of a costume, was to hand them a bill for it the day after Halloween. No one was going to let Millie dress them up this year.

My son's friend, Brian, spent a lot of time at our apartment, including overnights. The night before Halloween as I walked down the hall to use the bathroom, I kept noticing Brian's knee high fringed boots leaning against the wall of my son's bedroom. That and my son's guitar gave me an idea and I got busy creating my Halloween costume.

I started with my son's camouflage hunting cap. I formed a cylinder of cardboard around the cap and covered the entire thing with black material I had laying around. It took a while to smooth the matertial and attach it to the cap and cardboard, using long stitches or basting to keep it in place. The rest of the costume was easy: Brian's boots (my sneakers fit easily inside for a snug and walkable fit), a hard-rock t-shirt I gave my son, a black vest and a heavy silver cross that belonged to one of the boys. I would wear a pair of my own jeans and a black shirt under the tee, because I am always cold and some gold bangle bracelets.

The hardest part of my impromptu Halloween costume, next to making that hat, was my hair. I took a shower to wash it and then set it in pincurls. It takes some time to section the hair into 1/4 inch strands, holding a finger at the scalp, rolling the strand from the top, neatly around the finger, flattening it and securing the curl with bobby pins. It had probably been thirty years since I set a whole head of hair in pincurls and I marveled that we used to sleep with a head full of bobby pins.

The next morning I pulled the curls out and started teasing them. To tease or backcomb hair, you put a fine tooth comb on the end of a stand, hair pulled to the teeth, combing towards the scalp. In the 1960s we covered that rat's nest of hair with more hair~after applying a ton of hair spray~to give our bouffant style a nice smooth appearance (kept immobile by another ton of hair spray). That Halloween my hair stayed messy. I donned the cap, just before arriving at work, pulling strands over my face. Instant Slash.

None of my co-workers knew who I was. They did not know, they told me later, I had that much hair. A good disguise. Trouble was, no one knew who I was supposed to be. The guy who listened to nothing but hard rock music, said he thought I was some heavy metal rocker, but did not know who. Duh, my son's guitar must have given me away, huh. The bosses son is one of those geeky, computer nerd looking guys. When he arrived at work checking out our costumes, he knew I was dressed as Slash from Guns & Roses. Go figure, as my son.used to say.

My last minute idea to dress as Slash for Halloween was a smash hit with my co-workers. Even Millie grudgingly said it was a good costume. Not as good as hers, of course. I think she was just mad because she had not been able to trick me into buying a costume from her and my costume did not cost a penny. Not even for a mask!