I hadn’t gone to a Halloween party since my late twenties in Larchmont, a somewhat suburb near Koreatown in Los Angeles. It was a house party circa 2005. I was twenty-eight and dressed as a banana with white Mickey Mouse gloves. It was a full banana suit. I got drunk off whiskey and beer in a hipster house.

Most of them were too cool to dress as anything except as hipsters, which was a costume in and of itself. They wore all different ironic articles such as vests, trucker hats, and ironic message T-shirts. Even their mustaches and the Pabst Blue Ribbon cans in their hands screamed hipster. Many were artists, like musicians, designers in the movie/music industry, and plain old art school graduates.

And there I was, a professional delivery driver who told people he was a writer, sticking out like a sore thumb in a banana costume. Only my thumbs were covered with the Mickey Mouse gloves. I felt foolish, naturally, being one of the only people dressed as something. Not that I wanted to be the only schmuck at the party in a costume, but I knew it was a risk going to a hipster Halloween party anyway. A few who didn’t come there dressed as hipsters donned their unimaginative costumes, such as those of cowboys, pirates, or gladiators. Boring.

I spent over fifty dollars for that special-ordered banana costume in the mail. UPS delivered it to my Hollywood apartment. It wasn’t even sold at a Halloween store, but my vision saw a banana. My mission was to breathe life into the party, to loosen up the stiff hipster crowd, to impress the ladies. Who could compete with a costume like that? No one, as far as I was concerned.

The ladies were dressed as either hipsters themselves or as witches or devils or angels. We took a group picture at the party like it was for a baseball team, and I took my middle stance as the banana, the top banana. All that hipster alcohol made me pass out there at some point.

When I woke up the next morning still in the costume, my head ached, partly from a nasty hangover and partly because the costume made me sleep awkwardly. The banana nub on my head strained my neck. The host had no aspirin to alleviate the headache, but she adored me because of my outfit. I was flattered by that cute blonde professional singer.

It was my best Halloween costume ever, better than the hospital gown I wore about five years prior at a party up north, hundreds of miles from Los Angeles. My friend and I showed up in the cold weather to another house party. I wore just the hospital gown with a fake rubber ass sticking out the back. My friend came dressed as his usual asshole self. When I walked through the party with that big ass, people, mostly women, fondled those bouncy buttocks. They were there for the grabbing. I got even more drunk at that party. In my early twenties, what else was I supposed to do to ease my social anxieties? It was a pool party. I took a tequila shot from an ice sculpture and met a red devil woman with horns on her head. We made out on the diving board before I got too sick from drinking all that tequila. My world started spinning. I had to get up and leave her for the bathroom, but I couldn’t find it in that house of mirrors. Every door was tried until I finally barfed in the toilet before passing out in one of the bedrooms.

My friend found me sleeping on the bed and dragged me out of the house when I was still in the hospital gown. It was like he was stealing me from the hospital. That might’ve been the most memorable Halloween of my life, more so than when I was a kid, just tricking or treating for candy, going door to door like a salesman.

There were no great Halloween stories to tell from my childhood days. All I did was eat into a sugar high from mostly Snickers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a few candy corns here and Twix bars there, and sometimes a freaking apple, which parents should’ve been ashamed of distributing into kids’ bags. I had strong feelings about candy and what people gave me from their houses when I went trick-or-treating. My last year was when I was ten. I didn’t partake in trick-or-treating any time after that. If I did, it would’ve only added another layer to my everlasting arrested development.