Jack of Cups Saloon by Wesley Moore

Last Thursday, I was at one of my favorite Folly Beach oases, the Jack of Cups, talking Halloween with the Jessie, an impressively sophisticated twenty-something bartender who double majored in philosophy and theater in college, a young woman who can expound on Kant and Hegel as well as Kurt Cobain and Patti Smith.

I confessed that I rarely indulged in dressing up for Halloween, but that perhaps the most creative costume I put together was in grad school when I decided to transform myself into the personification of a libido. After I described the costume (black tee and jeans, white pancake makeup, red-laced fringed Lone Ranger-like mask, phallic walking stick), Jessie said that coincidentally she had been talking to three of her friends about doing Halloween as the chorus of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – you know, a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, a libido.

She went on to say that when she had mentioned the idea to someone else, the person had made a sour face and declared the concept “offensive.” What was really cool, Jessie claimed, was that her friend who originally had come up with the idea was biracial and loves the word mulatto and that she, Jessie, has been diagnosed with Ocular Albinism, Type 1, so coming up with a mosquito and libido would have been all they needed to pull it off.

I said, “Go for it. How humorously inappropriate for the politically correct crowd to chide, given the ironic brilliance of the concept.”

Naw, she had abandoned the idea for an easier one. She was going as David Bowie from his Ziggy Stardust days and her fiancé was going as the mid-70’s David Bowie a la the Young Americans album. She said she and her fiancé were going to make out at parties, which, I said, made delicious narcissistic sense.

I had just reposted my “You Won’t Believe These Killer, Innovative, Somewhat Offensive Halloween Costumes,” and when Jessie disappeared into the kitchen, I checked my email to find this costume suggestion: Sylvia Plath with cardboard box oven.

Now, that’s what I call spooky.

Anyway, last night I decided at the last minute to wander down to Center Street on Folly to see what was out there, hoping against hope that I might run into twin Bowies sucking face. No such luck, but I did run into Thomas Ravenel and Kathryn Dennis.

Southern Charm