Ho v. Slut*

I have had my costume for a year—since Halloween Spirit marked down their black wings. Add a big-schnoz mask and black clothing, and Corvus corvax is your uncle.

Since slut-ness is still all the rage, I considered being a Slut Crow—maybe fashioning a Madonna-esque bra out of golden beaks to wear over my shirt as an ironic expression of disapproval. (For one day of the year, beautiful women ought to look forward to wearing comfortable shoes!) But it’s hard enough just to be a crow.

At the first costume party, I wore the full regalia for about thirty minutes, but I was having trouble fitting through doorways. I couldn’t sit, and I was knocking over drinks and empty cups and dragging my feathers in the macaroni and cheese. At least the slut costumes don’t mess with people’s junk. I mean their stuff. How many Slut Catholic Girls poke their husbands in the eye with a beak?

I like a clever costume. I was fall, once, with fabric leaves glued to my pants and shirt, sparser toward the top, in a mask with tree branches sticking up, a few leaves waving in the breeze.

I have been a heavenly body (ironic unless you are really, really into sagging boobs and wobbly thighs), with a moon/sun mask and the solar system painted on my clothing. And I have been Medusa, with green skin and snakes sewn into my wig.

But Halloween was just not into me this year like it was my daughter, a petite Sarah Palin, a glittery, ketchup-bloodied Miss Maverick sash draped across her Target dress. Though the dress was expensive ($35!), it can be worn again to any spiffy function—with her tights and eight dollar red snakeskin boots. I popped the lenses out of some +3 dollar-store readers, put her hair in a bun, and stuck a rifle in her hand. And JimBob was her uncle.

At our first party, Serena's Sarah met up with my friend Kim’s Bristol, pregnant belly popping out of designer clothes, hands full of shopping bags. She put some of her son’s game balls in her bra, which upset the ten-year-old boy so severely that he vowed never to touch the balls again. (Pardon all the double entendres.)

If you’re a ten-year-old tomboy, being Sarah Palin is like being a pretty girl in a dress. And I like seeing my kid in a dress, even if she exemplifies wretchedness. But although it’s something she is not for at least 360 days in the year (my problem with the first half of Slut Witch and Slut Cop and Slut Majorette), it’s not enough for her to be an instantly recognizable star; she has to be an instantly recognizable zombie version of that star.

Enter Sarah Impalin.


I’m not an off-the- rack-costume fan anyway, so no way was I wearing those wings to yet another party. An hour before the Halloween dance at school, I was standing in my kitchen in a messy-hair wig, ironing a just-designed Cherry’s Liquors decal onto a ripped t-shirt. I added red Converse high-tops and exercise pants, and I made up my face with a black eye and a wad of sugar pasted below my nose. That's right, beyotches. I was a crack whore—and not just any crack whore, either. I was a Harford Road crack ho.

Maybe you're trying hard to find the difference between a whore and a slut. Here it is: sexy. There is no sex in the Harford Road crack ho—not even with the red bra exposed. I spent the entire night wandering from Beatnik to Goddess, Verizon Network to Zombie, Lucy Ricardo to Flapper, asking for "corters" for some "Pampers over Cherry's." While scratching myself. Crabs, lice, drug DTs—you name it, and I acted the part.

Marty accompanied me as my Harford Road pimp, a yo-boy wannabe, in size XXXL sweat clothes and sideways baseball cap, an outfit he found on three separate trips to the park.

I guess my inner beauty shined through, because Christopher Reeve felt something when I sat on his lap. And a devil whispered to me that he had just gone to the change machine and had a whole pocket full of "corters."

So, hey, listen up, my slut compatriots: Leave your thigh-high boots in the closet with your bustier—just for one night. Because you may turn heads with them, but I made a buck fitty.

*Ho. This time.