October: A month to celebrate the dark, play dress up, and be bad. I was recently telling a friend how my childhood obsession with black, tight, shiny things resulted in asking my mother to make me a Catwoman costume after seeing Michelle Pfeiffer’s feline prowess in Batman Returns. My friend replied, “Have you ever been to Kawaii Monster Café in Tokyo?” I said “No, but whatever the hell that is, I want to go to there.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the entirety of Gwen Stefani’s career, you’ll know “kawaii” means cute in Japanese. You’ll also likely know that the nation that has mastered the art of cosplay like no other is Japan. These costumes are no exception – they are so bizarre, so underworld outré, and yes, so very tight and shiny.
I blame the root of my fixation with tight and shiny things on the girls in Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love video from 1986. I had NEVER seen women who looked like that. Their tight black dresses, the slicked back buns, the lacquered lips – they looked like a gang of sexy black widow spiders.
I made a daily demand that my mother pull my hair into the tightest ponytail known to humankind on the top of my head until absolutely every. Single. Strand. Of my baby fine white girl hair until was perfectly smooth with no bumps. If it didn't pull my eyelids up so that it was difficult to blink, IT WASN'T TIGHT ENOUGH.
In fact, nothing was tight enough. Any clothing that was not essentially tights and a leotard could easily cause me to crumble into a sobbing pile of freak-out-melt-down. I didn't even wear jeans until I was 15 years old because I couldn't stand the way they gaped in the back when I sat down. I wanted garments to stay in place like a sheath over my body with out any of the dreaded "stems" (the seams) touching my skin with disgusting lumps. When I was 6, I once suffered my mother’s fury after returning home from a friend’s birthday party at Playland Skating Rink where she discovered I had shimmied out of my panties and stashed ‘em in my party favor bag to avoid the seam torture inflicted by soft cotton underwear.
Putting shoes on was an insurmountable obstacle in the morning routine of our household because socks bunching in my shoes caused me to throw myself on the ground, writhing and wailing. My mother will tell you that the day she bought me a pair of plastic glitter Jellies was a nearly religious experience for her. For those of you who don’t know what Jellies are, they are basically flexible clear plastic slip-on flats, and do not require the wearer to suffer those previously mentioned garments of Satan. However, the shoes that inspired a Gollum-esque obsession in my 6-year-old brain were my gleaming, black patent leather pair of Mary Janes. I was absolutely overwhelmed with their dark, shiny lacquered beauty, and they laced up with a big-ass ribbon. That’s because they were really tap shoes from Payless without the tap plates screwed into the soles. But that didn’t change the facts: that my shit was real fancy, and the other girls were suckers for failing to think of this brilliant idea before me. I’d tie that bow just tight enough to make my feet fall asleep, which was great, and no socks were required which was even better.
Despite my devotion to my black Mary Janes, my love for the Robert Palmer spider posse, and a killer Cat Woman costume, my ultimate goal was to be a mermaid. My mermaid ambitions absolutely began at Aquarena Springs.
It was a D-list amusement park in San Marcos Texas based around the wild and exciting party that is the EDWARDS AQUIFER, which is the source of drinking water for central Texas. It featured a glass bottom boat with a real live underwater mermaid show, followed by Ralph the Swimming Pig. Eat your heart out, Disneyland. One Halloween, Mom sewed me a velvet, sapphire blue, floor-length pencil skirt “mermaid tail”, shimmering with gold glitter puff paint scales. It literally bound my legs together from the hip to the ankle and I had to scooch along, taking teeny tiny steps to cross the room. It was amazing. Mermaids, after all, don't need panties.
In celebration of the season, here’s a fun list of bondage inspired furniture and decor, with a few fun extras to throw in to your trick-or-treat bag.
