fake red suspenders - Friday October 29 1999    

My plans for being some sort of Wizard of Oz Tin Man for Halloween ran into a few problems this morning. There's only so far you can go with duct tape and tin foil. A metallic hat I'd made last night was, at best, simply the outline of a Tin Man hat. So I just said fuck it and went on something of a costume tangent, only beginning with the idea of being metallic. With Kim's help, I put together an outfit consisting entirely of Kim's clothes. One of these was a form-fitting pair of black pants overlain with a silvery grid design. Kim's most silvery article of clothing was a simple leather miniskirt (a hand-me-down from Aunt Betty) which looked good over my shoulders. I tucked my hair into a tinfoil & duct-tape cap beneath that weird abstract woodsman's cap and painted my face silver using some of Steph's aluminum powder face paint. Finishing touches included a string of plastic beads and a little hollow-headed Lego™ action figure strung on bicolour telephone connection wire around my neck. I ended up looking like a metallic superhero. Kim and I walked Sophie around the block as I made a few last minute additions and alterations and little kids waiting at the bus stop waved at me like I was some sort of celebrity they couldn't quite place.

She grumbled a little about it, but Kim drove me to work. When she let me off, she said it felt as if she was dropping off her little kid at school on Halloween day. By the way, when did Halloween become an adult's holiday? I never remember adults getting dressed up for Halloween back when I was a kid.

Costume participation around the office ran at about 60%. Everyone who had worked there at least six months was dressed up, with the exception of Developer Dave. It seemed that some of the newer people didn't really believe that they were expected to come to work in costume. The vast majority of the costumes were obviously rented from costume suppliers and didn't vary from the usual traditional Halloween characters and recent movie characters. When people asked what I was, my answers ranged from "Copy-over robot" to "gas burner."

At around lunch, a group of a dozen of us (or so) headed down to San Diego State University to visit briefly with Theo. Theo is big-haired surfer dude from Pacific Beach who works seven days a week as a field campus marketer, and it's his job to organize and run the down-and-dirty student-recruitment operation. His methods are varied, but today he was giving away free slices of pizza to students who would sign up and become members on the web site we've built for them. As he looked over the operation, Dmitri wasn't impressed, saying, "College kids don't want a slice of pizza. They want to get laid! We ought to be handing out free condoms and displaying pictures of attractive members!" Dmitri isn't the only one who is dubious about our company's grassroots efforts. For one thing, many of the members who are signed up at kiosks these days do so upon computers that aren't even hooked up to a network; they're stored in a local MS Access database which is synchronized with our central database at a later time. Whether or not these people ever actually go to our site is seriously at issue.

Nothing much happened while we were there except for repeated comments made by my male co-workers concerning the beauty of the many young female students. Kevin the DBA was, as usual, the one most affected; beautiful women seem to cause him something akin to pain.

Me in Ocean Beach this morning.

Me with Sophie.

Me at the office.

In the evening, there was a company party planned for a club called the Onyx Room in the very center of downtown San Diego. Since I didn't have any transportation of my own, I decided to ride with Kevin. Unfortunately, he was running late as always, doing last minute database maintenance stuff on the ever-temperamental monster. So I continued working, drinking beers as I did so (there were plenty in the company refrigerator).

In Ocean Beach, we found co-worker Al hanging out with Kim and neighbor Lisa back at my place. After a little of this and that we decided we were too messed up to drive, so we called a cab. Five of us rode together and it was awfully crowded in that back seat wedged between Kevin and Kim.

On the street in the heart of downtown, we paused on the street to snap a few disposable camera pictures. For one, Kim bent over and I spanked her in keeping with the glittery "Spank Me" sticker she'd attached to the rear of her Dorothy skirt. Al, dressed as a nun, took the picture. A toothless old man saw the scene and was horrified, telling Al, "You're dressed as a nun and you take pictures like this!"

The Onyx room was in the basement of one of the downtown buildings. Thoroughly pervading the place, starting at the front door, was an efficient squadron of unfriendly bouncers clad in black tee shirts with red faux-suspender stripes. Moronically, they examined our IDs and quizzed each of us on our age as we entered.

The food was pretty much gone by the time we arrived, but we could still get drinks. Karin the Over-Involved Membersupport Girl was handing out three free-drink tickets per person.

Next came a series of best costume contests, two of which I was called on stage to compete for. The first was a "most original costume" contest, and for this I claimed I was a "piece of metal," and then gave a dreamy monologue about life as a piece of metal. In this competition I narrowly lost out to data analyst Barbie, who was impersonating a socially-challenged girl character from an upcoming movie, hands in armpits and everything.

The next competition in which I competed was for best multi-person theme. When it came our turn to show off, Kim and I skipped to the front of the stage as though it was the Yellow Brick Road and then, as a twist, I bent her over and spanked her. The crowd went crazy and we would have won had Karin the Over Involved Membersupport Girl over-estimated the crowd's reaction to the girl scout contingent and mistakenly given them the victory. But none of this really mattered; it was the process that made it all fun.

Kim was amazed by how much the company had grown since Halloween last year, when the company party was a sparsely-attended event held at the Grand Pooh Bah's La Jolla apartment. The size of the company and my position as an "oldtimer" within it actually seemed to threaten her.

Later on, Kim decided to smoke some pot. She had her little one-hitter with her, and she thought she could get away with smoking it right there in the bar. I didn't think she should, but she was determined. On her second attempt at lighting her faux-cigarette, one of the faux-suspender bouncers descended, demanding to know where the cigarette had gone. She played dumb, acting as though she had no idea that people can't smoke in California bars. She managed to convince the bouncer to let her stay, but it was a close one.

After awhile Kim and I switched to drinking martinis and Manhattans. There was some dancing to techno music and occasional bouts of conversation.

A group of fetishistically-dressed girls arrived, one being a hot blond chick with a stethoscope that ended with a dangling dildo. The nurse wasn't very friendly though, urging me to suck on her stethoscope dildo when I mentioned that I wasn't feeling well.

After most of the people had gone, Kim and I decided to leave. As we waited for neighbor Lisa near the steps leading up to the door, I sat in a chair with Kim in my lap. My eyes closed for a moment and when they opened there was an angry bouncer standing there, his red faux suspenders looking particularly absurd. "There's no sleeping allowed in here!" he decreed. I was absolutely sick of the place and didn't care one way or the other, so I said, "Okay, Mr. Security Guy!" The security guy was really angry now, and he bellowed, "Okay, that's it. I caught you smoking in here earlier [pointing to Kim] and now you [pointing to me] are sleeping in here and giving me lip. You're out of here!"

So that's how we got kicked out of the Onyx Room. On the cab ride home, Kim expressed her dismay with the uptightness of San Diego's downtown and the adjacent Gas Lamp district. The ridiculous zeal of card-checkers, the oppressive influence of bouncers, the overall stifling atmosphere, it's all alien to someone used to the laid-back bar scene of a place like New Orleans (or even Charlottesville!). Kim has asked around to find out why San Diego's downtown is so stiff & uptight, and the answer from those in the know is that San Diego businesses don't pay off the cops as much as other businesses in other cities do.

I spank Kim on the street in Downtown San Diego.

Neighbor Lisa chats with one of the VPs of Corporate Development.

Kim and one of the new developers, a guy named Don. The picture would have been better had Don's priestly white square been as visible as Kim's fishnets.

A Manhattan in the hand is worth a dozen in someone else's.

Sweaty armpits after dancing excessively.

I kiss Kim's fishnet stockings. The sombrero belongs to Peter the Developer.

Peter the developer and some unknown new blond employee. I have a Miss America sash in my hands.

John the Editor dude dressed as what Kevin would term a "slutita." The girl is Christina, one of the new community serfs.

Al as a drunk nun.

Front to back: the Director of Engineering, one of the VPs of Corporate Development, and Sherms the Web Designer. The VP of Corporate Development is dressed as a world wide web concept piece, complete with AOL 4.0 installation CD.

Left to right: Christina the community serf, Kevin the DBA and Don the Developer.

Al surrounded by fetishistically-costumed co-worker chicks.

One more for the liver.