Who are you supposed to be?

It’s always strange meeting someone for the first time when they are dressed as a monster covered in tiny pieces of green crepe. At a Halloween party in an unmarked loft apartment in Los Angeles, I saw a young woman getting beer out of the refrigerator.
“Are you a roller girl?”
“I’m one of the girls from Whip It, I don’t know which one, Drew Barrymore I guess?”
The girl was carrying six cans of Bud Light, and fell to the floor in a great crash, sending beer in all directions.
“Fucking skates,” she said, crawling to her feet, unfazed. “Who are you supposed to be? Are you Blossom?” I was wearing a floppy hat, a filmy pink nightgown shirt, and platform shoes.
“No! I’m Jodie Foster from the movie Taxi Driver.”
“Oh.” She looked confused.
“I’m a baby prostitute from the 70’s.”
The problem is, I know nothing at all about Jodie Foster’s character in Taxi Driver besides the fact that she was a baby prostitute in the 1970’s.
“Was your name Jodie?”
“I don’t know! I was a prostitute. I was twelve.”
“Oh.” She looked confused, and skated away.

Meanwhile, a monster sat on a nearby couch, looking melancholy.
“Who are you supposed to be?” I asked him.
“A monster,” he said.
“What kind of monster? Does your monster have a story?”
“No. I’m just a monster.”
“Halloween parties are so weird,” I said.
“Why?”
“There are just so many random people. Like those people. Who the fuck are they?” I motioned over to the stairwell, where two girls in eurotrash hiking boots and a man wearing white tights with his leg hair showing through were making their entrance.
“Those are my really good friends,” the monster said, looking even more melancholy.
“Oh. Oh no. I didn’t mean that. They look really cool. Um. So, what do you do?”
“Are we really going to have one of those LA conversations right now?”
“Oh. Not if you don’t want to.”
The monster looked at my tiny shorts, platforms and filmy shirt. “What are you supposed to be?”
“Jodie Foster. A prostitute. I don’t know. I have to go to the bathroom.”
I wandered over to the food table to eat a chocolate donut. “Do these chocolate doughnuts have weed in them?” I asked the resident of the house, who was dressed as David Carradine, complete with a gray wig, a rope around his neck, and a black dildo. About five people knew who he was supposed to be.
“The doughnuts are from Smart and Final,” he said. I stood next to a girl in a headdress, who was eating hummus and tortilla chips.
“Who are you supposed to be?” I asked.
“I’m Smokahontas,” she said, squinting.
I had a sudden craving for carne asada tacos. “Do you know where to get a burrito around here?”
She squinted again and rubbed her eyes, thinking very hard about Mexican food in some deep recess of her brain. Finally she said, “Oh, like Chipotle?”
“Um, sure.”
Smokahontas wiped some hummus from her cheek. “Dude, I don’t even know where I am right now. Sorry.”

I spent the rest of the party dozing on the couch next to my roommate, who was dressed either as a band geek or a majorette, depending on her proximity to anything that resembled a baton.
“What’s a majorette, anyway?” she asked.
“A hot girl in front of the marching band who throws a baton in the air.”
“I don’t have a baton,” she said.
“What about a drumstick?”
“Look, here’s a walking stick!”
“That walking stick cost $25 at Walgreens,” my other roommate said.
“Never mind, then. I’ll just be a band geek.”
I looked around for any strangers within hearing distance, and then I asked my question.
“Hey guys… do I look like Blossom?”
My roommates looked at me in shocked silence.
“Eek! No, not at all!”
Here’s hoping, for everyone’s sake.