Like most people (I assume), I like to think of myself as young despite the fact that I (1) turned 30 some months ago, (2) have forehead wrinkles that look, charitably, like someone stuck their fingernail in a pan of rising focaccia, and (3) am asleep before 10 p.m. on most nights, save the occasional weekend. I do know that 30 is objectively not old at all, nor does being quote-unquote old have to dictate anything whatsoever about your life, but when I recently found myself sneaking out of a Reneé Rapp concert early in order to get to sleep by a decent hour—while the Greek Theater was still full of her cheering, mostly adolescent fans—I was forced to admit it: I may, in fact, officially be washed, as the kids say. (They say that, right?)
Maybe that’s why I approached Halloween—a holiday I’m not usually all that wild about—with such a fervor this year. In past years, I’ve thrown myself into Christmas decorating, perhaps the greatest sign of all that I’m approaching “white woman of a certain age with a stack of scented candles under her bathroom sink” age, but as Halloweekend (a phrase I have definitely not used since I was binge drinking vanilla vodka in college) approached, I resolved to answer one big question: Could I still have a 20s-style Halloween night (or a couple of them in a row) in my 30s?
I commenced my party schedule Friday night at a bit of a disadvantage, given that I’d gone out for a so-called chill dinner with a friend the night before that quickly turned into us tossing back espresso martinis at the bar across the street until the wee hours. (This, TBH, is how I party now as a 30-year-old; it comes on suddenly and with no warning, like wildfire, and I spend the next two to five days feeling absolutely wrecked as a result.) I slept right through my friends’ Halloween party, despite the fact that I’d already planned my costume—sexy grape—and ended up listening to my partner and friend group have fun through the phone while I sheepishly explained that I was simply too tired to drive to Los Feliz. (I felt bad bailing, but the great thing about having a friend group mostly made up of queers in their early-to-late 30s is that they will always encourage you to “practice self-care,” even if they’re annoyed at you about it.)
After this less than auspicious start, my hopes were even higher for my engagement on Saturday night: an invite-only house party held by some very rich Swedish guy who one of my friends happens to DJ for and managed to wrangle me into a month ago. My partner sensibly declined the invite, but I knew from prior experience that the vibe would be Kendall Roy’s birthday party to the extreme, with an open bar, a live DJ, a full-on candy room, and a ton of weird special effects and “alien visitations” of the sort you can only expect in Los Angeles, a city teeming with people willing to dress up in weird costumes for money and work the room at parties.