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Haunts.

On Friday night, I attended my work’s Halloween party. I helped to organize it (of course). I dressed as Amelia Earhart. I snuck away before anyone had had too much delicious, frothy, ice cream-y rum punch, took a train underwater and met my girls at MacArthur BART in Oakland.

I piled in as they cheerfully recounted the contents of the party supplies underfoot, and we drove to a pumpkin-carving party with four pumpkins rolling around in the trunk of the car. We carved kittens, queers, Rocky Horror smiles, childhood icons, and creepy grins into a diverse crop of hapless, multicolored gourds. While it rained outside, the air in their flat was filled with the scent of delicious spiced rum and pumpkin guts, and happy laughter.

On Saturday night, M & I snuck away to do the monster mash at a Halloween Ball thrown by Les Beaux, where we got too hot, shed layers, drank too much and were charmed by a costume contest almost as intense as the Giants vs. Rangers rivalry. In the end, these guys basically won it:

On Sunday, we trekked out to one of SF’s most popular neighborhoods for Halloween, Cole Valley, and it did not disappoint. While the petite (dressed as a sailor) demurred any notion of trick-or-treating at her age (um, twelve), we strolled up and down the streets, paused every now and then for a performance or to watch the Giants game on someone’s bedsheet (tricked out with a projector of some sort) or spider-webbed television set. My favorite part was the tiny dance floor for toddlers only. They were grooving their little hearts out and I almost died of cute. It was a great Halloween!

…and then the San Francisco Giants won the World Series! And it was amazing! And I honked my horn and we celebrated over a delicious dinner and I high-fived perfect strangers and we took a stroll through our neighborhood (the Mission) – set safely back from where the mayhem was taking place, and it was good until it was bad. My feelings about it all can be summed up cleanly with this question:

Why can’t we just have nice things?

Right, testosterone. Silly me.

Still, I told myself consolingly, most people were peaceful and non-destructive.

…and then we voted.

M & I researched and debated and voted our little hearts out, and stomped to our polling place, proudly scribbled in every last last line and smashed our stickers onto our chests, and I suppose it isn’t all bad, it could certainly be worse, but it could be much better and it’s not. Also? Some maniac polling place worker has broken into a machine, stolen the ballots and the memory box, some poor teenager’s cell phone, and run off with it all. Sigh.

Earlier tonight folks were reveling not far from us, celebrating Dias de los Muertos, and we walked through the clouds of incense and giddy crowds with skull-painted faces. Tomorrow the SF Giants will get a perfectly Norman Rockwellian homecoming parade downtown, and I’m sure I’ll be able to steal away from work to pop over and take a look, and then all of the city will be spent and exhausted and we will move out of it, but only just.

Bless it.

FEMME: RVCA slacks, Banana Republic shirt, Zara bomber. Vintage scarf, tomboy’s aviator hat, Dolce Vita for Target boots. HARRY FUCKING POTTER QUIDDITCH GOGGLES for $16.99. (In case you didn’t know, steampunk has made vintage goggles of any cool sort totally unaffordable.)

BUTCH (CASSIDY): RSQ denim (NY and London cuts), Red Level Nine cowboy shirt and vintage gun holster. Harley Davidson boots and Maverick straw cowboy hat. Bandana by Levi’s.

O C E A N!

H I G H W A Y 1!

H A L F M O O N B A Y!

M fawning over seaside Pampas Grass like she’s never seen it before in all her life. Watching surfers take to the waves at Moss Beach.

Lunch and window-shopping in Half Moon Bay. Gawking at the 1,535 lb. pumpkin that won the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off this year. Antiques at our favorite spot. Finding gold-flecked vintage ski pants and an equestrian scarf for pennies. Picking up fancy unpasteurized Manchego cheese and Spanish Marcona almonds to nibble on with a fresh loaf of artisan French bread.

Hayrides, haunted houses and petting zoos at the pumpkin patches. Frolicking about at Montara Beach, where the waves offshore got so big and so tall that they’d briefly block out the horizon, and where it was so clean that not even the seagulls bothered with it. A giggly sunset at Rockaway Beach.

There is nothing like being towed around a pumpkin patch by your flannel-clad, big-ass-boot wearing, grinning tomboy, is there, femmes? It’s one of those rare joys in life. M picked out 10 little tiny baby pumpkins, and each of us picked out one big one for carving at Halloween. The weather was perfect. A pinch too warm, in fact, but M remedied her woolly issues by taking a shard of glass off the floor of the antique shop yard and cutting off the sleeves of her shirt.

Do I need to say it?

I guess so.

H O T.

The teenage boys who were studying maths in between scaring the daylights out of total strangers asked us if we wanted it “really scary” or just “a little scary”, and of course I trilled “EXTRA S U P E R SCARY!” and we all walked through the wooden doors into total darkness, clinging to M.

We counted to fifteen as directed, and blew out poor M’s eardrums as we screamed our way through 1,000 square feet or so of perfectly hokey, old-fashioned haunted house horror.

In the petting zoo of RADNESS there were piglets, bunnies, lambs, goats, ducks, chickens, and of course, tiny human beings. One of the bunnies bit me three times. The llamas were off limits and the ponies too miniature for me to ride (though believe you me, I tried). I’ve never held a piglet before.

EVERYONE SHOULD HOLD A PIGLET.

It’s amazing. Check out my awesome piglet-bunny-chicken video, filmed by M, by clicking here!

FEMME: Levi’s skinny jeans, Full Tilt plaid shirt, vintage Gucci scarf, boots from Buffalo Exchange, vintage Dooney & Bourke All-Weather Leather bag.

TOMBOY: RSQ London jeans, Mossimo t-shirt, vintage Pendleton flannel shirt, Harley Davidson boots, leather cuff.

Said big-ass pumpkin, behind my head:

Dear readers, you’re in for a treat. I’m handing the blog-mic over to my dashing M, who will surely amuse you as much as, if not better than, I do. Enjoy!

Don’t let my awesome cowboy-ish outfit trick you into thinking it’s hot out here. IT IS NOT HOT. Every day for the past week, the cocktease sun will come in through our tiny tiny bedroom window and blind us while we’re trying to sleep, and all the heavy sunlight tricks us into putting on shorts or flip flops or cowboy shirts and lures us outside into the PHONY PHONY spring day. Bah! By then it’s too late to go back in and change, so here I am, acting like it’s all warm, but in reality, only 1/10 of my face was warm enough to justify this outfit.

We went on a mad shopping spree this weekend! Sometimes you wake up, not sure if you’re still drunk or not and you decide you really, really need new white underwear. Not a fleeting desire or idea, a NEED. I decided I was going to buy some white underwear. ‘Cept I’m not really known for buying a reasonable amount of anything. Not clothes, not booze, certainly not lemons! I need a whole truckload of a thing. I shit you not, I think I got about 30 new pairs of white underwear. You can’t see them in these pics, but I am wearing them! Of course, once we were in the store, the femme decided I absolutely needed this shirt — she’s already threatened sexual assault — and as you can see, the sunglasses also go quite nicely. After this photo shoot, I put on a giant christmas sweater.

Fuck you, SF sun!

I love my wife, guys. She makes me laugh. Wanna know something else? We totally sex-broke our – well, her – bespoke harness not last weekend, but the weekend before. It’s only been a year or so! Anyway, off we went first thing Saturday morning afternoon, in a homo ass panic to Mr. S (super NSFW) to see if there was anything they could do at the Sex Toy Hospital for M’s most beloved leather piece and lo! “This will just take us 15 minutes. We’ll be right back.” OMFG, I love them so, so much. Thanks to them, we only had to resort to the lowly commoner harness once. Well, a few times. But still. IT WAS REALLY A SCARY TIME FOR US, OKAY!?!

She also left out this very crucial part of our retail therapy binge on unmentionables:

TOMBOY CONFESSION: M has said that her confession would only wax poetic about ham or sweet potato pie or my deliciously festive sparkling Cosmopolitan cocktails from Christmas, so I guess I’ll say a few words in her stead. We are both VERY excited about the gun rack my brother and his girlfriend so thoughtfully gave us for Christmas. She keeps fussing with her hair, y’all, saying it’s already gotten too long, despite the fact that it’s only been three weeks since she had it cut. Tomboys!

A bit about this blazer: M found it without much ado at our favorite neighborhood thrift store, for five gay bucks and in pristine condition. Turns out it’s from a little place in San Francisco that’s been in business for over 35 years, The Hound Shop. The embroidered label on the inside says “Tailored for the Montgomery Street Man” and has a great hound in the center – it’s really fantastic. She did a dapper job pairing it with this vintage striped, flat-bottom tie I got her two Christmases ago, I think.

FEMME CONFESSION: I really, really, really love this dress! Another epic thrift store find – it must have been somewhere between $3-$5, tops. From the fluttery little sleeves to the deep pinks and reds to the cut and wearability – it’s almost perfect. I have to try it in some va-va-voom heels and decide whether or not the hem needs to come up a couple of inches. I tossed the beret on as an afterthought on our way out of the door and it really made the buttoned-up look (though the weather was so agreeable, I didn’t need the coat at all).

Long story short, it was a very brilliant Christmas – cozy and raucous and abundant in the best ways – with a very full house, wonderful surprises, lots of incredible food and loved ones. My mother had several silly games with awesome prizes for us to play, including a 2-page, multiple choice Christmas trivia quiz in red and green ink that had us all in stitches (M had the lowest score of everyone, even the foreigners – it was hilarious). Nearly everyone teared up when I opened my mom’s gift to me – several sets of my beloved Grandma’s gorgeous vintage jewelry – I was astonished! Amazed and so, so touched.

Some festive Christmas pics below:

When: Thanksgiving Day, 2008.

Femme What: Sweater dress by Dolce, green belted trench by Do & Be, brown chevron tights from Old Navy. Skinny brown belt by Elie Tahari, olive green knit socks by some fancy Italians (I can’t remember the brand, sob) and Donald J. Pliner boots. For the trek to the actual river, I wore my awesome “hiking” boots from El Mexico. They are the only boots, aside from my Noconas, that haven’t got a 4″ min. heel!

Femme Scent: Serge Lutens Chêne, of course.

Femme Confession: I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. My top three thanks, for the record: My precious girls. My resilient health, while it lasts. The dearest, most clever, loyal and affectionate friends a girl could wish for.

Tomboy What: Awesome bear sweater from Express, shirt from Banana Republic (with vintage fleur-de-lys cuff links – a bit much, I KNOW), brown label jeans from Lounge, and brown boots from Harley-Davidson.

Tomboy Confession: I started the day with a completely different outfit: black slacks, a black blazer and the same green shirt (silver and black griffin cuff links from Ben Sherman instead of gold fleur-de-lys ones) and black boots. I only changed because my black boots are too faggy, they provide absolutely no traction! Since the trek down to the river is the absolute highlight of my dogs’ lives, I changed into something more “outdoorsy.”

Second Tomboy Confession: I ate about 100 grapes from the vines to and from the river!