#141. Halloween Without the Girl (Saturday, November 2, 2013)
What was your best day…of enjoying a day because of the absence of someone?
The only main list story involving Chenling—the only girlfriend I ever had—comes from before we were actually together (#91). This one finally takes place during the relationship itself.
But as the title would suggest, relevance does not mean presence. And as you could probably surmise (from the title and how I’ve been characterizing the relationship), it’s actually the absence that makes this day what it is.
Normally, I hate Halloween—specifically the adult version of it. An innocent childhood sugar-acquisition expedition somehow becomes another social competition: who got invited where, who showed up in a cheesy couples costume, who dressed “best” like any of it matters.
A lot of that was likely because I had never actually been invited to a Halloween party until this one—hosted by Jenna from my Master’s program, with about fifty or sixty grad students there at its peak.
Chenling was not one of them, as she was very stressed with classes at the time. And much like that night in Chapel Hill (#91), knowing that my romantic life was developing elsewhere gave me a strange kind of social confidence. I could drink, move around the party, and talk to old and new people with an extra level of ease.
Beyond that special qualifier, and the typical Duke party vibe I’ve already described in way too much detail (#67, #60, #51), a few other notes:
- I distinctly recall a long conversation with a psychology grad student who knew Jenna’s roommate. The Chenling context may have distorted my read, but I felt a real signal of interest there—something not especially common for me.
- As for my costume, of course I was committed to putting zero effort into it. But I technically needed one. So I just threw on my St. Louis Cardinals cap1 and called myself a baseball player. And that’s what I told everybody, with no shame whatsoever. (It even became a conversation starter later that night, when the Cardinals walked off Game 3 of the World Series on a controversial obstruction call.)
- The top costume had to be Walter’s (#81), who was wearing this giant dice cube he had made himself. He told me it took him four hours, and I asked if he made sure the opposite sides added up to seven. (He told me he did; otherwise, it would’ve been “the biggest waste of four hours that was humanly possible.”)
- My good buddy Chun-Keong (CK, #87) had to get home early, so I lent him some cash—twenty dollars or so—to take a taxi back because he had left his wallet at home. He then texts me thirty minutes later: “Twenty dollars doesn’t even get me halfway there, can you believe it?” (I never found out how he ended up funding the rest of his trip.)
I had been to many, many parties in grad school without a girl—practically all of them. But this was my first one without the girl. And somehow, that made it just a little better.