Post #13: Suppressed Desires!

Hey Folks!

It's Friday, July 27, and that means of several things. First off it means that yours truly has a special visitor this weekend. Which is awesome, but let's just say that this special visitor has given me a strict time limit to produce today's post because this special visitor drove several hours and hundreds of miles to see me and this is not how this special visitor wants to spend a few days away from the city.

A special visitor, huh? Who is it?  oh, let me guess, is it...Satan? 

Today is also the last day of Hell Week. Which means tomorrow night is the yearly summer bacchanal known as the Suppressed Desires Dance, a tradition dating back at least 2,000 years, around the birth of the founder of Bread Loaf, Mr. Miyagi.

The First Suppressed Desires Dance, circa 67 AM (Anno Miyagio). 

The unofficial, unstated rules for this particular masquerade are that one comes dressed as one's suppressed desire. This is no mere costume party. A costume party is where normal men and women dress up as firemen and french maids to behave in ways they usually shun as naughty or reckless. A Masquerade is where stuffy aristocrats with funny accents wear tuxedos and gowns and hold up masks--masques--to disguise their hideous faces so they can have sex once a year.  A Suppressed Desires Dance is when English Nerds decorate a huge yellow barn and compete with each other over who can come up with the most wildly clever costumes in the history of mankind. 

Royal Nerd. 

Now, in years past, there are have been numerous examples of stunning costumes, too many to list in one mere blog post (also, I'm running out of the time allotted to me by my special visitor.)

I'm almost finished, I swear!

Typically the English Nerds will select costume ideas fall under a few broad categories. Many people go for the clever play-on-words costume, like Renee L. who was dressed in a Freudian Slip, or Melissa R. who came as a "One Night Stand," complete with body-hugging table and lampshade. Probably the coolest literary pun costume was worn by Christian G., who not only decorated the barn one summer (theme: brothel. Talk about literary!), but also arrived as The God of Boxus (Bacchus), which featured a Franzia wine-dispensing breast box.  Finally, there's the category of Dang-That's-Just-Freakin-Brilliant. One year Jim S. came dressed as a fully operational Photo Booth, complete with a working Polaroid camera. Loafers could step "inside" Jim and have their picture taken. (I'd show you the pictures taken that night but most of them came out blurry and the ones that came out well are not appropriate for a family friendly blog.) But the grandest costume of all, the one that tied in humor, creativity, and a genuine Suppressed Desire belongs to Andy P. One summer Andy and his housemates had so much fun hanging out on the porch of the Annex house that the then-director of Bread Loaf intervened. The director wrote Andy and his mates a polite but stern letter regarding their Annex porch festivities. Andy's response was to transform himself into his beloved Annex porch for Suppressed Desires. 

The Letter. 

The Buddha once said: You can take the man off the porch,
but you can't take the porch off the man. 

As for the Front Desk Mavens, attending the Suppressed Desires Dance isn't so simple. Maven Gene has yet to reveal his costume. Maven Overlords Edward, Victoria, Peter, and MacNair usually attend the dance for the sheer fun of seeing the costumes rather than dressing up themselves. As for me, well, I'm constitutionally allergic to costume parties for a simple reason. One Saturday morning in 1986 in the small town of Sherman, Illinois (pop. 1400) where I grew up, my mother, The Original Maven, heard me impersonating the twisted laugh of Pee Wee Herman. Realizing that the 9 year-old version of me resembled Pee Wee flipped a switch in Ma Clarke's brain and she instantly become a small-town Hollywood Mom. She entered me in that year's best costume contest at our local neighborhood Halloween block party. Tragically, I won. For there on, for four straight Halloweens, from 1987-1990, I dressed as Pee Wee Herman in order to defend my title. And I always had to do the laugh and say, "Hey, Cherry," in the voice. Luckily, all that changed in July, 1991 when Pee Wee got caught touching his pee pee in public. I have shunned costumed parties ever since.

No, mom, not again! I'm 34 years old. 

And so, tomorrow evening, the English Nerds will finally have their due. They will get out of their heads for one evening and into their Masques and cut loose. I will be there to enjoy the evening's festooned festivities from a comfortable distance. But I will have my camera ready...

And now for today's installment of Edward Insults Me: On Wednesday night, the special visitor joined one of the teams for trivia night. The next day at work one the special visitors' teammates, named Liz, approached the Front Desk. Liz let me know it was really nice meeting my special visitor. "She's really smart," she said, adding, "She pretty much got most of our correct answers." Edward, overheading this, chimed in. "Look, let's get real, here, Liz. If she's dating Christian Clarke, she just ain't that smart."

Enjoy. 

Christian Patrick Clarke

Front Desk Novitiate, 2012

Hic et Ubique