How A Bondage Costume Ruined My Relationship. Twice.

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It never really had occurred to me before that making a jackass of myself in the name of comedy would be off-putting to the girl I was seeing throughout the formative college years, but by the end of my Senior year of college, I’d say I probably got the message loud and clear. Basically, I got in major fights with her that year, not once, but twice, for dressing up as a sex slave in public. In front of our peers. And some parents. Fool me twice, right?

Now, before we venture down the road of sheer idiocy, I must confess that in neither occasion of dressing as a sex slave was I participating in any sort of Halloween festivities. Now, having said that, on the brink of another Halloween weekend, I felt it my duty to the Peej community that I warn you of my follies. If I can prevent at least one of you from looking like a gimp belonging to Zed & Maynard a la Pulp Fiction and maybe save you from yourself, I’ll consider it a win.

I will now do my best to try and capture the lunacy and absurdity of my behavior in the written word, but it’s like trying to describe what the sunset looks like to a blind man. Or what the sweet melody of The Outfield’s Your Love sounds like to a deaf man. Some things just need to be seen (or heard), to be fully believed, but I believe the below should suffice.

I went to a liberal arts school that was pretty sex-positive; we even had a sexuality information service on campus that fostered that sex-positive mentality by cultivating a safe space for all things sex. They had a whole library, counseling services, a hotline where any and all questions were on the table, and, “an array of superior quality safer sex and sexploration products.” All kinds of condoms you could ever need. Studded. Ribbed. Lubed. Flavored. All ten cents each. Vibrators. Butt plugs. All kinds of lubes. It was wild. My girlfriend was a counselor at this student group, and one of my best friends lived with the president of the organization who Janis Ian would say is “too gay to function.” He also happened to throw these wild BDSM parties each semester that were no different than any other apartment party, except everyone dressed, well, kinky. Roll MF tide.

My first transgression, fall semester, I distinctly remember not dressing too outlandish. Maybe some leather jacket or something, but the real Palme d’Or of my outfit was that my buddy fastened his weight lifting belt around my torso, then strung the chain part around my neck. Then fastened another chain to the makeshift collar and led me around like a slave dog, only, because the weightlifting belt wasn’t quite long enough, I had to constantly remain hunched over. Why did I do any of this? Not sure. Make a scene, I guess? Get some laughs?

So we head to the party, me hobbling along hunched over like Quasimodo being led around by my buddies dressed in relatively normal leather ensembles. Walking from our place to the party, we had to pass a large parking lot, and wouldn’t you know it, but it was also parent’s weekend. But, like, who the fuck comes to parent’s weekend when your kid’s a senior? Well, low and behold there were a gaggle of parents in the parking lot as we made our way by. Didn’t bother me one bit; they seemed quite shocked, but ‘tevs. I made sure to smile and wave.

Anyway, we get to the party and of course my girl is already there (looking hot) helping her fellow sex counselor set up his party. As you can imagine, she was none too pleased with me walking in looking like the gimp, in front of all of her friends. She lashed out and basically demanded I remove the weightlifting belt. So yeah, I was relieved when she made me take off the chains, because it meant I could finally stand up straight like a normal person and drink my beer normally instead of trying to lap it up like a spastic third-grader at the bubbler. Needless to say, despite all the rampant sexual themes surrounding us all night, my girl was thoroughly off-put by my outfit that we went straight to bed without any supper sex.

Flash forward to second semester. The girl and I are kind of on the rocks at this point, so making a moron of myself around her friends probably wasn’t going to go over well, but they were throwing another BDSM party and everyone was going. I decided, initially, for a tamer approach to my getup. I put on compression shorts and a lax pinnie. I happened to have some caution tape so I ripped off a piece and fashioned a belt out of it. I also had a bandanna, so I threw that on and kept it in place with a headband. This I knew would easily pass the girlfriend test.

We walked out of our apartment and then I saw it. It was my one-seat hammock (it looked exactly like this) and the day before, some rotund girl I’d never met before sat on it and ripped the damn thing right outta the fucking tree in our front lawn. So I see this hammock just sitting on the ground and I got this impulse. An urge. I said to myself “Kyle,” (that’s what I call myself), I said “Kyle, incorporate this hammock into the ‘fit.” And incorporate I did.

I rested the wooden piece that holds it all together behind my back and looped my arms around it, creating a makeshift stockade, looking like my boy Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments when he is being sentenced in front of his brother and the Pharaoh, Ramses. Then, I looped the mesh hammock part over my head. So essentially, I’ve got my arms in a stockade, and I’m relatively unrecognizable with all this hammock shit draped over my head and upper torso. Oh, and remember, I’m barely wearing any pants. I’m legit just wearing 4″ Under Armour compression shorts. I look absurd.

We get to the party, and I’m there before my girl this time because I think she was pregaming with some of her friends. Anyway, I get up on one of the couches and start dancing like the party’s own personal go-go dancer. Me in my absurd outfit, drunk as a punk, in my own zone, having the time of his life (Dipp, S. 2017).

The couch is sort of by the door, and when the girl and her bestie show up, the first thing I hear my girl say is “oh my God, who the fuck is that?” And her bestie replies, “I think that’s your boyfriend.”

Friends, the look of horror and embarrassment on my girlfriend’s face that night has had me repenting to Gee Dash Dee every Yom Kippur since. I was dragged out, reprimanded and told to remove the hammock. We got in a HUGE fight, because I said she was killing my spirit. Not letting me flex my creative wings as the class clown.

In hindsight, this was all dumb. I should have known that dressing up like a complete idiot would embarrass her in front of her friends, because I’d already done it some mere months before, but did I learn from my mistakes? Fuckkkkk no. So please, a little respect, for I am Boston Max, Lord of the Idiots.

This Halloween, if you’re going to dress up as something you know will embarrass your significant other, don’t do it. Or do it, I really don’t care. .

Image via South Park

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Boston Max

Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly

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