Those who know me, or have stepped foot in my apartment, know that I’m Halloween obsessed. Pumpkins currently line all available countertops in my living room. Skeletons hang on every door. Ours is the only home on the street with orange lights. Life, at this time of year, is good. A friend recently joked that I had a Halloween fetish. I think he may be right. Now if only Freud were here to ask how I could have seen a pumpkin before witnessing the horrible truth of female genitalia. THE HORRIBLE TRUTH.

This year Scott and I are having a Halloween party, an attempt to get together all our Bay Area friends and/or an excuse to bake black and orange cupcakes. That means having to put actual thought and effort into costumes (in years past we’ve stumbled to showings of Rocky Horror in the semi-nude, or simply celebrated with the arrival of sex toys). I’m being Joan from Mad Men. Anyone who has seen this sassy, majorly curvy redhead in action — and by action, I may or may not mean in that episode where she’s not wearing a shirt — will understand.

Scott, however, was having a harder time thinking of an outfit. In brainstorming with him, I came up with a number of highly inappropriate options that would have, even if they scared away our guests, endlessly entertained yours truly:

1) A sex machine. Take a cardboard box, spray paint it silver, hot glue an extension cord to the back and a low-quality dildo to the front. Tada!

2) Lolita and Humbert Humbert. Yes, I am currently Lolita obsessed. No, it wouldn’t be hard to get a female friend with chestnut hair and honey skin to put on a pink, pleated dress and carry a tennis racket while looking fiery yet broken. Wait, am I a bad person?

3) The Marquis de Sade. Choose your own adventure! Slim and fine-featured? Go with early Sade, handsome, effeminate, aristocratic. Hoping for something a little less refined? Try later Sade. Just stuff a few pillows into an oversized, French Revolution era pants and shirt combo and spend the evening furiously scribbling something lewd.

What ever you are this Halloween, here’s hoping it’s a great one — filled with flirtation, fun, and fun-sized candy. Enjoy the inappropriate while it’s appropriate!