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Sport 39: 2011
Fancy Dress
Fancy Dress
I pour myself another drink. My friend is behind the dressing screen on her hands and knees, searching for a matching sock. I’m looking at myself in the mirror as I balance a pencil behind my ear. Now my friend is in the bathroom finishing her makeup, and I’ve scrapped the pencil—it’s not going to work. We’re going to a fancy dress ball. Which is really just a big party that happens once a year in a rambling Mount Victoria mansion. Fancy dress, however, is universally expected. This year’s theme is Fire and Ice.
My friend emerges from the bathroom wearing a short and black pavlova skirt, a sparkling maroon leotard, and eye makeup that makes me think polar bear. ‘See,’ she says, framing herself with arms straight out to the side, ‘my costume means nothing.’
‘You look like an ice-skater,’ I say. ‘You could be one of those infamous ice-skaters that beat each other up. You’re Tonya Harding.’
My friend is all right with this concept—anything, as long as she can wear the skirt. But Tonya Harding is the blond one, and my friend has long, dark brown hair, so we decide she should be Nancy Kerrigan. We do a quick Wikipedia study to make sure our facts are straight—Nancy was clubbed, not knifed; it was Tonya’s ex-husband, not Tonya. I’m going to the party as John Shade from Pale Fire.
The first thing I see as we round the corner and climb the weaving mansion driveway—this place really is like something out of The Great Gatsby—is an oil drum fire burning on the front lawn. A dozen people in red outfits and face-paint are circling the drum as if it were a requirement of their costume. There are more red people on the verandah. Most, it would seem, have chosen to come dressed as fire. There are also an astounding number of penguins loitering.
A guy I know, who is not dressed in red, lumbers towards me. His shoulders are too broad for the rest of him—it makes him look topheavy. As I think this, he trips on the curb in front of me. He’s an oldpage 271 friend, but one I’ve lately been estranged from. I’m pleased to see him, but am also wary of how this might go. He recovers himself and looks about sheepishly.
‘Who are you supposed to be?’ I say. I look him up and down—he’s wearing his regular clothes, except with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal a white T-shirt underneath. It could be a costume. It could also be a new look he has fostered while he and I have been on a hiatus.
‘I’m Emilio Estevez from St. Elmo’s Fire,’ he says. ‘There are other cast members too.’ He gestures towards the verandah behind him. ‘Who are you?’
I’ve not seen St. Elmo’s Fire but in these clothes he could indeed be an Emilio Estevez character. I give him an approving nod. ‘I’m John Shade from Pale Fire,’ I say.
‘Wow,’ he says, nodding, ‘that’s good.’
This response is too much. He’s trying to please me. Which pleases me, but for a different reason. I’m dressed like I would usually dress except I’m wearing a vest and argyle socks. You can see a good few inches of sock beneath my too-short trousers. I could be anyone.
‘This is Nancy Kerrigan,’ I say, turning to my friend. She’s towering beside me in the shoes she thought most resembled ice-skates, and which now make her six feet tall. Her skirt, which sits almost horizontal, is itching its synthetic frills into my side.
‘Is that the one who got knifed?’ he says.
My friend and I shake our heads knowingly. ‘No knife,’ I say. ‘She was clubbed.’
‘In the knee,’ says my friend.
‘So you’re the victim?’ he says.
My friend laughs and looks down at her ensemble. She looks ridiculous. Like an enormous child who has been allowed to dress herself for the first time.
page 272The band is warming up on the verandah. No one in the band is dressed in costume. This is because they are the band, and normal social rules don’t apply to them. Two penguins cruise past in front of the verandah, and congregate with more penguins beside us. There are obvious differences in their costumes—the way their beaks are attached, the fullness of their torsos—which makes me think these penguins are meeting for the first time.
The last time I saw Emilio Estevez was a few weeks ago on his birthday. I arrived an hour late and already drunk to his celebratory drinks—a table, at a swank bar, of his closest pals. This was how I’d planned it. I would be late. And I would be drunk. Then I would sit at one end of the table and make wisecracks. It was all I could do to be there, and to be lighthearted. Tonight, we are similarly, tentatively, pleased to see each other. The way we were before, many months ago now, which we will never revisit or discuss truthfully, is behind us. When you get in that deep with someone, there’s usually no way out. We found a way. We’re John Shade and Emilio Estevez talking smack.
‘I bet it’s hot in those penguin suits,’ he says to me now.
It’s something.
The band has finished playing and I spot my friend talking to a handsome man, not in fancy dress, on the other side of the lawn. I stroll over and catch her telling him how her costume means nothing— she just really wanted to dress like this, she says. She’s forgotten her Nancy Kerrigan back-story. I go to interrupt her, to make him see how thoughtfully predesigned we were for this evening. But then I stop. That’s no way to begin.