Thanks Mom.

Every now and then people ask me how I ended up the way I am. They read my exegesis about how sexy is a state of mind. My affinity for corsetry and trench coats. How did all this come about? I think to myself, and answer with two little words:

My mother.

It all started when I was about ten years old. Though I loved dressing up -- pretending to be someone I wasn't -- I was never very good at picking out Halloween costumes. One year my mother took me to her room and pulled out a long, pink nightie. At the time, I remember thinking it was the sexiest piece of clothing I'd ever seen. It was pink. It had lace. Can anything ever be more luxurious, more sensuous, than pink lace? My ten-year-old brain knew for sure that the answer to that question was no.

My mother dressed me in her pink nightie, fitting in with a fast safety-pin-alteration. Then she went to the front closet and produced my father's navy blue Air Force trench coat, a brown fedora, and a pair of sunglasses. She instructed me to put these items on over the pink nightie.

"What am I supposed to be?" I asked her.

She instructed that when strangers asked me that same question (presumably strangers from whom I was begging candy), I should open my coat to reveal the pink lace, and quickly close it. They'd understand.

And they did understand, even if I did not. At the tender age of ten, my mother chose a Halloween costume for me:

A flasher.