Welcome to
Eric's 2002 Halloween Costume,
the fire breathing dragon.
From mild mannered computer programmer to mythological monster in 10 easy steps.
If you are offended by the amount of male human flesh you can see at public swimming pools (not in the change rooms), then these pages are not for you. However, that shouldn't include more than 0.034% of Westerners.
Intro
For many years, I ignored Halloween, foolish grownup that I had become. Then I discovered that adults sometimes costumed for halloween parties. Then life became interesting. A slew of costumes followed: the grim reaper, a demon (with cantilever wings and a flash paper hand), a gargoyle (with piston driven wings), a Ferengi (a very tall Ferengi), Smorgas of Borg (all you can assimilate, with battery operated egg beater hand), the Tin Woodsman from the Wizard of Oz (with an empty heart shaped compartment), and then Night (with chocolate truffles). But what to do this year? And where to go with the costume?
Last year, friends suggested Harry Potter, but I'm afraid the resemblance is just a little too close in nature and appearance to be a worthy costume. And I'd seen so many poorly done Harry Potter costumes that I just wasn't excited about the prospect. Besides, I have a history of never dressing as a human being.
And then it occurred! A fire breathing dragon, also from Harry Potter. And I'd take it to the Halloween Howl, a location suggested by a bartender who works out at the same gym that I do. With 1500 people the previous year, the odds seemed fairly good that even a 6'4” bachelor of 38 could meet at least one prospective mate if he “dressed to impress”.
R&D
I began two months early, accumulating parts and pieces. The mask would be simple to construct; a movable jaw controlled by my own jaw. Except how to implement the firebreathing part? There was no way I wanted to be breathing real fire near 1500 people.
A disco fog machine with a red light behind it, mounted in the snout? A little research revealed logistical problems: a solution of water and propylene glycol, heated to a high temperature, sprayed at high pressure thorough an atomizer, whereupon it cooled into a mist. Sounded like a recipe for extremely scarring facial burns if anything went wrong. Back to the drawing board.
How about a tube of light-weight red cloth, inflated by a fan? I got a 4 D-cell operated fan from Seeing-is-believing, but it didn't have enough speed or volume to lift the fabric. Oh well.
Then: a party blower. A tube with a coiled up slip of paper on the end that uncoiled when you blew on it. Lengthen it, dye it red, attach some red filaments, and you had some excellent comic relief fire.
The suped up party blower is in action:.
The Mask
For some costumes, a bit of makeup on your face is all you need. Or a store bought mask with a few simple additions. A dragon however needs a long snout, ideally a mouth that opens and closes, some fins, etc.
I began with a safety helmet donated to the cause by some really sweet neighbours, Einar and Elaine. I altered the internal webbing fit my large head, attached pieces of old flexible cutting boards, stiffed it with closed-cell foam from a pool toy I once bought on a whim, some mesh from a store bought mask, and held it altogether with nuts,bolts and duct-tape. Voila! A skeletal head:
A bit of fabric, painted with a mix of green and black provided the skin. Craft foam and caulking provided the fins. A solid rubber ball sawn in half provided wto eyes, with two holes drilled to mount chemiluminscent light sticks. A velcro chin strap could drive the jaw downwards, while rubber bands raised it upwards. Looking was difficult but the look was great.
The body
Just to be truly attention getting, I thought I'd try liquid latex. I'd read about a demonstration of it at Kiss-and-tell, a local sex toy shop and been curious enough to call them to find out about it. Stretchy body paint. Two years later, that description rushed back and I figured it was time to research it in greater detail. A trip to Kiss -and-tell resulted in me buying a “Rainbow Pack” of liquid latex, manufactured by a company called Deviant (they have a web page with rather curious demonstrations of their product). A pint each of red, green, blue, yellow, purple, and another one of yellow because somebody goofed in the packaging, plus a foam roller and brushes.
Kiss-and-tell is a rather weird place for single straight guys; one wall is covered with dildos of a dimension to induce male insecurity, another has fetish gear, and the sales counter has a display of vibrators, erotic art hangs here and there. But every costume has to start somewhere.
The instructions for the liquid latex (and everything I found on the net) said you wanted to remove body hair before applying. Otherwise, it will get trapped in the latex and it will be very painful to remove, sort of like getting your body waxed the first time (not an experience that has ever sounded tempting). The options to remove this body hair are nasty chemicals (such as no-hair or neat), shaving (praise be the electric razor), or waxing (uh, the cure sounds just like the disease).
After 1.5 hours with my electric razor, toxic chemicals didn;t sound so bad. Minor abrasions on the inside of joints (such as the back of the knee), on the leg anywhere near the shorts line, and forget about the cavity at the base of the throat. Later I would discover entire regions of my back that I wasn't aware had any fur at all. Fortunately, I thought to apply some hand lotion to that region of my body normally covered by shorts; some parts I didn't want to even think about shaving.
Since most reptiles don't give birth live, you wouldn't expect to find navels on dragons. Ditto for breast feeding and mammelian nipples. A bit of surgical tape would presumably be enough to mask them. More surgical tape could be used to hold fins onto arms, legs, and spine before the latex was applied. A pair of shorts that I never liked with a chopped up pair of ladies (size D) pantyhose would suffice to hide those male attributes that dragons probably didn't display either.
Liquid latex isn't something you can apply yourself, for reasons other than not being able to reach certain areas reliably. Its very tacky and loves to stick to itsef until you apply some waterbased lubricant to it (the package had something called slick). This is where you need really great friends who have a tremendous sense of humour. Lucy, the lovely lady to the left is a friend of many years and was in Victoria for the weekend of the halloween party.The plastic rainjacket she's wearing is to prevent liquid latex from getting onto her clothes (clothing is like skin with lots and lots of hair. We won't talk about what region is getting painted right now. The expression on my face is because the liquid latex was quite cold. Lucy didn't have any idea of what she was getting roped into by her mild mannered and conservative appearing friend.
A major struggle is keeping your arms up so that the latex in your armpits doesn't stick to itself. Arm pits and the inside joints of the elbows needed some repair work several times. You may notice that the surgical tape on the nipples was discarded; it formed wrinkles that were too obvious.
I thought a green dragon should have a yellow stomachs. It turns out that yellow liquid latex is a much more transparent pigment than green liquid latex. However, it was too late to remove the surgical tape covering my navel.
It also seemed like a good time to add my claws, craft foam painted silver. Claws were applied by another good friend, Stuart.
Shoulders have been left bare so we could still tape on the wings, ditto for a spot on back to attach the tail.
Putting it altogether.
I had originally planned to have the scales drawn in gold, but the liquid latex alone took two hours for two coats and a few repairs. I can speak from experience that convential clothing is far faster to put on and hence won't be superseded in the near future. The next step was to add my wings and tail. The wings were a new design; very light weight so that each one could be individually fastened to a shoulder and moved independently. A few animal sculpture balloons, some light weight fabric, and a needle with thread (plus a little stitching by Stuart's wife Sylvia on her sewing machine). Stuart appears below, positioning the mask on my head (the claws decreased my manual dexterity). The woman sitting on the left is a house guest of a roommate's from Mexico. A definite expression of disbelief.
Trying to adjust my firebreathing component. It wasn't fastened securely enough.
Posing with the now costumed Lucy before heading to the party. The camera flash doesn't do justice to the mask.
Some neighbours asked me to show them the completed costume before I went to the party. They weren't home at that time. Its hard not look ferocious when you are a dragon. You see the ticket to the party in my hand.I discovered that liquid latex, not trapping any air, is a poor insulator of heat. In the five block walk to the party, I shivered intensely, despite a very brisk pace.
The Party
Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the party itself (the halloween howl at the Cedar Hill Rec Center). There just wasn't anywhere to carry a camera on this costume. However, about 12 different people took my picutre (that I noticed). Lucy tells me that several guys looked very annoyed when their girlfriends wanted a picture next to me. Lots of teenyboppers coming up to feel my chest with reactions of “oh cool” or “eww, freaky” when they were told it was latex body paint. Lost count of the number of people walked up to me and shouted (it was loud there), “great costume”, or “you've got the best costume I've seen”.
Lucy tells me that she had a great time just watching the reactions of the other partiers to me. Apparently some felt quite threatened by it, prehaps the glistening latex suggested nudity more than dry bare skin would. I'm told that her presence seemed to reassure them that I wasn't some strange freak. It was probably the first and only social occassional that I've ever received more attention than her.
Sadly, it was the wrong party for a single bachelor of 38 to hit. Even without the limited vision afforded by my mask, I wouldn't have been able to spot any bachelorettes in their 30's among the thousand or so gyrating bodies. The music was loud, the lights blarring, and thats all there was. I returned home with not a single number to call later. Oh well, it had to be tried once, just to say (and remember) that I'd done it!
Liquid latex breaths reasonably well, there were beads of sweat on my costume all over; it probably doesn't have the surface area (on the microscopic scale) to support as much evaporation as human skin does.
Demasking
Removing the liquid latex was painful.. So was removing the duct-tape. Despite the grueling session shaving, there were still lots of hairs to get caught in the latex. Kudo's again to Lucy, who was kind enough to peel all of the stuff off my back and shoulders, despite my squeals of pain. It looked a lot like a horror flick as this stretchy green stuff separated from my skin.
Of course, the latex had seeped through the nylon and the shorts, glueing both to my skin, but the hand lotion applied earlier converted the experinece of detaching myself from the shorts from being “an emergency room trip” to being merely uncomfortable. A few minutes in the shower allowed me to handle those bits that the hand lotion hadn't mitigated.
Needless to say, it will take powerful motivation to make me go near liquid latex again; this stuff will never replace clothing. My leftover supplies get donated to an wacky artist friend and his tolerant girlfriend.
