BY
Fenno had always been a huge fan of Halloween. He could still fondly remember eating so many Three Musketeers that he tossed his cookies onto the neighbor’s porch. His mother instructed him that he should have politely used his trick-or-treat bag, but he wasn’t about to spoil the hard-earned sugary loot that he still intended to polish off before midnight. Besides, that was the “trick” the neighbors deserved for trying to pass off oranges and bananas as “treats.” Those damn hippies.
Later in Fenno’s life, “trick-or-treat” had turned into just “trick.” He was still damn proud of a few of his high school pranks. Making the prom queen scream his name in the only way he knew how had been completely worth the misdemeanor charges.
He grew even fonder of the holiday in college when he found that the best part of Halloween was not the tricks, nor the treats, but the costumes. He could run into a hundred young women on All Hallow’s Eve and regardless of whether they said they were going as a nurse, a maid, or a farmgirl, they all looked like strippers to Fenno. One wonderful year he had dressed as a pole to test whether such a look was intentional.
But since law school, Fenno had found Halloween to have all the candy, excitement, and hardcore partying of Columbus Day at a retirement home for tax lawyers. Desperate for change, Fenno decided to host a gigantic Halloween party at his place, complete with real live dead people and homemade pumpkin bongs. He had just finished a guest list of 834 people (still five less than Emily Famutimi’s birthday party evite list) when he realized he was going to have a little trouble having that many people over at his place, it being a Gropius room and all. Fenno also wanted his bash to be like every other party that had treated him to a “good time,” which meant Fenno had to be able to show up hammered four hours late and mooch someone else’s alcohol before playing a game of full contact human foosball until he passed out. He was still trying to find a workable solution when, like a godsend, he saw Jessica Tuchinksy strolling across campus.
“Hey!” yelled Fenno. “How’s my favorite class marshal?”
“Good. Have you signed up for the class trip over Spring Break? You get to spend an entire week on a private tropical island with only your classmates for company for only fifteen thousand dollars,” Jessica said as she handed a sign-up sheet down to Fenno.
“Yeah, I was just going to do that, but, uh, my dog burned my checkbook. Listen, I had this awesome idea – what do you say to a 3L Class Halloween Party in my bumpin’ Gropius room? I think I already have Janice Corrales talked into making an appearance as Elvira, and Dan Urman could make an awesome Frankenstein if we feed him enough xanax.”
“…”
“It’ll rock, I swear.”
“I’d have to run it by the other class marshals, Fenno,” Jessica said as she strode away.
Fenno was encouraged. She hadn’t said “no.” If he could get the three other class marshals to do the same, he might be getting jiggy to the Monster Mash in the Grope on October 31st. He just hoped Massachusetts wasn’t a state that required affirmative consent.
“Hey!” yelled Fenno later that day as he ran down the ubiquitous baseball cap to which Jeff Jamison’s head had apparently been grafted. “How’s my favorite class marshal?”
“Can this wait, Fenno? I’ve got to arrange the ACS Halloween debate today on whether Alito is evil or really, really evil. It’s going to be great. One of our speakers is arguing that the new nominee hatched ten years ago from the poisonous black egg of Scalia, er, Satan.”
“Hellspawn is exactly what I wanted to see you about, Jeff. I’m wanting to put together an extremely scary Halloween party. Ken Reinker and Jesse Panuccio should both be there. Now I can’t promise they’ll attempt to suck the blood from a baby rabbit – that all depends on whether that weird 1L gal brings her pet bunny on a leash and harness around campus again – but they should definitely be in their Fed Soc shirts and will frighten the hell out of anyone who tries to talk with them. It’ll be awesome.”
“Could be fun, Fenno. Maybe Professor Fried could come as Dracula. We’ll talk later.” And leaving that glimmer of hope, Jeff sped away.
Two down, two to go. Fenno began pacing Kagan Plaza like a madman as he stalked the remaining marshals. He didn’t go to class, but he knew other people did, which meant they would surely pass through the plaza at some point in the day.
“Hey!” yelled Fenno into the crowded exchange between classes. “How’s my favorite class marshal?” Class Marshal Mike Thakur emerged from the mass to talk to Fenno. As did Class Marshal Byron McLain. Fenno now had the opportunity to kill two birds with what was already one poorly thrown stone.
“You guys are just so great that I can’t decide which of you is my favorite. So I just think of you as one. Such great, great harmony and complementary auras between you two. Like you were underneath each other’s skins and sharing organs. Harmonious auras and organ sharing are so hot right now,” he said. When things started off on the wrong foot, Fenno liked to continue hurtling in the wrong direction as violently as possible with the hope of somehow coming out the other side.
“You’re being a little creepy, Fenno,” Mike said and smiled.
“Creepy is exactly what I wanted to discuss, Mike. I’m trying to get a 3L Halloween party put together. Jeff practically offered to pay for it himself, and Jessica said it just needed to be rubber-stamped by you guys. I’ve already looked into zombie rentals – Cravath will let us have a few of their mid-level associates for almost nothing.”
“No can do,” Byron said. “There’s already a Halloween celebration scheduled in the Hark. We can’t do a competing party.”
“Like a Halloween Hark party is going to be competing with my party when I’ve got the hookup with the med school for some cadavers. Come on, pull some strings, fellas.”
“Mike can rally the Democrats and I can get all 1L BLSA ladies to support it through their adoration of me, but it’s still not going to happen. Sorry, Fenno.”
Fenno groaned as he saw his plans of wild debauchery wrecked by cookie decorating in the school cafeteria. He was doomed to spend the night bored out of his mind watching sitcoms on the WB with Halloween themes.
As he considered the gruesome thought that he might be driven to take knitting as a hobby on his walk down Mass Ave, he spotted Docheff being tossed out of Cambridge Common for once again coming to blows with the locals. Docheff was mumbling something about a battle to defend a female’s honor. Party or not, it looked like Fenno had found his key to a night of wild debauchery, or at least violent entertainment.
“Hey Docheff, where are you going to be on Halloween?” Fenno asked.