For the past 3 years, I have gone to my friend (M’s) Halloween party. It is his favourite time of year and this year coincided with the celebration of his 50th birthday party.

He lives on a hill that over looks the ocean and elaborately decorates his home like a haunted house, hence the title of his invitation, ‘Horror on the Hill’.  His bathroom has bloody foot prints on the floor; body parts and a knife in the tub with blood all over; a bloody shower curtain with bloody hand prints on it; a mirror behind the toilet with audible, laughing, scary, faces; and music playing creepy movie scenes like Psycho. It still unnerves me to hear the shower turn on and the stabbing music start. There is also a little, creepy girl voice saying, “I see you”.

Elsewhere around the upstairs is police tape around an area with a zombie like creature in a wheel chair wielding a knife, dancing skeletons projected on one of the walls, a guy you actually pull a breaker switch to watch violently riling back and forth as he is shocked to death in an electric chair, a 7-foot tall moving Frankenstein, skulls and spiders that move up and down the wall, mirrors with changing faces, a book that has a feather pen that talks and writes out a scary message, a cat that jumps at you, and a giant werewolf.

Outside, he has an incredible array of creepy decorations throughout his gardens.  On his lawn there are huge blow ups as well as large mummies in coffins standing up and lying down. On the front porch a young zombie girl moves back and forth on a swing with her head turning side to side and her eyes lit up singing very eerily, “La la la la la la”. The theme is carried through to the food, the dishes, glasses and every detail throughout the house.

M loves to dance and he is very good. He has mirrors on one wall of his living room and I joke that he probably just goes in and watches himself dance. He admits that he does. The best part of the party is that his tenant is a DJ and sets up an entire DJ booth with video player, strobe lights, a skeleton mirror disco ball hanging from the ceiling and the entire living room is turned into a giant dance floor.  This year, in honour of M’s 50th birthday, there was live music, too, with a reggae singer and hip hop artists.

M has always come across as very sexual to me. He has an amazing body.  He is over 6 feet tall and all muscle. He loves to wear Halloween costumes that show off his athletic physique and he is very comfortable in form fitting outfits, bare chest and legs. He changes his costumes throughout the night. We have a strictly platonic relationship but he is very teasing, playful, touchy and always asks specifics about my sex life.  We joke a lot but we also share deep, personal, painful, and honest emotions with one another.  His wife had an affair with his best friend. His wife lied to the police about him and when she was found out she lost custody of their children. My friend was awarded full custody but he is amazingly compassionate and forgiving and offered his wife a 50/50 split so their children had a chance of actually having a relationship with their mom. He is very generous to me. He has been my knight in shining armour rescuing me when my car got towed and taking me to lunches and dinners always finding ways to never let me pay.  He’s come to yoga with me. We both have a sweet tooth so find reasons to go for treats and laugh when we run into each other in local bakeries. He knows my lawyer and on the day I was walking over to court with her  M called her on her cell phone to tell her that he especially hoped she did well in court today for my sake. He even offered to call my ex to share with him his court experience, to offer any assistance and to even act as a mediator.  Whenever I am having a particularly difficult day with my ex I hear M’s words, “Dave is just being Dave” and it calms me in the storm that Dave is creating all around me.

This year, I went to his party with my girl friend, her boyfriend and another couple who are close friends of mine.  We are all fairly conservative and remarked that there was quite a lot of slutty costumes this year.  There were breasts hanging out, bare stomachs, fishnets, garters and stockings, bra tops, skirts that barely covered and even a man wearing a onesie with his butt hanging out the back. The party seemed even more crowded and as I was going into the kitchen I was stopped behind 3 people who were arranging a three-some. I shared with my friends what I had just overheard. The one girl involved with the arranging was dressed as a slutty police officer. She talked to me throughout the night with a sexy whisper, would wink at me from across the room and suggested to me that I check out Elvis because he was really sexy.

My friends and I all took a break from the dance floor and went into another room. I sat on one couch with my girlfriend and her husband and my other girlfriend and her boyfriend sat across from us.  When her boyfriend got up another man came and sat down beside her.  He was dressed as a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit. He was the husband of the slutty police officer. My girlfriend and he were quite chatty with each other. Then the slutty police officer came and sat down with them.  My friends beside me on the couch joked that they were going to invite my girlfriend for a 3-some.

Slutty police officer was now sitting across from me.  My girlfriend whispered, “I don’t mean to be vulgar but you are going to see pussy in a minute.”  Her skirt was that short. Her cleavage was so plentiful and revealing that my friend also whispered to me that she saw nipple.  By this point we are really entertaining ourselves people watching. A very drunk French maid decided to get down on her hands and knees in front of us and show us how she could balance on her hands with her knees on her elbows. While this was going on a very tiny girl came in with a man in a suit. We were told a contortionist/fire eater was coming but I already saw a girl carrying a hula hoop with places for the torches to be set on fire on the hoop.  Turns out this new girl was just one of 2 strippers that gifted my friend with quite the performance. He apologized to me afterwards saying that the grinding to his face was a bit much but what else could he do when everyone was there watching.  He had to act polite.  I joked with him that I could tell it was a terribly unpleasant experience for him. Then he showed my girlfriend’s husband photos of him and a girl on his phone that he wouldn’t show me.

I was back on the dance floor when my girlfriend and her boyfriend came to find me announcing, “We are at a swingers party.”  When my girlfriend was sitting with the slutty police officer’s husband on the couch he shared with her that his wife was making out with the host. He didn’t say the host’s name so my girlfriend said, “You don’t know M?” He told her that his wife met him on line and invited her to his party because there would be at least 10 swinging couples here. The prisoner-costumed guy received a text while he was talking to my friend and commented, “That was fast.” He told my friend his wife was able to arrange a hook up with the host. Then slutty police lady came back and sat on the couch pouting.  She was now in a bad mood because she said that she couldn’t hook up with the host because he wanted her to go to places she wouldn’t go. I wondered what places a girl like that wouldn’t go and then I wondered what the heck my friend was into that slutty police officer wouldn’t take part. My friend and her boyfriend ended up calling a cab for the slutty police officer and her prisoner husband. She was very upset that she didn’t think she was going to have sex (even though she had arranged the 3-some I overheard with mermaid girl and her husband). Prisoner husband decided they would leave saying, “Don’t worry Honey, we’ll go to the Sticky Wicket and we’ll get you laid.”

Once I was aware what was actually going on I saw things more clearly. Groups coming out of bedrooms, people going downstairs (my married friends dared me to go down), men and women fondling each other and grinding all over the dance floor, partners that I thought were together were now clearly with other people, too, people making eye contact with me maybe waiting for some  signal or for me to invite them over or for me to approach them.

When I went home I checked out the website where my friend apparently is a member. I remembered my husband telling me in the year before our separation about his friend and wife who shared partners and I remembered meeting friends of theirs where I was told later the husband is one of two men who got a girl pregnant that he cheated on his wife with and he was waiting for a paternity test to see if it was him. I remember telling my husband that he better not be on his friend’s boat without me. I wondered if he and Janice might now be apart of this group as I remembered finding the emails after my separation that he wanted to have 3-somes with my closest friends. Maybe that is why Janice sends my ex sexy photos of other women even publicly on Twitter. My husband shared with me different stories about the unhappiness in his friend’s marriage and about his friend waking up on their boat in one stateroom and looking across to the other stateroom seeing his friend groping his wife and her staring off blankly while this was going on. I asked what he did.  My husband said he just turned over and went back to bed. I told my husband that I didn’t know why he would feel anything about seeing that when he chose to introduce other partners into their sex life.  It is just a license to allow cheating.

I am having dinner with my friend, M, next week to celebrate his actual 50th birthday. We have spoke a couple of times since his party but I haven’t let him know yet that I learned he might be a swinger. I will when we go for dinner. No judgement. I want this man to continue to be a part of my life. I just have concerns that he is maybe being pulled in a direction that is taking him further away from what he is really looking for. Then again, this may just be another example in my life that you never really know who people are or what they really think, feel or want for their life.