Julie Luongo

I’ve only been punched once in my life, and it happened one Halloween. I was an undergrad at Penn State and I had gone out with my roommate Missy and two of our friends – Saranne and Lenny.

Naturally, we didn’t have any money, so we were forced to scrounge around our closets to put our outfits together. This made a telling statement. We basically went out as our not-so-hidden alter egos. 

I was dressed as a biker bitch. This is because I owned thigh-high leather boots. Yep. Just for everyday wear. What’s worse is that in my lifetime I’ve owned – not just one - but two pairs of thigh-high boots. Oh, brother, what was I thinking? Hideous:

Missy went as a baby. She wore pajamas and carried around a bottle with beer in it.

Saranne went as a harem girl. Ok, she didn’t look this naked, but I just liked this sexy picture:

And Lenny, a beautiful man, went as a woman. We cornrowed his hair for some reason, which was stupid because he had nice hair and we just made him look weird. I overheard some guys whispering about him at one of the parties we went to. Then Lenny sat, like men do, with his legs spread, showing the hole in the crotch of Saranne’s purple tights he was wearing. The guys who were checking him out laughed and said something about how he was a hot chick until then:

It was a long night of fun. We went to a bunch of parties and then to the bars. Now, some guy had been harassing Missy and Saranne for a couple weeks at our regular haunts. For some reason, I had missed all of these antics. So, I was convinced it was because they hadn’t told this creep what was what.

The creep showed up at the end of the night and was following us being an aggressive jerk. I guess I had biker-chick beer muscles, because I got in his face and was telling him what was what. He hauled off and punched me, a body shot. I believe it was a right hook to the kidney. Just then our pal, a black belt in some martial art, rolled up and scared the guy away.

So, it turns out my alter ego is more of a dimwit than she is brawler.