Sunday was the day to “fall back,” or set the clock back an hour and sleep in after a late night of Halloween debauchery. Instead, I woke up at 7:30 – which was now 6:30 – after dreaming that I was choking on a bone. In the dream, I’m standing in the kitchen at my parent’s house, while Mom and Dad are sitting at the table. For some reason my mother barks, “Gary, what did you do with my kitchen scissors?” and I start choking. Mom, who was once a nurse, gives me the Heimlich maneuver, and out of my throat fly a chicken bone and blood, splattering in slow motion on the…

That’s when I woke up and couldn’t fall back to sleep. While other people were spending their extra hour sleeping in or having hot morning sex while watching “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” I spent it lying there, trying to fall back to sleep, and wondering why I’d dreamed about choking on a chicken bone, since I normally eat boneless chicken. I suspected the reason was because a day earlier I’d gone to the local Halloween superstore where, next to the rubber monster masks and fake blood, I saw a brown felt hat with a brown felt chicken on top. It wasn’t a cute feathered chicken though – it was a headless, cooked bird. I stared at it for a few seconds, wondering why anyone would wear a fedora with a cooked chicken on it, except maybe Bobby Flay on “Boy Meets Grill,” or a guy in a chicken suit with a taste for irony. I suddenly wanted one to wear at Thanksgiving dinner, but I don’t look good in any type of hat.

I didn’t see any chicken hats or chicken costumes among the tens of thousands of people who converged in West Hollywood on Halloween night, and I was glad. But for all I knew, Carmen Miranda could have walked by with a ten-foot-tall fruit plate on her head and I’d have completely missed her, because I was getting whiplash looking at the shirtless cowboys, construction workers, football players, and superheroes in tights. My friend and I were further distracted by having to pose for photos all night with four-dozen or so women and a couple of gay guys. The ladies loved our “sexy butler” costumes, which showed a lot more skin than fabric. It felt strangely satisfying to know that straight girls might still find me sexy, even though my rhinestone-studded serving tray and plastic martini glass painted with pink glitter probably shattered any illusions of butchness.

When I described our sexy costumes to my mother the next day on the phone she said, “My, you’re getting to be quite the exhibitionist lately.” I wasn’t sure what other photos she’d seen of me counted as exhibitionism… did going to the gay beach in a Speedo really count? But Mom lives in Ohio, so I explained that what some people consider exhibitionist there is par for the course in places like West Hollywood or San Francisco, especially during festivals. “If you don’t wear something crazy, nobody will give you a second look,” I explained. “Everyone wants their fifteen seconds of fame, and looking cool on Halloween is an easy way to get it.”

I think the people who achieve the greatest celebrity on Halloween, and every other day of the year, are not afraid to shed their inhibitions. The trick is to master the fine line between being outrageous or outspoken with being fake – and that mastery only comes from self-confidence. As I’ve gotten older I’ve been able to lose a few of my former inhibitions, but I still have a mile to go when it comes to things like public speaking or approaching hot men. Last Halloween I got the nerve to take a photo with a very hot guy in a skintight Tron costume, but only after my friend pushed me toward him and snapped our picture. But in his zealousness my friend failed to include the guy’s head in the photo, so I’ll never know who he was and be able to marry him.

I’m sure that by the time I’m seventy I’ll finally not give a damn what people think. That doesn’t mean I’ll be one of those older guys who troll locker rooms while walking around naked. I just want to become outgoing enough to chat up a handsome guy on Halloween, at a bar, at the gym, or anywhere.

On the other hand, seventy is a long time to wait, so I’d better work on the self-confidence thing now. To put it in poultry-speak: I’m no longer a spring chicken, and I refuse to hide in a chicken suit anymore.