That awkward moment when you resort to small talk with the handcuffed, half-naked, pregnant nun you’re standing next to.

“So, how are the kids liking the new middle school?”

Let’s just put it on the table here. I think every moment is awkward on Halloween and at adult costume parties. While there are seemingly endless American oddities, adults dressing up always rises to the top of weird for me.

I’m not shy when it comes to dress-up fun. I was an actor throughout college until I realized I had to get a paying job. I was an enthusiastic Halloween skeleton as a kid. I cruised Denver streets trick-or-treating as a fat old lady. Halloween is a kid’s waking dream, capped by the license to act out, act up and have everyone in the neighborhood tell you how cute/scary/handsome/funny/sick you are. Who couldn’t like a night where people pay attention to you and then hand over pounds of free candy? It’s a night of blissful binging limited only by inevitable-yet-brief puking. You knock on a door, strike your best black-widow spider pose, wait for the loot and move on to the next house. As a child, it’s the most natural thing in the world to turn to Tinker Bell, a 32-inch Superman or a homeless vagabond in his dad’s dress shoes and strike up a conversation about what candy you’re going to eat first, trade off or hide from your parents. Sliding in and out of character between 10-year-old pimp and a fourth-grade student is natural.

Not so much with a 48-year-old bearded computer analyst in purple fishnets and size 15 red, patent leather pumps that must have cost a fortune.

I’ve been to a lot of costume parties as an adult, and they race to the same dead end. You get an idea for your costume. Maybe it’s the Pope in camo-robes carrying a dead skunk. Naaaah. Maybe it’s Spider Sabich recently uncovered from an avalanche. You tap on the door of your pal’s house. Your friend’s wife answers and has lime-green hair, a fake nose the size of your foot and a witch’s hat covered in inflated condoms. “You look great,” is exchanged then and all night. You reach a little too fast for your first beer or quart of vodka and scope out the food. Immediately you worry that your vampire-baby-in-a-diaper costume is going to be trouble when your fangs puncture your chin and you produce real blood. Your diaper sags a little as you’re marveling over the fake pecs of your neighbor’s rented Hulk outfit. He makes a crude joke about how much his wife didn’t complain about having to paint “everything” green. You hitch up your diaper and try not make your laugh sound too strained.

And then it happens. Party or no party, no amount of pale ale or yellow diesel or Cuervo can turn you into a vampire baby in a dapper diaper. And your neighbor? Even well into the night, his muffin top is a discomfiting distraction from his now-listing green pecs. At one point, the polite banter about everyone’s costume and the bruschetta wears thin, and it happens. You ask a real question, breaking the tepid festive spell.

“You ever get your garage door fixed?”

The room shrinks and gets glaringly lighter. Fake blood flakes off your chin and soils your baby booties. The Hulk pushes his pecs up a few inches, takes long draw off his Rolling Rock, and he nods his head.

You now can’t escape from being a grown man in a diaper talking about garage doors with a friend whose long, wiry shoulder hair is standing up from thick, dollar-store green makeup he’s smeared all over his body. His wife pulls alongside with her whip and handcuffs, pretending to spank her husband with a rubber snake she pulls from her pocket. The last time you saw her, she was wearing stained yoga pants and loading her screaming kids into a car that was covered in bird poop.

Everyone is still far too sober to pretend to be having fun. Without the costumes, it might have been another fun evening with liquored-up pals that you look forward to seeing all week long for the easy laughs. But seeing your same friends act out their fantasies, oppressions, hatreds and latent inhibitions is as pleasant as someone saddling up to the trough urinal right next to you and start talking about his prostatitis. Adult costumes are a fleeting amusement, best enjoyed as a picture on Facebook and not as a long night on the town. You are a guy with fake fangs stained with guacamole, wearing a diaper. Really, if this was such a good idea, we’d do it all the time. Casual Fridays would be Drag Queen Tuesdays. We would all come to staff meetings wearing our superpowers on our sleeves. You’d have your annual dinner with in-laws as your favorite Bollywood character.

Take my advice. Buy a lot of beer. Give out plates piled with your best ribs and pumpkin cookies. Laugh at the kids dressed like kitties and zombies. And spend Halloween as yourself.

And looking for my Batman cape and T-shirt, I’m outta here.