2006

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2006 is my favorite costume. It was also the biggest pain.

When I first stumbled upon it in a novelty shop while visiting San Francisco I instantly knew that had to be my next Pride costume. That was in late 2005, so I bought it many months in advance. Over the next several months I started seeing the same item pop up in stores all over the place, including right here in Vancouver and I started to get worried that I wouldn't be able to debut it as a smash novelty. But my fears were unfounded.

I considered it my simplest costume to date. I had made the sign out of a piece of corrugated plastic board and glued to a paint stir stick. Super simple! I also had the addition of a new hat this year. I'd had it custom made emblazoned Nude4Fun.com across the front in extra large text. But everything was real easy, and all done well in advance so that on Sunday I merely had to pull it on and walk out the door.

It was a smash success. Everyone loved the "I've got candy!" thing, and by the end of the day I had a lot less candy--about 1/3 of my jock strap got eaten.

But along the way I had some serious problems. First, that candy is heavy. Very heavy. So the jock strap was constantly trying to fall off. The solution I sprung upon was stealing the string off a balloon and using it to make a loop around my neck that strung down to the waistband in the back. Slightly uncomfortable on the neck, but that's life. Second, sweat makes sugar melt. So my costume began melting within an hour of putting it on and never stopped. It's slow enough that the costume stood up quite acceptably, but if you look at the photos of me you can see the sticky goo stuck to my inner thighs.

But if I had to choose I'd do it all over again. Just come up with a better method of keeping the jock strap from falling down. It really was fantastic. And I got probably 50% more photo requests than any other year. Everyone loved the "Candyman" as I was commonly called that day.