We're going to a Halloween party tonight, and of course we have given no thought to planning costumes. Me, because costumes freak me out, and Pär because he still just doesn't quite get the whole Halloween thing. He likes dressing up, he likes to paint his face or color his hair or wear strange accoutrements, but having not grown up with the holiday in Sweden, he doesn't quite understand the concept of dressing up as something.

One year he decided to wear all green and he painted his face green and wore a sparkly green wig. So of course everyone assumed that this six-foot-five green man was dressed up as the Jolly Green Giant... but he wasn't.

He was just a green guy.

I'm not sure whether we'll dress up this year. It's a company party, which with our company means a lot of gamer types will show up who live for costumes, which is fun on Halloween. Anyway, we were talking about what we might wear, if we dress up. Pär said he personally thinks Halloween costumes should be scary. He asked me what I'm going to do this year? Will I wear Monster Head again?

I said I think maybe I will wear Monster Head again.

"Yay! You've got to do something with the pregnant belly, too," he said.

"I know. I could draw a jack-o-lantern face on it. Or make it..." I gestured vaguely, "...monstery."

"You know what would be the coolest?" he said, warming up and getting excited. "If you had it look like an alien was coming out of you. You could paint on a bloody gash with a little baby alien head chewing its way out and slimy gore all over your stomach."

There was a pause. I stared at him.

"That is sick, man!" I said with insincere heat, vexed that I hadn't thought of it first. "That is fuckin' sick!"

"I'm just not sexually repressed," he stated smugly.

"Oh really!" I put my hands on my hips and aimed an approximation of a sceptical glare at him. "What does sexual repression have to do with this?"

"It's only sick if you think that pregnancy has to be all... " he fluttered his hands in the air and made a dopey face, "'OooOooh, flowers!' If you accept being pregnant as a natural part of life, then there's no reason not to play with it the way we play with everything else."

I looked at him for a moment, trying to come up with a good retort. He looked back at me, probably trying to come up with another good one himself. There was another pause.

He raised his hands into the air and fluttered them around again.

"OooOooh, flowers!" he crooned. He smiled. "That was such a funny line I had to say it again."