All of the pseudo-imaginative plot twists in the history of pornographic film combined could not compete with what I saw this weekend at a particularly frat-tastic Halloween party. I had just stopped smirking after a nurse and a mailman holding hands walked out of a bathroom stall, when a flight attendant swung the same door open, straightened her skirt and shouted, “Wait for me!” Happily reunited with her partners, the stewardess gasped and grabbed the nurse’s shoulder. “Do you know where my underwear went?” Laughing, the nurse reminded her, “You didn’t wear any tonight, silly!” The stewardess was satisfied and she and the nurse wrapped their arms around the mailman’s waist and casually strolled out of the bathroom. In fact, the nun at the sink next to mine barely noticed the whole thing.

The reason that such flagrant acts of sexual irregularity go unnoticed is that Halloween is all about indulgence. When we were kids, Halloween offered the annual opportunity to eat whatever candy we could find without opposition from our parents. In college, Halloween is your chance to openly indulge your most private sexual fantasies. Guys can act on their most socially suppressed sexual desires and people will assume that they’re just playing a role. Did you just blatantly look down that girl’s top? Um, no. You’re dressed as a doctor and you were giving her a complimentary breast exam! Besides, considering the fact that she was dressed as a cat (a.k.a. lingerie plus ears), she was pretty much asking for it. And that’s okay, too! Girls can wear anything they want to — or, rather, not wear whatever they don’t want to—and no one can judge them. So, you’re an underwear model for Halloween? Clever!

Halloween parties are the perfect opportunity for us to spice up our sex lives. The characters who attend them range from walking sexual innuendos to deliberate references to popular sexual fantasies. If you used to sit in prep school fantasizing about being with a girl in her Catholic school uniform, you’ll be happy to learn that there are about a hundred drunken girls wearing them tonight and, unless you live in a hole, you’re bound to find at least five of them. For any of the other girls out there who have a thing for Superman’s biceps or six-pack, Halloween provides a guarantee that you’ll meet at least one chest-padded Superman. No, you’re not dreaming and it isn’t your birthday. Halloween is the one day, or week if you go to Cornell, that the unusual, the strange and even the freakish are celebrated and finally exposed.

While Halloween does provide a convenient excuse, it seems to me that many of us have a lot more “freakish desires” than we might let on. Perhaps the reason we go to such lengths to keep them under wraps is because of the negative connotations associated with their title. With all of the societal pressures, it’s no wonder we go crazy on Halloween indulging all of our repressed urges. Well, I, for one, am not afraid to say it. And since I have this unique opportunity, I am going to expose it on behalf of all of you out there who are less fortunate. Ladies and gentleman, that secret ounce of arousal you get when you hear about certain situations, objects or types of people is not uncommon, it doesn’t make you a freak, and it’s called a fetish.

Try to stifle the close-minded urge to exclude yourself from the rest of us freaky fetishists and ask yourself a few questions. Can you think of anything — say, a body part, an outfit, a hair color, a particular action or any other sort of thing — that consistently turns you on? Has your perception of the attractiveness of some individual ever drastically increased just because you saw them doing a particular action? Is there any setting in which you would be more excited about having sex than you would in other settings? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you can just step right in line with the rest of us and admit that you, too, are a sexual fetishist.

The reason that we feel this aversion to admitting to our fetishes is that the definition of the word “fetish” is widely misunderstood. Having a fetish does not mean that we enjoy being whipped or tied to the bed — not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that — but merely implies that one can be sexually aroused by an inanimate thing. Not so bad, right? This includes accessories, body parts, attributes, environments and, of course, physical behaviors, such as the sadism and masochism we typically associate with the word. So, if you’ve ever heard a guy call himself “a boob man” or “a butt guy,” or if you’ve ever heard a girl admit that “she loves hockey players” or “doing it with her heels on,” you’ve met someone with a fetish. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that you didn’t think it was weird at all.

As far as I’m concerned, any consensual activity or involuntary mentality that can enhance sexual pleasure is a very good thing on Halloween or any other day. Whether you’re dressing up as Princess Leia for your Star Wars fanatic of a boyfriend, donning the shoulder pads for your cheerleader girlfriend or just dressing up because you feel like it, try to remember that fetishists are people just like us. In all likelihood, we probably are fetishists ourselves. So, if, on this Halloween, you see someone’s costume and find yourself scared stiff, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Nikki Nussbaum is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be contacted at opinion@cornellsun.com. Cornell Unzipped appears alternate Tuesdays.