I say it's Black Tie. And I say the hell with it.

Last night I went to a black tie event.

Actually, as That Stud Muffin I Married put it, there was so much ass-kissing going on that it was more of a Brown Nose event.

And that aspect of it was sort of amusing. I enjoyed watching one new partner kiss the asses of the people he thought--incorrectly--were important. This definitely wasn't me, so I spent long periods of time speaking to--and being spoken to by--no one except TSMIM. Whenever anyone buttonholed him, I would get so bored that I made five trips to the "lady's room," i.e., out to the television set to watch the White Sox beat the Houston Astros in the first game of the World Series.

I kept thinking that if I weren't at my husband's firm's prom, we could be watching the game at home. Wearing comfortable clothes.

God, how I hate black tie events.

Joke loves them, but he doesn't have to encase himself from head to toe in unnatural fibers. He wears a cotton shirt, a wool dinner suit, a silk tie and a cummerbund. A bit of fiddling with shirt studs and cufflinks and boom, he's done.

But when I go to a black tie event, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to get ready. And I end up wearing enough nylon and spandex to equip a small gathering of fetishists.

First of all, there's the dress. I have no idea what the fabric is made of, but it's definitely not natural. Under it I'm wearing a one-piece instrument of torture that sucks my stomach in for me. Over that I've got on a pair of control-top panty hose to prevent the tops of my thighs from bulging out from under the instrument of torture.

Then of course I have to wear pointy-toed shoes. I have to style my hair (a joke in and of itself) and then cover myself and my bathroom mirror with hair spray.

At various points during the process of donning my fetishwear, I have to apply a full face of spackle and deal with my contact lenses. I hate wearing my contact lenses. I only wear them for black tie events because glasses + black tie = Agnes Gooch. The solution they're stored in irritates my eyes, so every time I wear them I have to factor in extra time for the tearing, blinking, swearing, adjusting, and mopping off of my face.

I also hate my lenses because they don't correct my vision all that well, and they don't correct at all for my rapidly-developing hyperopia, meaning that I have to put them on after I've done everything that involves being able to see anything at reading distance. And this means that I end my primp sessions by having to put on my eye-makeup via Braille. With the result that I end up with mascara in my eyebrows, so thank heavens I can't see myself when I look into a mirror.

After going through all that, is it any surprise that when I arrive at the event, my first and pretty much only idea is to inhale any ethanol within a five-foot radius of my spandex? Of course not. But then I am faced with the challenge of getting in and out of the fetishwear in order to relieve myself of the after-effects of too much liquid refreshment.

So I've decided that black tie events are a plot devised by the male of the species to make themselves look great while the females of the species undergo the modern, Western equivalent of foot-binding in order to end up looking--maybe--sort of acceptable.

And anyone who wants to argue with me can just kiss my spandex-encased ass.

--P.