You know you are on a really special date with your wife when she turns to you, rests her head momentarily on your shoulder, and says, "It's worse than seeing porn."

This romantic moment occurred when we were standing in line for a movie last weekend. The movie -- and I'm not proud to admit this -- was "Jackass Two."

Choosing "Jackass Two" was, in all fairness, a spontaneous decision. It was 9 o'clock on a Saturday night, and we had just seen appropriate grown-up fare: "All the King's Men." Now, however, our daughter was at a sleepover and so we figured (as Ernie Banks said about baseball), "Let's play two." Yes, we'd enjoy a good old-fashioned double feature. "Jackass Two" began at 9:45, and we decided we'd see it. Then, as if we were (Gosh!) James Stewart and Donna Reed in "It's a Wonderful Life," we even strolled to the nearby Ben & Jerry's scoop shop for ice cream between the two films.

Then, however, as we were returning to the theater to purchase our tickets, we realized that we were not especially proud of our choice in a second feature. There standing in the lobby was our old friend, Jennifer Nachbur. Nachbur works at the University of Vermont College of Medicine. When she asked us what we were going to see next, instinctively -- reflexively -- we both lied. (Sorry, Jennifer.) I looked at the movies that started after 9:30 at night and mumbled "Last Kiss."

It's hard to be a middle-aged couple and tell people you actually want to spend $16 to see a group of guys climb aboard rocket-propelled skateboards or grocery carts, or voluntarily attach a leech to an eyeball. Just for the record, those are the only moments from the movie that I feel comfortable describing in a family newspaper. The others, if you have the common sense to be oblivious to the Jackass phenomenon, involve creative attempts among the guys to make one another vomit or become forever incapable of becoming a father -- which, actually, might be just one more example of Darwin's principles in action. Does anyone really want Johnny Knoxville or Steve-O -- the moron who intentionally sticks a fish hook through his cheek and then goes swimming with sharks in "Jackass Two" -- to continue the species?

Yes, my wife and I were suitably embarrassed. Apparently when I was purchasing our tickets, I was mumbling so softly and with such shame that the ticket seller had to ask me twice for the name of the film. When a very kind woman who reads this column regularly introduced herself to me in the lobby a moment later and asked what we were seeing, I answered, "Oh, we just saw 'All the King's Men.'" Then I prattled on for so long about Sean Penn's performance that I bored her into submission. She retreated before I was forced to admit, "Oh, my wife and I thought we would see 'Jackass Two.'"

But it got worse. The movie was so popular opening weekend that we had to stand in a special "Jackass Two" ticket holders' line so the whole world could see us. This was, not surprisingly, when my wife murmured that she was more embarrassed than if we were in line to see an adult movie.

And we were pretty obvious in that line because I was the only male not wearing a ball cap backwards, and my wife was the only female not sporting a baby-doll tee and flip-flops. We had, by even the most conservative estimate, 15 years on everyone else in line. We looked like ... and I hate to admit this ... chaperones.

So, in hindsight, do we feel like jackasses ourselves for watching "Jackass Two?" Not at all. The movie was a little long -- it's short, but a little "Jackass" goes a long way -- and yet it was also so childish and appalling and absurd that it was downright liberating. Best of all, it was so disgusting that my wife spent a sizable part of the film with her head buried against my shoulder.

Now that's a good date.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 1, 2006.)

Recently my wife and I went out to dinner with another married couple, and at one point before the meal arrived the other woman got up to go to the ladies' room.

"Victoria," she said to my wife, "come with me." And so my wife went.

This is not news. Women drag women to ladies' rooms all the time. But just imagine if the other man at the table had said to me, "Chris, I have to go to the men's room. Keep me company."

How creeped out would I have been? Very.

This is one of the great chasms that separate women from men. My wife and I have a 12-year-old daughter, and already she and her female friends have starting going to the ladies' room together at movies and restaurants and shopping malls.

Now, I have been inside ladies' rooms many times. Yes, that sounds a little creepy, too. Sorry. But when my daughter was a very little girl and we were traveling somewhere without her mom, I would always take her inside the ladies' room at restaurants and airports when she had to go to the bathroom. Let's face it: No three or four-year-old girl needs to be eye level with a urinal.

Actually, no three or four-year-old boy does either.

In any case, I know firsthand that ladies' rooms are not a whole lot more interesting than men's rooms. It's not like they have massive plasma TV screens inside there showing disaster movies, or there's an ongoing game of Paintball, or there are Nintendo Game Boys by the sinks. I doubt there's even a greater chance there will be soap in the dispensers, since I believe a woman's idea of proper bathroom hygiene is a whole lot more sound than a man's. To wit: At the health club where I work out, only the girly men (like, alas, me) wash their hands. Ever. Yup, I just can't wait to wrap my fingers around the weights or the grips on the Nautilus machines there.

Yet women flock to the ladies' rooms as if they expect to find Jude Law or Matthew McConaughey inside waiting for them. If there are three women with three men at the table together, you can bet if one of the females excuses herself, the two others will join her.

Consequently, I asked my wife what women do when they go to ladies' rooms together.

"I assume we do the same things men do," she said.

"I don't think so," I told her. "First of all, men don't go to the bathroom together. Second, we get in and out of there pretty quickly."

"Well, you know, we primp."

"It's true," I admitted. "Guys don't primp."

"And we talk about you. Men in general."

"And we gossip," my daughter chimed in. "It's always good to leave the table if the conversation is getting awkward."

My daughter is obviously onto something here. Yet for some reason men are expected to stay put at the table -- at least until we are in our 50s and our prostates are the size of beach balls. Even then, however, when we go to the men's room together we're not primping or gossiping or escaping an awkward discussion at the restaurant table. We're talking about our prostates. In other words, we are moving the awkward conversation away from the restaurant table.

Nevertheless, I understand precisely what my daughter and my wife are saying. I appreciate the importance of friendship and camaraderie and bonding. And so the next time I am at a restaurant and a male at the table with me suggests we go to the men's room together ... I am going to run like a hunted game animal for the exit.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 15, 2006.)

What scares Queen Halloween -- a.k.a., Jana Beagley, the 29-year-old creator of Burlington's "Nightmare Vermont" and the assistant managing director for Williston's "Haunted Forest?" A bunny.

In all fairness, the bunny was in heat. And Beagley was home alone watching a remake of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," when her pet bunny, (named, appropriately, Boo), decided to jump out at her from behind the couch, catching her off-guard and, she says, giving her the biggest fright of her life.

Now, why was Beagley watching "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" alone? Frankly, I don't even cue up "Garfield's Halloween Adventure" unless there's a crowd in the house.

The answer? Research. "I was studying the movie for timing and trying to see precisely how they set up their false scares," she says.

Yup, for Beagley it's all about timing. And authenticity. And really good special effects makeup because the last thing you want (for example) is a zombie in a nightclub who doesn't look like he's really risen from the dead and feels like devouring a little human flesh while the band's taking a break.

Beagley is a Halloween impresario, a creator and coordinator and artist behind all things Halloween. If something wicked this way comes, you can bet Beagley has had a claw in it -- hence her nickname, Queen Halloween. "I just love this time of the year," she says. "The bugs are dead; the leaves are gorgeous; and now that I'm a grownup, I don't have to go to school."

Ironically, after graduating from Middlebury College, she was a schoolteacher. But she found that she "didn't like having a captive audience. I wanted an audience that wanted to be there." Moreover, Beagley discovered that she liked the sort of audience that comes to a Halloween event, and she liked the way they responded: "An audience at a haunted event will really respond to you. At a traditional stage event, they'll clap politely when you're done. But at a haunted event, you know you've done good because people are screaming."

Indeed, one of her favorite moments occurred when she was performing in the Halloween "Tooth and Nail" show at the Champlain Valley Exposition in 2004. Clad in a black hood and a black dress, she ventured into the bleachers during the performance and found that an audience member was actually sitting on the stairs on precisely her mark. Beagley, who might be flirting with 6 feet, simply lifted the man up by his shoulders and moved him, and she nearly fell out of character when she heard him murmur to a friend, "I think I'm in love."

Beagley was a founder of the Equinox Theatre, which when it isn't trying to scare the heck out of its audience with Halloween productions brought us "Dangerous Liaisons" in 2005. Her new show, "Nightmare Vermont," opens at Memorial Auditorium this Friday night. It has some of the characters you might find in any Halloween production, including vampires and, um, a power-mad deejay. But Beagley hopes the show will offer a new twist on women's roles in the horror genre: The female characters this year are very powerful, she says, not merely the traditional Halloween victims. Of course, she also admits they're "scantily clad, and there's a lot of vinyl," so clearly the show has something for everyone.

Meanwhile, the Haunted Forest with its shadowy paths of goblins and ghouls and painfully bad puns opened Friday at the Catamount Family Center in Williston. This is the Forest's 26th incarnation, and Beagley has been volunteering for more than half of them, carving pumpkins and writing and jumping out at people whenever possible from behind trees. Next year, when the current director Sara Haggerty steps down, Beagley will take over, inheriting the Kingdom of 1,000-plus jack-o'-lanterns.

"I just adore Halloween," she says. "I love the sense of transformation. I love the darkness. I love the way it's a license to twist things."

Perhaps someday she'll even find a costume for the scariest thing she can think of: a bunny named Boo. No doubt, she'll give it fangs.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on October 22, 2006.)