At the onset of her fourth year in college, Eve has learned quite a few things about sex. Eve, The Hatchet’s anonymous sex columnist, will share her observations and (sometimes dirty) thoughts about sex at GW with the population that fuels her fire.

Eve’s obligatory safe-sex note: A condom goes well with any costume.

Many moons ago, on a dark and spooky Halloween night in 1982, my mother fell in love. She had tucked her blonde hair beneath a dark wig and gone to a friend’s costume party as Esmeralda, the sexy gypsy from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

As the story goes, my mother was sipping on witch’s brew when she saw a man dressed as Quasimoto across the room. Though she could not tell if he was handsome beneath the fake hunchback and white make-up, sparks flew when their eyes met.

They talked late into the night about presumably everything from reggae to Reaganomics. Like her, his favorite author was Victor Hugo, and they both loved Mexican food. At the end of the night, he kissed her on the hand and said, “Goodnight, my Esmeralda.”

To this day, my mother says that his gentle peck was better than any sex she ever had (to which I generally reply, “Ew, Mom, gross!” but for the sake of this story, I will put aside my juvenile reactions). Either way, it was love at first spook.

Two nights later, they met for margaritas and tacos at a nearby Mexican restaurant. But things were not the same. Without the hunchback and heavy make-up, he looked painfully normal … and short.

“I thought you would be taller,” my mother said.

“I thought you were a redhead,” he replied, equally disappointed. The fireworks fizzled. Margaritas sat untouched. The Halloween-induced lust was

For years, I thought this story was so sad. How could an instant connection be killed by simple visual differences? How could a Halloween costume create such great expectations that reality could so quickly squash?

And then I realized that my mother’s story had little to do with lost love and everything to do with the hottest of all holidays: Halloween.

On Halloween, we become something else. Not just by wearing a costume, but by broadening our entire sexual spectrum. No one is who he appears to be. That nerdy guy from the gym might surprise you by looking exceptionally hot in a Han Solo costume. Or, you might even surprise yourself by wearing a super-slutty Naughty Nurse costume and wanting to give everyone you see a check-up (by the way, if anyone wants to borrow my nurse costume from last year, it’s yours if you’re willing to front the dry cleaning bill).

My guy friend Brown believes that Halloween returns us to our basic male-female sexual roles.

“Girls are allowed to fulfill their innate desire for attention and domination by dressing slutty, while guys don’t have to feel wrong about lusting after some slutty French Maid.” Which, by the way, was voted sexiest costume almost unanimously among my male friends.

Suffice to say, we are primed for excitement and exploration of the unknown on Halloween. Other people’s costumes excite us, while the anonymity of our own gives us more confidence. On what other day of the year can a guy blatantly lie to a potential hook-up and not feel guilty the next morning when he or she says, “Wait, you’re not really Superman? I feel so used!”

While Halloween is a sexy departure from who we are every day, Nov. 1 always comes early the next morning, with its demands that we dress appropriately and be honest with those we wish to bone.

But how honest are we, really? Plenty of guys in normal clothes and no masks at all have made me feel tricked, cheated, used and abused. Plenty of times I have withheld information or put forth not-so-true facts in order to seem better, smarter or sexier than I am. At least on Halloween, everyone is playing the game.

And in this game, there are no rules, so none can be broken. There are no definitions, thus we don’t feel the need to define ourselves. And kisses from a stranger’s lips will feel the same whether he’s dressed as the Lone Ranger or Tonto.

So if you’re up for the fun that the Halloween game of lust-and-loss offers, dare yourself to take on a new persona for the night. When someone asks you, “What is your costume supposed to be?” respond “What costume?” Grab a masked stranger’s hand and say “Trick or treat?”

This is your only chance to fall in love for just one night, because the object of your affection only exists for the night. It’s like Cinderella, only maybe this time Prince Charming will get laid.

Just remember, no matter what happens on Halloween, it’s the one night where you can wake up the next morning, thigh-highs torn, condom wrappers strewn across the floor, and say, “Well, I just wasn’t myself last night … “