“What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen tonight?”

3:30 a.m., Halloween night: Wide-eyed and staring around, a few devoted debauchers still roam the streets.

I ask all of them the same question.

“Uh… I don’t really remember.” He squints at me and walks off, swaying with the rhythms of the drinks sloshing around in his stomach. I can see his morning already. He’ll have to track down everyone he might’ve been with to find out what degeneracy he took part in.

“Thanks anyway. Happy Halloween.”

His arm raised in answer. You really can’t expect much from the maniacs who are on the street at this ungodly hour.

There had clearly been some insanity. The street told the story in trampled cups and costume pieces. At the night’s peak, it took about an hour to get from Camino del Sur to the last house on Del Playa.

Crushed shoulder to shoulder in this mad parade, no one could see your hands. Faces were hidden under masks and makeup.

Anonymity gives a guy a hell of a lot of nerve. Added to the booze and pharmaceuticals, which were many and various, inhibitions were drowning in the mob mentality.

This was the craziest thing I saw:

A girl who was dressed as an angel and a guy were leaning on somebody’s car in my apartment’s driveway. She, of course, was slutted out, and he was dressed as a frat guy with a mask. They were half-embraced and drunkenly swaying a bit.

I was walking past them when I heard a squeal. I saw his hand reaching up the side of her skirt. He withdrew it rather quickly when he realized she wasn’t going to quiet down until he moved it.

They went back to their gentler playing and I was about to walk away again when the guy tried a new approach. He tried to lift her skirt up behind her and she screeched again. He moved his hand and she stopped.

In almost one motion, he withdrew his hand from the back of her skirt and brought it around for a frontal assault. Either he had a sexual learning disorder or he was trying to molest this girl against her will. When his hand slipped between her legs and up her skirt, she screamed and didn’t stop.

I walked away, looking out for a cop. It was reassuring to see that she was giving him a hard time. Not every girl is that brave. The guy she was with was big enough to intimidate me, and I had a solid half-foot and 40 pounds on her. How she must’ve felt under his aggressive hands appalled me.

Walking down the street, there wasn’t a minute that passed without a girl slapping a hand away or shouting “Asshole!” at some guy who had manhandled her.

I never found a cop in the crowd but mentioned the occurrence to the first one I saw on a side street. I’d bet that no guys got in any trouble for what they did that night. That may make it all right for them, but I wouldn’t want to be the one to have to comfort that angel the next morning if the guy she was with got what he was after.

There are some places in this world where they cut off your hands for stealing. I think Isla Vista should be the place where you get your hands cut off for molesting people. Del Playa would’ve been much better on Halloween if a lot of the guys didn’t have any hands.

Daily Nexus assistant Opinion editor Cory Anthony plans to keep his hands his whole life, even after he becomes King of Isla Vista and cracks down on molesters.