I take the long way back from the DHL drop-off. The weather is fucking perfect. I take a tiny toke to spark the flow.
I walk down a residential street. There aren't that many in this neighborhood. We're surrounded by tall glass buildings, industrial back alleys, and ethnically specific retail and dining up to East River. But there are some very cute hidden gems, adorable stoop-front streets here and there. I love to wander through them and pretend I'm on the Upper East Side.
It’s dusk on Halloween—52 degrees. This quaint and quintessentially New York street is littered with strollers and little kids in their adorable, slightly half-assed costumes, bursting at the seams with the excitement of having an endless flow of candy in their future. Their parents trail behind them, looking equal parts exhausted and elated in their onesie pajama dinosaur costumes. Whatever could be Amazon-primed and took the least amount of time to assemble. Honestly, I appreciate the effort. Some parents went all out. I saw a very realistic-looking zombie. Then again, it’s 2023. That could’ve been a zombie or just a resident of NYC. I couldn’t tell for sure. Who can?
I loved seeing the homeowners outside in their costumes handing out candy. The spiderwebs and floating skeletons are a nice touch. One of the brownstones has a haunted house with red light and smoke spilling out the front door as a mysterious tarot reader reads the candy-filled futures of these joyful little kids. Even though I recently mentioned my aversion to being a parent, I still enjoy witnessing this type of hope in humanity.
Dead Man’s Bones plays in my ears. I felt it was apropos for the holiday. The sound of a ghostly child's choir being fronted by Ryan Gosling and some other guy. I think about writing a story of two eclectic men stumbling upon an old chapel. They decide to live in it during a global pandemic, and they're haunted by the angelic voices of a children's choir. Disembodied harmonies coming from the cherubic songbirds who perished in that chapel during a fatal fire. You get to find out what happened to them through the songs from this album…hmm maybe…not sure about the songs part, but the rest could be interesting. Is it a Netflix Series? Who knows? It will never see the light. Just another idea I jot down in shorthand in the notes section of my phone.
“Gotta love Halloween.” a voice in my head says.
I've always enjoyed dressing up and pretending. I think I was a weird kid. Wild imagination. My mom says when I was really young, maybe 3 years old, I would cry to her because my imaginary friend wouldn't play with me. I grew up thinking it was so sad that I was rejecting myself at such an early age. Rather than take me to therapy, my mom decided that my imaginary friend was probably a ghost anyway. I’m not a big fan of ghosts, the general idea of them—I don’t love it. While I present as “tough,” I’m actually a huge chicken shit. Lots of things scare me. Too many to mention as a grown-ass woman. Self-rejection or temperamental ghost child? They're both not great options, to be honest.
Fucking love Halloween. I just love everything about it, minus the haunted houses and ghost stuff. Oh, and horror films. I hate horror films but love True Crime. Weird. I love the whole Halloween aesthetic. That’s it. The witchy, spooky, pumpkin vibes hit me in the right spot.
Halloween feels right in New York. A crisp Halloween. A sweata-weatha Halloween that’s how the Universe intended it to be. It feels like a scene from a movie. Like a warm apple cider hug to the soul.
Halloween is truly a Fall weather holiday. Growing up in Miami in the ‘80s and ‘90s, trick-or-treating in 80 degrees with 99% humidity while wearing a plastic bag was brutal. I went as a scantily clad Hula Girl one year—probably to survive the sticky weather. The mask was a breathing hazard and its own rite of passage (to hell). I wonder if I'd be different if I grew up in the idyllic movie neighborhoods and climates I saw on TV. I'd probably be soft AF. Having curly hair and bangs in high humidity hardens you. Also, a lot of you didn't get heat rashes from your Halloween costumes, and it shows.
I think about my sexy Rust Cohle costume fondly. Some of my finest work. Too bad only a handful of people even knew who Rust Cohle was. The absurdity of me trying to make that character into a “sexy” version with a “slutty” outfit was doubly lost. True Detective Season 1 was a masterpiece. I should probably rewatch that.
“Too dark for the holidays,” I think
“Yeah, you’re right; that’s better for the long haul of January.”
I zig-zag through the happy Halloween mob.
The air is crisp and smells like cinnamon.
Ryan Gosling sings about zombies.