Halloweeness

Penelope woke up at 6 AM. She had to open up Uncommon Grounds with Claudia and Ted this morning. She woke up in Luther’s apartment, and she left him a note which read:

I went out to go to work (unlike some people!) but you can call me at 2:00 if you want to hang out before we go to Lauren’s party.

She showered, she changed, she left the apartment, she walked through the city streets, she swiped her CTA card, and she stepped aboard a train. She took it two stops and stepped out and walked to the coffee shop, where Ted and Claudia were already setting up for the day.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Penelope apologized.
She clocked in and Claudia told her she could sweep and mop the floors. As she pushed the broom and mop around the establishment, and just as Claudia stepped into the manager’s office, Ted walked over to her.
“So, your news couldn’t wait until today?” he joked.
“I had to get it off my chest,” she said.
“Well that’s cool, as long as it made you feel better.”
“Yeah, I’m just excited about tonight. Are you doing anything special?”
“Not really, I met this new girl and I think we’ll probably be hanging out tonight.”
“Oh really?” Penelope’s eyes opened wide in surprise.
“Yeah, we just kind of crossed paths, and we had this immediate connection. Weird how things work out isn’t it?” Ted was smiling sheepishly.
“That is good timing, I guess. Well, if you’re interested, my friend Lauren is having a party, and I know she wants it to be big, so you could come with your new friend if you’d like to.”
“Oh well I’m sure it would be a lot better than watching scary movies and smoking pot,” Ted said under his breath, as Claudia had just walked back out from the office.
“Cool,” Penelope said, going back to her mopping.
“C’mon you two, there will be plenty of time to socialize when this place is clean. We need to be ready in 15 minutes!” Claudia ordered.
“Sorry Claudia,” Ted said, “I’ll get back to the kitchen.”
As the day progressed, a different kind of wind blew through the air. The cold front had moved in, and now, snow was predicted for the evening. Nothing could have stopped the million Halloween enthusiasts which were to crowd the streets. It was as if their will to accrue candy or liquor ruled their actions of the day. Children in school did more poorly on quizzes and tests than usual. Certain adults at work were less productive than usual. College students ditched class and took to all-day binges.
One ex-drug pusher and current dictation taker spent his day as he spent every other—that is, waking and baking. Halloween had no special meaning for Spencer, other than that he could get as high as he wanted to and generally no one would notice. He had woken up early today though, because Charles had informed him that they were going to be very busy. Spencer said he was desperate for money, and Charles said he was desperate to finish his history, but it would take time. Spencer was on the couch as he was the day before, and in the same clothes as he had worn the previous two days. He had to keep the larger items out of his laundry hamper so as to go as long as he could without spending more money than necessary on the cleanliness of his wardrobe. He had to find some real kind of income before he could be so frivolous as to do his laundry.
Charles came out of his bedroom wearing a homemade t-shirt that said, “I am extreme” in large letters across the front.
“How do you like my Halloween costume?” Charles asked.
“It’s extreme.” Spencer said, going over to their stash and packing more in the bowl.
“So you said you need to get paid today?”
“Yeah, I need to make money for rent.”
“Well you have eight dollars from yesterday, and if we do eight hours of work today, you will have seventy-two dollars. That should be good start for you. You can afford the rent for tomorrow, right?”
“Maybe, but I’d be scrounging for it.”
“Well we have to be very busy then today. We have to get a lot done.”
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
“Okay, well get that computer started.”
Spencer looked at what he had typed the day before.
“We stopped off talking about your discovery of birds.”
“Right. Let me begin: Birds are not the main element to my life. I have seen millions of birds in my lifetime, and they’ve never done anything for me except unpleasantly wake me up in the morning. Sometimes it is difficult to find beauty in one’s life when it is spent in great periods of solitude. It is to be understood that my life is unique from many others in that respect. I may not have known a very distinct community, but I have had a great amount of time to contemplate things. It could be assumed that solitude would give me a better idea of how to appreciate things, but actually, much of the time I concentrated on how unfairly I was tossed into this world, a regular human being, tied to inscrutable circumstances, understood by no one, and collectively regarded as a freak. But that was much later, and I had only stopped at my infancy. Let me relate another early memory from a more innocent time.”
“Only when I was in kindergarten was I introduced to the concept of sharing. For the first four years of my life, everything that was given to me was explicitly mine, and no one else could play with it. Entering a community with some thirty other kindergartners, l learned that I was not as special as I originally imagined. No, here were many other children who looked very different from me and spoke differently and who knew different words from me. As school began though, we shared what we were to learn, and we became more alike. Our unique aspects disappeared as we gained more common knowledge. Now, I learned that ‘I’ stood for ‘igloo,’ and that igloos were in very cold areas, and we all shared this knowledge, and igloos presented themselves to us in the same light.”
“As I grew older by months, I soon realized that my parents were different from my classmates’ parents. People knew who they were before I had to explain it to them. They would ask me how it felt to have parents who were famous. I told them it felt good, because it made me feel famous too. They told me that maybe I would be famous just because I was their only child. I would say back to them that I hoped I could be famous for some other reason. I didn’t just want to be known as their child forever. It was a question of identity, and not being locked into their conception of what my identity would be as I grew older. My parents often told me that I should do certain things in order to be civil, and to get along with other people. I couldn’t cry as often as I did. I couldn’t be as messy as I was when I ate. I couldn’t give up on learning how to read. I had to comb my hair whenever I was going to leave the house. I had to dress in clothes with colors that matched. I had to walk with my back straight and my head up. I had to write legibly. I had to fasten my seat belt whenever I rode in a car. I had to stop whatever I was doing if my full attention was required, or if I was doing something that was disruptive. Usually it was for the latter reason, but as I grew older, it increasingly became the former.”
“This history of my early life must seem rather uninteresting. Truthfully, I don’t remember much of it, so indistinct are my early memories. I am speaking in broad strokes, giving justifications for my behavior, while not intimately expressing what that behavior was. I don’t really know, to be honest, and my life is bisected by an event which renders everything before it especially meaningful and everything after it especially bizarre. So I would like to focus more on everything that came before this specific event, but most of the details are hard for me to relate in a chronological and disciplined narrative. It is after this specific event when my life instantaneously became more real and less understood by others.”
“I was 13, and I was staying home by myself on a Friday night while my parents had gone out to a party in the city. I remember that they gave me money for dinner, and I ordered a pizza, and I watched a movie I had rented about a serial killing spree. The movie made me a little bit afraid afterwards. My parents had let me rent it even though it was rated R because they specifically preached a belief that, while they knew it might not be the most appropriate entertainment for me, I was free to see what I wanted to see so long as I understood it for what it was, and was able to recognize the merits and failures of the film itself. Such critical faculties had yet to manifest themselves in me, but I thought the serial killer was a very lonely figure, and not wholly unsympathetic. I thought he might be a decent person, if only he didn’t spend his time intricately plotting the methods by which he would kill unsuspecting friends and acquaintances. You might say that I always found the villain the most interesting character in whatever movie I was watching. They alone possessed true motivations. They alone set the action of the story in motion. They alone caused the heartbreak which would soothe my own as I reflected on my sad and monotonous life of thirteen years. What had I done? I had played a few sports with friends. I had sampled different cuisines. I had seen many movies and read a few books. I had spent many, many hours in front of the television. I had played video games. I had gone to video arcades. I had gone to amusement parks and I had gone to a few museums. My parents gladly suffered all this with me. I was their only baby. No activity was too childish for them, and they spoiled me like no other person I’d ever heard. They rarely said “no” to me. And it was in this that I learned that there was no proper conduct for behavior, it was only a matter of how I judged things myself. They had told me that they would be coming back late and that I shouldn’t worry about staying up too late for them. Still, I stayed up until 2 AM waiting, and finally feeling exhausted, I went to bed. A couple hours later, the phone rang. I let it ring even though it woke me up. From my upstairs bedroom I heard the answering machine in the kitchen go off, and a strange voice intoning formal procedures drawled on about steps I was going to need to take in the morning. A couple hours later, our doorbell rang. I went down to answer the door in my pajamas. It was my grandmother. When I opened the door, she was composed, but after a few seconds, after she had looked at me and realized that I was completely oblivious, she broke down, and she lunged towards me with arms open. I asked her why she was crying and she told me that my parents had been killed in a car crash late the night before and that now she was going to be the one taking care of me. I broke down too, and she spent the next hour consoling me, reassuring me that things were going to be okay.”
At this point, Charles couldn’t go on anymore. “Okay, stop taking dictation. That is a good place to stop.”
“I thought we were going to work for eight full hours today?” Spencer asked.
“That’s some pretty heavy stuff there. I can’t just keep dictating through all the emotional turmoil. It causes me to reflect.”
“Well c’mon man, how am I going to make up this rent?”
“Why don’t you go back to selling drugs, you never had any problem making the rent then?”
“You’re not being helpful.” Spencer said.
“Well maybe I can’t be expected to just dictate and dictate and dictate what you’re supposed to do with your life all the time, okay? Maybe I have to make decisions for myself all the time and maybe you should try making your own decisions instead of relying on me to provide you with a livelihood. I have a hard time enough myself just figuring these things out on my own.”
Charles went into his bedroom and Spencer got up and left.
He didn’t know what kind of job he was going to get.
Ireena was at work. Today, she was going to interview Reginald Topper in person. It was her responsibility to find him a job after his bout with crack addiction. He was living in a halfway house, and he would soon be out, and he would soon need a new center of employment.
“Hi, I’m Reggie,” he said, walking up to her desk.
“Ireena, pleased to meet you. Why don’t you pull up a chair?”
“Thank you,” he said, pulling a chair out from a nearby empty cubicle.
“So, how is the rehab going?”
“It’s good. I feel like I know myself more now than when I went in. Now that the drugs have been out of my system long enough, I can remember what my original goals were.” Reggie explained.
“Wow, well it sounds like a success!” Ireena enthused.
“Yeah, problem is I need to find a job. See, I can only stay at this place for ninety days. I have to go out and get a job before I leave.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here to help you with.”
“Thank you.”
“So, you have worked for electrical contractors in the past?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s pretty complicated stuff there.”
“Yeah, but I know it.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to demonstrate your proficiency in an interview with electrical contractors?”
“I think I could.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be a problem then! Okay, so how many years did you work at your last job?”
“1 year.”
“And what was the reason you stopped?”
“I was addicted to crack.”
“Oh, well you were fired then?”
“I quit.”
“Well, you want to go back into this business then?”
“It’s my best skill, I really should.”
“How long were you addicted to crack for before you went into rehab?”
“Six months.”
“And you spent all your savings in that time?”
“Yes. And borrowed some too.”
“So you have some debts to pay off?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Okay, well the first thing we are going to do is set you up with the Union. Then we are going find you a job, and then you can get a place to live, and you can go back to your old way of life. Won’t that be nice?”
“If it doesn’t involve crack.”
“Hahahahaha.” Ireena laughed. She wondered if she was being too cutesy for her own good.
“I want to ask you.” Reggie started.
“Yes,” Ireena resumed a professional stance.
“How does a girl like you see this world?” He said wistfully.
“What?” She responded, caught off guard.
“Well, I wonder, you look like you got it made.”
“Well, I don’t okay. It may look all nice on the outside, but on the inside I’m a wreck. You have no idea. But that’s just something I never talk about now!”
“Oh, well, I can relate.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
After a pause, Ireena said, “Well, I guess we don’t have much more to talk about now. I’ll get right on this. Come back on Monday, and we will give you a list of contacts in the field, and within those, you should be able to find a position. We have about a 10% success rate in finding new work, so don’t get discouraged if the first few interviews don’t go that well. Good luck, nice to meet you Reggie.”
“Nice to meet you too, Ilene?”
“Ireena.”
“That’s right, Ireena, thank you.”
Reggie walked out of the office. Ireena was somewhat taken aback by the interview. But she resumed her job, and she began searching various databases for new jobs in contracting fields. She reassured herself that strange things were bound to happen. After all, it was Halloween. This would be the last task she had to complete today, she realized. She took her time with it, and she wondered what the night would hold.
Rory was in his apartment, having just returned from the local Target. He had bought an undershirt there. He put on the Nation of Ulysses’ song “A Comment on Ritual” and wrote out the lyrics on the undershirt in a black felt tip marker. He was going to go as a Nation of Ulysses fan, and he thought cleverly to himself about how original he was going to seem, while at the same time figuring that his costume was something of a cop out. It wasn’t an especially hard costume to make, or wear. It was also of too rare a subset of society to be represented by traditional Halloween acceptability standards.
Marcus went to class dressed as the President. He wore a suit and tie and smiled and waved everywhere he went. Today he had his class on Political Despotism. Before class started, his partner in the previous class, Erin, was passing out flyers to everyone. Their professor asked if anyone had any announcements to make before they began their discussion. Erin raised her hand.
“Tomorrow night we’re having an open mic and zine release party at the Hungry Brain. It’s this thing we’ve been putting together for the last four months and now, we’re finally ready to print it. I’ll be doing a reading, and so will a lot of the other contributors, but there will also be an open mic, for whatever type of performance you might want to do. So, please come, it’ll be really fun.”
“Anybody else?” The professor asked. No one said anything. “Very well, now Susan, will you begin our discussion on Arendt?
Susan was an older student in her 40s who had come back to get her degree. “What I’d like to know is, how can she manage to write this way? I counted just one sample sentence, and it had 119 words! It can become extremely hard to follow her when the point is so laboriously long that she has to go on like that, describing the trend over the last one hundred years in every sentence, being so comprehensive, getting so incredibly specific that any other sentiment or inkling as to what she is trying to say seems wrong and just ends in confusion.”
“Well yes,” the professor said, “It sometimes is hard to read. But what about the ideas? Have you brought in any passages you’d like to start the discussion with?”
“I do. Page 245 ‘Franz Kafka knew well the superstition of fate which possesses people who live under the perpetual rule of accidents, the inevitable tendency to read a special superhuman meaning into happenings whose rational significance is beyond the knowledge and understanding of the concerned. He was well aware of the weird attractiveness of such peoples, their melancholy and beautifully sad folk tales which seemed so superior to the light and brighter literature of more fortunate peoples. He exposed the pride in necessity as such, even the necessity of evil, and the nauseating conceit which identifies evil and misfortune with destiny. The miracle is only that he could do this in a world in which the main elements of the atmosphere were not fully articulated; he trusted his great powers of imagination to draw all the necessary conclusions and, as it were, to complete what reality had somehow neglected to bring into full focus.’”
Marcus spoke up. “So Franz Kafka anticipated totalitarianism, is that what she’s saying? Or that the atmosphere under which he lived was itself totalitarian? I’m going to agree with Susan about this material being hard to understand. It’s written in a very unnatural way. The rhythm of the text is too difficult to grasp.”
Erin raised her hand and Susan called on her. “I think she means he lived under totalitarian circumstances, but managed to supersede the limitations imposed on him by his environment in order to create a more unified vision than reality could provide him with, even if it was more twisted and exaggerated at times.”
“But what does this mean?” Susan asked, “Why include these sideline remarks about Kafka?”
Marcus raised his hand and said, “I think it’s an attempt to be less obscure, to include something in this incredibly dense text that people can actually relate to, because I would think almost everyone who reads Arendt is familiar with Kafka. But yeah, I think he’s a potential symbolic figure for the totalitarian model mindset for his depiction of bureaucratic operatives. It gives something of an idea of the rationality of the government in those times.”
“Yes, but you’re missing the point,” the professor interjected, “We have to stay on target. We can mention Kafka, but we are not going to talk about his books for the whole eighty-five minutes. It might make for an interesting dissertation to identify all of the totalitarian elements in his novels and stories, but we are more interested in the true history of the world in this class. Arendt wrote at length on Kafka and there is plenty to dissect in that category, but we have to think about what it must have been like for someone like Kafka, and not what it is like for someone in one of his fictional works.”
What does Halloweeness mean, you ask? It was the heading of a t-shirt given out in a bar in Paris on Halloween, the bar was named La Pomme d’Eve: the phrase itself may suffer from an absurd translation. In this case however, the translation affords more than the regular limitations of acceptable phraseology in American life. You will not find anyone who refers to the “Halloweeness” of things, but it is an unmistakable feeling too, for there is a day when we might be allowed to not be ourselves, for once. There is a day when the silly, supernatural, or sophomorically humorous approaches gospel truth. There is a day when candy is given out for free. There is a day when vandalism is tolerated. There is a day when it is okay for kids to be kids and it is okay for adults to be kids. There is also a mood of eeriness, a feeling that the expectations for that particular day of October 31st render the familiar everyday world null. The costume is a shift in identity, but whatever costume people choose must give some insight into the way their mind works, their opinions on what constitutes a really good thing to dress up as for Halloween. For Marcus, then, perhaps his presidential costume might portend a future of his own in executive politics. Or else, perhaps his costume signaled a reversal of political rebellion, a non-ironic vision of a figure traditionally viewed as a dolt, one who had been lampooned mercilessly, now embraced as a symbol of the ultimate opportunity—the highest office in the United States, rewarded to the highest bidder, though it helped to be naïve and optimistic on the campaign trail. The less political know-how the better. Marcus embodied this archetypal image as well as he could.
Luther and Penelope were putting on their camouflage outfits.
Jeanne did not go to class dressed as Sylvia Plath. Back in her dorm room now, she was putting on a black sheath dress, which she had bought at a vintage clothing store not far from campus. She did her lipstick, mascara, and eye shadow, adding a little more than necessary on the latter two for costume-like effect. This made her more of an exaggeration of the stereotypical view of the woman than an approximation of the woman herself, but it was Halloween, and she wouldn’t know what was realistic anyways, and neither would anyone else, so she felt it pertinent to play up the more frightening aspects of the author’s life. In truth, she felt an enormous affinity with her. And she had to, for who else would take on such an obscure costume?
Ireena wore a black dress with a long skirt and sleeves, and a black veil. She sat on her couch and waited for Rory to arrive. She thought about doing a line, thought about saving it for when Rory came, so she could offer him some, waited five more minutes, thought about doing a line anyways because she was bored, and she poured out a tiny pit of powder and sniffed it up her left nostril. She sniffed again, and another time, to get every last bit of dust up and out of her nasal passage and towards her brain. She sniffed to clear out her sinuses. She put her black veil down and turned on her television, and continued waiting.
Charles and Spencer left their apartment, Charles wearing his “I am Extreme” self-made t-shirt, and Spencer wearing the same clothes he had worn for the past two days. He was not dressing up as anything, but instead he would tell whoever asked him what he was supposed be whatever the situation called for. They were going out to get food before going to the party.
Ted and Barbara were dressed up as witches. They carried brooms with them, and Ted carried his secret potion in the pouch of the witch coat. Their hats were tall and pointy.
Lauren was dressed up as Wonder Woman. It had been a surprisingly easy costume to find, and she felt like it would be one she could actually look hot in. Lauren has no introductory details that need mentioning in a section more recognizably her own. No, if it weren’t for Lauren there would be no Halloweeness, and that is her key attribute. Only she could hold such a party on such a night in such a year in such a world. She is dressed as Wonder Woman, but what else matters about her? Does where she went to college, or what she does for a living really matter? At her party, for her guests who would arrive that she didn’t already know, she would have to explain these details. But alone in her apartment, sweeping the floors, spraying the counters with disinfectant and wiping them down, emptying all the waste receptacles, vacuuming all of her rugs, beneath her couch cushions, fluffing up the pillows afterwards, removing formations of dust from all readily apparent corners, nothing else matters. All that matters is presentation at this point. All that matters is the comfort and inoculation of her guests from all harmful bacteria. Lauren wants her guests to like her apartment, and she wants them to like her by extension.
She did not decorate her apartment for a Halloween party. She was not going to buy a skeleton, witch, Frankenstein, or Dracula cut-out. She did buy a pumpkin, but only today. She had not carved it, and she both figured and hoped that someone at the party would get drunk and want to do it. She did however, possess a vast array of candles, which she arranged in strategic places throughout the apartment. The lights would just go out, and the atmosphere would be enough, she figured. She had bought a .99 cent pumpkin-faced bucket which she filled with Butterfingers, Crunch Bars, and Bazooka Joe bubble gum. Her kitchen counter held a handle of Bacardi, and liter bottles of Jack Daniels, Absolut, and Jose Quervo. Her refrigerator stowed sixty beers of the Old Style and Pabst Blue Ribbon varieties, two two-liter bottles of Coke and Diet Coke each, a half-gallon of orange juice, a half-dozen limes, a half-gallon of lemonade, and a half-gallon of fruit punch. She was getting impatient waiting for people to arrive. She called Penelope.
Penelope’s phone went off while she was having intercourse with Luther. She was in a particularly compromising position, one might say, and the details need not be splayed out on the page. She let it ring though, and they continued on for another five minutes or so. Penelope then had to get to her phone. She checked her voicemail.
“Hey Penny, it’s Lauren, I was just wondering when you were planning on coming over, I know it’s still early and everything, I’m just basically waiting for the first guest to show up so I can have a drink and not feel like I’m getting ahead or anything. Just give me a call when you can. Bye.”
Penelope looked up at Luther.
“She wants us over there.”
“It’s 8:00.”
“She just wants certain people to show up early, me being one of them.”
“Well, okay, I’m ready.”
“I guess we don’t really need to spruce up or anything.”
“You look done up like an anti Popular Unity rebel soldier model.”
“But I don’t look Chilean?”
“Like, a little bit you do. You can pull it off, with the way you did the makeup.”
“We should get going.”
They put on their coats, which were part of their costume also. The combat fatigues were prepared to brave all kinds of menacing terrain. They decided to walk, and it was a good mile and then some from Penelope’s apartment to Lauren.
“So I wanted to ask you, what was life like with your husband?” Luther said after they had entered the outside.
“It was not very long. We hadn’t even been going out very long when we decided to get married, maybe two years. And then we were married for about a year, until it all came to an end. So it was like a roller coaster ride. But for the most part I was very comfortable with Paul. We had a very intimate understanding of each other. It was a connection I thought only happens for real with one person. I thought he was my soul mate and we got married. He was working at a big investment banking firm straight out of college and he told me we were going to have to wait for him to bust his ass for ten or fifteen years until the benefits would start kicking in, ‘and then they would really start kicking in’ he said. I just felt safe with him, and felt like he would only do what was good and right for us. We loved each other very much, but I know he wouldn’t want me to be alone for the rest of my life because of what happened.”
“I still can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you lived this alternate existence,” Luther said, “The person you are now doesn’t seem to fit with the person you were then.”
“Of course it changed me. Nobody is capable of going through an event like that unchanged. It threw my life upside-down. I went from living in a wonderful condo on the Gold Coast, to renting this bare-bones place here. Everything was going to be taken care of for me, and now I feel like I’m fending for my life again here. I mean, I do alright, but I’ve got to get something else going at some point if I’m ever going to toil less and make more. The coffee shop completely changed me too. It is 100% customer service, the kind of face you have to put on for so many hours. There is some satisfaction in it, but it is so endless and unrelenting, and the benefits could be better. I make out alright, but I’m not swimming in money or anything.”
“I’m living out of my savings at this point so don’t worry about justifying yourself to me,” Luther said, “I admire what you do. It’s good, honest work.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do yet?” Penelope asked.
“I really like the idea of acting,” Luther said, “But it’s so hard to find work. It’s all about connections in this business. I want to do something that matters though. I’m not satisfied to simply work for the advancement of the business community. I’ve never been big on it and it’s never been big on me. One thing I didn’t tell you, I quit my job a week ago.”
“Well, that’s encouraging. I mean, I thought you were just without a job for a while. And at least you quit and weren’t fired. People are always getting fired at Uncommon Grounds, but its pretty unfair most of the time. They run a very tight ship, with a revolving crew. I’ve managed to become the most senior member of our staff, and I’ve only been there for a year total. You just have to know how to play by their rules.”
“That’s exactly what I hate about it,” Luther said, “The rules that govern the business world are so stultifying and soul-crushing. You have to devote so many hours a week, a month, a year, a life, to be able to live. I just can’t understand how anybody can make it in these times. It’s opposite to all my expectations I had coming into the world after college.”
“You know what I say? At least we both have somebody. We all have difficulties in our lives, but having someone else there makes it so much easier to bear,” she said, squeezing his hand in emphasis.
“Yeah, that’s true, but it just seems so hard to keep pushing on for something that I wouldn’t want to identify myself as for the rest of my life. And people switch jobs all the time, so I hear, but acting is really the only thing I feel I’d be happy doing. I’d be happy telling people I was an actor, but I wouldn’t want them to think I was a starving one. It’s a whole level of desperation I just don’t want to exude.”
“It’s always hard starting out. You’re going to be fine though, you know so much more about acting than most people going into those auditions, one of these days it’s going to pay off.”
Rory rang Ireena’s buzzer and was let into her building. He walked up the three flights of stairs, saw her door left ajar, and entered. She looked over at him from her couch.
“Hey! I just got a call from Lauren, she’s wondering when people are going to start showing up. You want do a line before we go?”
Jeanne had convinced Missy to go Lauren’s party, even though Marcus had been told about it by Spencer. Missy had curled her hair and wore a red dress. She said she was going as Marilyn Monroe. They were walking over to Marcus’s dorm to meet him before they all went to the party together.
Of everybody who would show up at Lauren’s party that night, Charles and Spencer had the most unimaginative costumes. At this point, they were on their way out of the Columbian restaurant where they been eating dinner. Charles was waiting for his credit card to be returned with the copy of the receipt to add the tip onto.
“Do you think I’m going to stand out, not being dressed up as anything particularly different?” Spencer asked.
“No, nobody is going to call attention to the fact that you’re not wearing anything out of the ordinary, but they may think you’re boring,” Charles answered.
“What about you? That t-shirt isn’t a costume.”
“Are you kidding me? Nobody has the originality to turn Halloween on its head and expose its inherent ironic flaws in the way that I do. They all accept what you’re supposed to do on Halloween. They don’t see that you can simply say what you are, and not have to look like anything. By telling people that I am extreme, they can choose for themselves the arena in which I would exercise my extremity. In this case, it will be a party, and I will have to do something extreme to live up to my costume.”
Spencer looked sad. “Well, I’ve got nothing to live up to.”
“You can be whatever you say you are, no one’s going to question you.”
“They definitely will question me. ‘What are you supposed to be?’ I’ll just tell them that who I am is enough of a costume on its own.”
Interrogative paranoia aside, the two were happy to have a party to go to on this day. Ted and Barbara, however, treated their attendance as if it were business as usual. Ted knew that Penelope had only invited him along to be nice. He would greet Luther, he would be overly charismatic, he would ask if he could get him a drink, he would do what he decided he was going to do, and then it would be over with. It should be noted that Ted was having second thoughts before leaving. He had never yet used the secrets he knew for ill, for that was the code he had taken when he had began his study of the dark arts. He justified himself to Barbara, who believed his scheme wouldn’t work anyway, as such:
“Sometimes it is necessary to use force to bring about the greater good,” he declared, paraphrasing Machiavelli.
Marcus, accompanying the two girls, had a similar attitude towards the party as Ted, though he didn’t have anything up his sleeve, so to speak.
“I just called up Spencer to ask if I could pick up a bag and he told me to meet him at this party. I don’t know who this girl is, and he says he doesn’t either, but he gave me her address. It could be weird.”
“As long as there are people and booze there, it should be fine,” Missy buzzed, “I don’t even care about seeing Spencer, it might even be kind of fun, just to show him how little he affected me.”
“Do you think that kid Charles will have those pills with him again?” Jeanne asked.
“Oh God,” Missy said, “He has to. I spent a few days around their apartment. They live like that, they are those sort of people that can’t go a few hours without putting some exotic substance into their body.”
Lauren’s buzzer rang and she trotted over quickly to the access button. She held it down for a few seconds and opened her door and stood at the top of her stairs.
“You came! Thank you Penny! “
“Oh no problem Lauren, you’re being so gracious, it’s the least I can do.”
“I just got so bored waiting to get the party started! Hello,” she said, noticing Luther, “Hi, I’m Lauren.”
“Luther, you can call me Lu.”
The three of them walked towards the kitchen. Lauren decided to begin making the punch for the party. She asked the other two if they wanted a beer, or if they wanted to wait for the punch, and they said they would wait for the punch.
“So did anything spooky happen to you guys today?” Lauren asked as she poured the fruit punch into her biggest bowl.
“If doing next to nothing on a Friday is spooky, then yeah,” Luther said.
“Oh you’re so lucky, I had a meltdown today at work! But it’s the weekend, and it’s Halloween, and we’ve got nothing to worry about for a little while.”
Not quite a mile away, Rory had his head down over Ireena’s old chemistry textbook. He took the line she had offered him.
“So like do you have a reliable guy for this stuff? It’s incredible!” Rory said, perking up.
“I know somebody,” Ireena said.
“I don’t usually do that stuff, but mostly because I didn’t know people that do it. You could be a really bad influence on me Ireena!”
“I call ‘em as I see ‘em,” Ireena drawled.
“What!”
“This girl whose party we’re going to, she says we should go, but I don’t want to yet,” she said, moving over the textbook, now snorting, “Like it’s so early! Why start these things early? There is booze, there are people, the earlier you have it the earlier the booze runs out, the earlier the party ends, and if it ends too early people leave to go to a bar, like who cares about spending a few extra hours before so the ending is good. We should go trick-or-treating.”
“We definitely should.” Rory said.
“I’ll go get two pillowcases,” Ireena said and walked out of the living room, returning shortly after with their candy sacks.
“Nobody ever comes trick-or-treating to my apartment on Halloween,” Rory said, “Do you think people in the city are actually expecting their buzzers to go off tonight?”
“They can’t say no to us. It’s the only day of the year we have the excuse to call on random strangers in their homes. Let’s do another couple lines before we go?” Ireena suggested.
Back at their shared apartment, Spencer and Charles were collecting a variety of intoxicants for fun and profit at the party, delicately placing them in a secret zippered pouch inside Spencer’s messenger bag.
“So Marcus is going to be there again,” Spencer explained, “I’m just getting him an eighth, so that goes in the pouch.”
“Magic pills are necessary as they are the next best thing we possess to ecstasy and everybody will want to buy one,” Charles reminded.
“We need some coke for the whole slick ‘let’s slip into the bathroom’ type thing,” Spencer added.
“Opium, add a little rock of opium, and some extra pot beyond Marcus’s stash, and we can’t really get much more decadent.” Charles finished, satisfied with their decision-making process.
Walking from their campus to the nearby elevated train stop, Missy was attempting to prove to Marcus that he was a fool, as Jeanne listened without offering any wisdom of her own.
“I mean it’s all well and good to be getting a little bag of pot when you’re 20 or 21 or whatever, but are you aware of the cycle that you’re nurturing? I’m not against it as a recreational, once every once and a while activity, but when you haven’t had it for a day and so you need to get more, just to have the same thing happen when your next bag runs out, don’t you start to see the futility of it?” Missy as Marilyn argued her point.
Marcus as President replied professionally, “Well, those are all good points that you’re making there Melissa, but you treat my predicament as if it were something I could simply ignore at this point. It’s not so easy to forget, you see, when your childhood is at an end, and when the memories are no longer extent, and all fond memories after a certain point in high school are unique for their sentiment of ‘getting away with something’ or ‘beating the system.’ You may not appreciate my definition, but I view you as being entrenched within the system, buried within it and chained to a post. I may risk trouble from various law enforcement agencies, but I refuse to be defined by that which enslaves me.”
“If you could listen to yourself talk!” Missy jumped in, “You’re enslaved by your addiction, not the government.”
“You wouldn’t call it an addiction if the government didn’t attach illegality to it.”
“I’d be able to tell. What’s the one thing you do that sets you apart from all other normal people?” Missy mock-reasoned.
“I think your extraordinarily anti-drug stance is what sets you apart from normal people.” “Because I’ve seen how bad it can get!” Missy revealed, “It can completely abbreviate a life. My brother is probably ten years behind where he should be, but at least he didn’t die, which we were worried about constantly.”
“Yes, but now he did harder drugs than pot?” Marcus asked.
“Well yeah, but it’s what he began by doing.” “You make some excellent points Melissa, but you see, I’m not going to progress any further beyond this level of mind alteration. I will continue with it because otherwise I’ll be forced to take the world too seriously and to try to shoulder more responsibility than I’m capable of, and I’ll end up never being able to fall asleep at night because I’ll be too worried about how hard the rest of the journey towards the destination is going to be.”
“I think you’re just hiding,” Missy said.
“Damn right I’m hiding!” Marcus said.
“You can’t hide forever.” “I’ll hide until somebody gives me reason not to. I’m a proponent of the theory that life sucks, and once I’m convinced otherwise, maybe I’ll start listening to your advice.”
Rory and Ireena held out their pillow cases in front of them purposefully and ambled down a few nearby side streets from Ireena’s apartment. They had rung a few buzzers without gaining admittance. After about ten minutes, they came up behind a large group of significantly slower-paced sixth grade girls.
“Hey do you guys know where all the good houses to go to are?” Rory asked them collectively.
They looked at each other and giggled.
“We want to go trick-or treating too,” Ireena told them, “Can we tag along?”
One girl who established herself as the leader of her pack said, “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“I know!” Rory said, “I know totally never talk to strangers! But we feel left out, we just want to go trick-or-treating, and everywhere we go, nobody lets us in. If you just pretend we’re like your babysitters or something, we can totally clean up. Come on, do you like the idea of someone telling you trick-or-treating ends when you’re twenty-five?” “You’re twenty-five?” the lead girl asked.
“Yes and I still love trick-or-treating!” Rory said.
“Come on you can totally help us and as a reward, we’ll answer any questions you ask us, whatever you want, whatever you’re too embarrassed to ask anyone else.” Ireena offered.
“Well okay,” the girl said, “But you answer to me, and you follow my lead. You stay behind the rest of us, and when we come up to the door, you can get in on the action.”
“Okay, you’re officially the coolest girl in the world.” Rory said.
Now drinking from their plastic cups full of punch, Luther and Penelope wandered around Lauren’s apartment. As they toured the premises, Lauren kept on their tail.
“I really like how you laid out the candles here,” Luther complimented.
“Oh, thank you. I didn’t really know how much it was appropriate to decorate. I kind of feel like everyone brings their own decorations—themselves.”
“Is there any reason you decided to be Wonder Woman?” Penelope asked.
“Yeah, I thought girls didn’t read comic books,” Luther added.
“Well you don’t need to read a comic book to know who she is,” Lauren began, “I mean, there are so few good female costumes, I just saw this in the costume shop and I thought it was hot. I mean, you can never wear something so revealing any other day, you know, unless you’re trying to call attention to yourself or something. Now, I am sort of calling attention to myself tonight, but I’m also the hostess, so I feel like it makes sense. How about you? What are you supposed to be? Soldiers in Iraq?” “Revolutionaries in Chile.” Luther corrected.
“That’s obscure,” Lauren said.
“Yeah, we know,” Penelope said, “But nobody else is going to be it.”
“Oh God that would be so embarrassing if another girl dressed up as Wonder Woman came!” Lauren mock-worried.
“Chile had serious problems in the 1970’s.” Luther stated, “Salvador Allende was the President. There was class conflict, a destabilized economy, and echoes of Marxism. The U.S. cut off their support to Chile, and there was a military coup, and Pinochet headed it. And at first he claimed the country would be more free, but for seventeen years the Chilean people lived under a tyranny. See but leading up to the day of the coup, there were opposing views about what was best for the future of this country. We are dressed as the military which overthrew its own leader. We are dressed as the military which backed up Pinochet.” “So, you’re actually bad guys in the end,” Lauren verified.
“Yes, but not evil, just misguided, too easily trusting. And we mean to express the revolutionary attitude, not the murky political beliefs of the conservative forces. In a sense we are the American aspect to the situation. Being so opposed to any resemblance of communism, the U.S. certainly played a role in this change of power, and to the longer-term detriment to the Chilean nation. So do you know what day it’s supposed to be, the day of the military coup?” Luther asked.
“What, Halloween?” Lauren asked in deference.
“September 11, 1973, a date that will live in obscurity.”
“Wow, that’s weird. You’re not going to overthrow me are you?” Lauren joked.
“It may be necessary,” Luther said, “If we are unsatisfied with the current regime.”
“Yeah, if we don’t like the music we’ll lock you in a closet,” Penelope threatened.
After this comment, Lauren’s buzzer rang again.
“More guests!” she exhorted, running to press the button to let them in.
Charles entered first, and shouted, “Who’s Lauren? Are you Lauren?”
“Yes, that would be me,” she said obviously.
“Pleased, charmed, pleasured to meet you, my name is Charles, my cousin Rory informed me of this gathering, and I hope my presence will not be frowned upon. We have brought a few party favors, though if you are opposed to the use of minor hallucinogenic materials, they can just as easily be foregone.”
“Oh no, that’s very cool of you. Please, however you want to enjoy yourself tonight, be my guest. I’m not a cop. Ideally I just want everyone to go home at the end of the night and feel happier than when they came in.”
“Well no problems then, might I ask you where one could get himself a drink?” Charles asked.
“Help yourself in the kitchen, there’s punch I made, or there’s beer, or you can make yourself a drink.”
“Thank you Lauren, you’ve already shown how well you take care of other people,” Charles complimented.
Spencer stood still and silent, standing by himself in the middle of Lauren’s living room while she and Luther and Penelope looked at him expectantly.
“What are you supposed to be? Charles is obviously an extremist,” Luther assumed.
“I’m a drug addict and dealer by default.”
“Yes, I remember, a week ago you said you were going to be in jail,” Penelope mentioned.
“The penalty was not as serious as I was imagining. I am on probation, and it’s not the safest thing to be dealing so soon after the fact, but Charles is not a very lucrative employer to work for, and people seem to call me because they want something from me, I fulfill for them what is a very important function. It’s a seller’s market. I tried to find a new job but every time I looked at the listings, I didn’t have the skills they wanted. So I’ve been switching between two extremes all week, to go straight or not, and I just pretty much forgot it was Halloween until today. Do you care that I don’t have a costume?” Spencer explained, excused, and asked.
“You can say you’re a Chilean revolutionary too, if you want,” Luther said, “You can be one of the townspeople. Do you agree with us that Allende needs to be deposed? That the seeds of communism demand sterilization?”
“I actually wish we lived in a communist country. It’s too hard when you have to make choices for yourself. So what if nobody is extremely rich? No one is extremely poor.”
“Everyone is extremely poor,” Luther corrected, “The government wants you to think everyone is at a social equality in communism, but in truth everyone is worse off than before.”
“Well at least everyone is accounted for, nobody slips through the cracks and ends up being alone forever.”
“No, they just get abducted when their beliefs veer slightly from the norm, and they only have to die in pogroms.”
“Please, I’d much rather die by governmental execution than cancer. Nobody could say I was asking for it.”
“Sure they could!” Luther said, “They’d say you were asking for it the minute you didn’t play along the same way all your compatriots did.”
“I only wouldn’t play along if no one told me what I was supposed to do. Even if I had no choice, I still think it would lead to happiness better than this kind of cold, desperate, anxious struggle for respectability within a chosen profession. I wish our government would come down on us, at the end of eighth grade, or at the end of high school, and give us a test, and send us a letter and require us to enter into work at a particular place at a certain point. I mean, I would never vote for the abolition of college, but I would like it if they told us what we were supposed to be, like in The Giver.”
“But everything is so drab and gray in that book,” Penelope said, “And nobody remembers the past. It’s a horrible society.”
“Yeah, I know what things we’re supposed to find distasteful about it, I just like the idea of our professions being chosen for us, you know? Because nobody is just born and automatically likes to assume a vocation. School subjects do not adequately translate into the concerns of adults. School is its own separate business, and anyone reared in it can only imagine the world of education, and not the competitive, perfect, mistake-free, uber-quality business world.”
Another buzzer sounded and the undergraduate triumvirate of Jeanne, Missy and Marcus waited at the downstairs landing for admission. If it were not Halloween, the average passerby might have concluded that three of them were waiting to enter a 50’s style dance party. The buzzer sounded again, and this time the doors were unlocked, and the three of them walked up to join the others.
Not a minute later, Ireena and Rory and the dozen or so sixth graders ahead of them passed in front of Lauren’s building.
“Should we just end this now and go in?” Rory asked.
“Excuse me, Kelly?” Ireena called ahead to their ringleader. The girl turned to look at her.
“How much longer do you plan on trick-or-treating for?” she finished asking.
“We go until midnight,” the girl said stoically.
“Oh come on!” Rory said, “We can’t stay out here that long.”
“What’s going to be so much better about that party anyways,” Ireena reasoned, “The sooner you get there the sooner you can drink? Don’t you feel like this is such a pure way to spend the appropriate hours of Halloween? Are we not going to be there after midnight anyways, and staying for a few hours after that?”
“That’s two more hours,” Rory said, “And I’ve got more than enough candy to satisfy me for a while. And plus, this seemed like a really good idea at first, but honestly the novelty is wearing off on me.”
“Fine, we can stop. But I think we should go back to my place first and do more coke and then come back here.”
“Fair enough,” he said, repositioning himself to address their crowd, “Hey, excuse me?”
About half of the girls turned to look at him. The others didn’t realize he was talking.
“We really appreciate you letting us come along with you tonight, but we have a party we need to get to so we’ve got to get going now.”
“Okay, bye, happy Halloween,” one of the girls said, and that was enough of a farewell.
As the two of them began to return to Ireena’s apartment, Ted and Barbara began to leave for the party. As Ted was grabbing his keys, back at Lauren’s party Spencer was grabbing Marcus. He put his arm around him and walked them out onto Lauren’s back deck. He asked him if he had the fifty dollars. Marcus handed him the money, and Spencer handed him a baggie with three and a half grams of pot in it.
In the dining room, Missy and Jeanne made a couple of private comments about their respective ex and current boyfriends.
Missy emphasized, “I don’t know what I was thinking when I went out with Spencer. I mean, a serious, stable, adult relationship is so far out of that kid’s grasp. I can’t imagine how he’s ever going to support anyone, let alone himself.”
“It seems like drug selling is a pretty high profit business,” Jeanne deadpanned.
“It’s like a separate reality for them, though. Like, all the things we learn, we build off of. We have a foundation, and we continue adding onto what we know, and we move forward. I feel like they just sit together on the ground in a drum circle and never try for anything the same way we do. And somehow they get away with it, but it only seems like it now. Like you can see, there’s a huge difference between the way Marcus acts, and the way Spencer acts. The more years you spend in that kind of state, the more you lose sight of the way things really are.” Missy finished.
“You’ve got to lighten up,” Jeanne said, “Things really are different from person to person. They seem happy, don’t they? They’re not hurting anything.”
In the living room, Lauren put on the Public Image Ltd. album Second Edition. Charles walked over to her.
“Do you prefer extreme or practical measures, Lauren?” he asked.
“That’s such a vague question,” she said, “It depends on the situation.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re in the subway and a bomb goes off somewhere along the track and your train stops and the conductor makes an announcement that they are experiencing technical difficulties and you look around at the other passengers and they all seem to know that something more serious is going on and you look ahead on the track and you can see the next stop isn’t more than two hundred feet ahead and then someone in the car pries open the door to make an escape but most people stay in waiting for things to fix themselves. Do you run out the door or do you stay in the train?”
“I run out the door,” she answered.
“You go out into the unknown, the unfamiliar terrain. You are a seeker. Are you interested in a magic pill? I’m selling them for five dollars, but because you’re the hostess I’ll give you one for free,” he offered.
“What do they do?” Lauren asked, “I’ve never heard of anything called a magic pill before. I mean, beyond, like a diet pill or something.”
“Everyone wants to know what they do. These are ayahauscas extracts, which have a more powerful alteration of one’s functioning consciousness than anything I’ve ever experienced. You really become whatever you want to. Lately I have been hung up on the idea of celestial bodies, and so I’ve recently taken the form of the Sun, both living and dead.”
“That’s kind of weird. The Sun doesn’t have human qualities.”
“It’s responsible for human qualities. It alone provides for the sustenance of life.”
“Yes, but so do plants and trees and precipitation. The Sun has no variance. It sits there, and whatever changes there are to it are only our perceptions from Earth.”
“Well, if you were on the Sun then you would have a different perspective now, wouldn’t you? I haven’t taken one yet, but I want to. You are a seeker, Lauren. These are non-toxic, au naturel, will not cause brain damage like excess cough medicine. Do you trust me?”
He held out his hand with two pills in it. She took one.
Penelope and Luther were sitting on the couch in the living room by themselves.
“Run away, run away, I ran away,” John Lydon moaned through the stereo speakers.
“Can we change this music, Lauren? It’s so depressing.” Penelope requested.
The pill had just traveled down Lauren’s throat. “You don’t think this is the perfect music for a Halloween party? It’s so spacey and threatening.”
“Do you have any music you can dance to, or just stuff to listen to while strung out?” Penelope continued.
“Just let this play till the end and see if it doesn’t grow on you. You can pick what to play next.” Lauren said.
As the album played for the next hour, the party became populated by many more less familiar figures— co-workers of Lauren’s from her job, neighbors from her apartment building, random acquaintances she had met at other parties, old friends whom she did not keep in touch with as well as she should, and some other strange ducks, like me, and co-workers of other friends, like Ted and Barbara.
When these last two came through the door, Penelope greeted them, with Luther trailing slightly behind her. Ted looked at Luther pleadingly. He thus spoke his first words to him in six months:
“Hey man, how are you?” He affected an outward appearance as if there were nothing between them. The tone was airy and brisk, cordial and friendly. Buried beneath it lurked a desperate feeling to be forgiven. A feeling that mistakes had been made, and that certain actions should have been taken responsibility for.
Penelope did not know there was such discomfort in the air. Only after seeing Luther react to seeing Ted did she sense things might not be settled between them.
Luther couldn’t believe he was seeing Ted in the flesh. He had changed. His hair had been cut short, totally unlike the days when they used to hang out. He had wanted to crash his party a week earlier, but was secretly afraid of a confrontation with him. In fact, he had fallen asleep as a subconscious excuse to avoid said encounter.
Barbara looked on like she was reaching for popcorn.
Luther finally answered, “I’ve been better—recently out of a job.”
Ted said, “Oh that sucks man.”
Luther waited for whatever words had to be said about their extended period of avoidance. He said, “Yeah well it’s not like I’ve seen you recently at all. Things are a lot different. This is just a rough patch.”
Ted said, “Yeah I meant to say something about that. I don’t know what I was thinking back then, back when I said you weren’t welcome at my house anymore. I was going a little crazy myself, and I guess I just acted irrationally. Like, my mind was not totally healthy at the time, you know? Looking back on it, I have a lot of regrets about it, and I wanted to do what I could to make up for it.”
Barbara was impressed with Ted’s performance. She had seen him act genuinely, she felt, with her. And she felt that Luther could not help but be moved by his apology. His appearance of reconciliation rang true, and when offered in earnest, could never be rejected. She looked on, aware that now would be an inappropriate time to say anything, afraid of unsettling the sacred area the conversation had just entered. She looked at Penelope and thought she must be feeling the same way about keeping mum.
Looking back on the party a year in the future, Penelope would wonder about Ted’s apology. What was odd about it, she would reflect, was his timing. It was the first thing he said after coming through the door, practically. It was as if it were his mission to be forgiven, and not to have a good time.
“Hey, do you want me to get you another drink?” Ted asked Luther, whose hand dangled past the couch cushion, the plastic cup held at a horizontal angle.
“Sure, thanks, I’ll just have another punch,” and he handed Ted the cup.
Ted and Barbara walked towards the kitchen with Luther’s cup in tow. They had to squeeze their way through the crowd that had developed along the narrow hallway of the apartment.
“I know him!” Barbara said, giving Ted an emphatic shove to his chest. “He’s nice, I drew a sketch of him a few days ago in the park, and I gave it to him. I don’t want to hurt him.”
“We’re not hurting him. He’s going to hurt himself. Besides you don’t know what he’s like. Of course if you draw a sketch of him he’s going to be nice to you. He doesn’t understand boundaries. He takes and he never gives.”
“Don’t you think he should get a second chance?” Barbara urged, “He seems happy with Penny, and we’re happy, aren’t we?”
“The basis of our relationship is founded upon the plan of his demise. We are doing this together. Think of us as Bonnie and Clyde. We’re vigilantes. I’ve known him for years, and I did my best to extricate myself from him when he showed how he was only going to be a leech, and he still managed to finagle his way back into my life, and cause me extreme duress. Don’t you trust me?”
“If you say so, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like he doesn’t deserve it.”
They reached the kitchen, took out two additional plastic cups for themselves, and ladled the punch into them.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Barbara reasserted as Ted reached into the pocket of his witch coat.
“Look it’s probably not even going to work, okay? Sometimes I’m not sure if the devil is communicating with me, or if I’m just convincing myself he is.” Ted explained, attempting to assuage Barbara’s fears.
He uncorked the cap from the top of the test tube in his pocket and quickly sifted the black substance into the bottom of the cup. He ladled half a cup of punch on top of it and shook it around, then filled the rest of the cup, and shook it some more. He inspected the drink and it looked no different from his and Barbara’s. He held it in his left hand as they returned to the living room.
“Okay, here’s your punch. Should we do a toast?” Ted asked.
“To burying the hatchet?” Luther suggested.
“To starting afresh,” Penelope offered.
They held their cups up, repeated her toast, smashed the cups together, and took bountiful chugs.
As the toast was being consummated, not quite a mile away Ireena did what she told herself would be her last line before she and Rory would leave for the party.
“Time check?” she asked him as she rubbed and sniffed her nose in post-ecstatic restlessness.
“11:45,” Rory answered her, “I think it’s about time we think about going.”
“Don’t you kind of love the idea that we got hung up here and ended up doing something totally different than what we were expecting?”
“I don’t particularly care, to be honest,” Rory said, pulling the chemistry textbook over to his side of the coffee table now, and leaning over it, “All I wanted to do was spend time with you.” He snorted the last line.
“Thank you, that’s very flattering. But I think we’ve done about enough coke for now.”
“Whether we’re here alone, or at this Halloween party, it makes no difference to me. You’re the only one I’m interested in.”
“Well I’ve felt that way about you for some time too, but I’m not about to let it show yet. There are still a few things left undone.”
“Like?” “Like a serious kiss.”
Rory felt that it was the right time to put his mouth on hers, and as she kissed him back, a knot of anxiety and tension was untied from his body, giving way to the blissed state of abandon and anticipation.
She unlocked her lips from his and said, “To the party then?”
“Yes—to the party,” Rory said, standing up, holding his left arm out, waiting for Ireena to slip her arm through his.
Back at her apartment, Lauren had poured herself another drink. Charles took one too, and they stepped outside to have a smoke. Already out on the deck were Spencer and Marcus, sharing a marijuana and tobacco cigarette that Spencer had rolled.
“How’re you doing buddy?!” Charles drunkenly shouted at Spencer.
“Pretty good man,” Spencer answered back in a mellow way, “What are you right now? Do you still believe you’re the Sun, do you still believe everyone revolves around you?”
“No, this time I feel like the universe has collapsed. Everything’s gone and all matter, or anti-matter, is of the same thread and seam. There is no longer any separation. There is no revolving. There is no centrality. I am the void and the fullness at the same time. I am nothingness and everything. My experience at this present moment is a distant dream which I am remembering 10 billion years in the future, the memory of my human lifespan, and I only feel like I am present in it, but in truth, in the real ever-present final inevitability, I am at a distance, I have no identifiable consciousness or perspective, I simply am and am not at the same time, and nothing that I do can change that.”
Spencer said to Marcus, “I was taking dictation from him earlier today; he still must be on the same kick. He was going to use me to write his book for him, but his pay was next to nothing, hence my going back to dealing.”
“Well if it means anything,” Marcus said, “You make my life more enjoyable. I hold you responsible—you provide me with happiness.” There was a pause. “I love you,” and he threw his arms around Spencer.
“I love you too buddy,” he said, patting Marcus on the back, “But nothing lasts forever. One day you’ll need to find someone else to sell you your dope.”
“I have a pumpkin,” Lauren announced after exhaling a stream of smoke, “Who wants to carve it?”
“I would love to carve your pumpkin,” Charles said, “Especially if I can eat the goop inside of it. I’d like to just stick my nose in it. Mmmm, pumpkin goop, the aroma is intoxicating.”
“You freak,” Spencer said.
Charles and Lauren went back into the apartment, and Luther and Ted replaced them not a minute later. Two more cigarettes were lit and Ted began by telling Luther that he was lucky.
“I’ve worked with Penny for four months now, and I can tell she’s just pretty much as close to perfect as you can get. I mean she is beautiful, but she is also incredibly kind.”
“She’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a really long time,” Luther replied.
“How serious are you guys? Like you haven’t been going out for that long, right?”
“I guess we only met six days ago, but we’ve seen each other every day since. I mean, primarily because I’ve had nothing else to do. It’s been a weird week. Things feel good, really good.”
“What do you think of her in bed?”
“I don’t know if that’s any of your business.”
“Why not? I thought she was amazing. I was just interested to hear your opinion.”
“Wait, what?”
“What did you think of her? She’s pretty good at giving head, right?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sloppy seconds, man. Sorry, but I beat you by a day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A week ago I had a party. I invited her, we just got drunk and it happened. I thought it was great but she didn’t want to get involved. Apparently she wanted to get involved with you the next day, though.”
“So you’re saying, consecutive nights?”
“Yeah man. I think that’s pretty cool actually, like I wish I could fuck two different people on consecutive nights. Actually it was only a few days until I met Barbara after that, so I guess I came pretty close.”
Luther looked out at the night sky, slowly exhaling the smoke through his mouth and nostrils. He didn’t know how to respond to Ted.
“You’re a liar,” Spencer said, “Nobody can meet people to fuck so quickly after another.”
“It depends on your approach,” Ted explained, “Maybe you can’t, but I know now I can. It’s all a matter of self-confidence.”
Marcus had to know the secret. “What do you mean by ‘self-confidence?’”
Ted said, “You have to show the girl that you know what you’re doing. You can’t hesitate. You have to let them know what you want. If they reject you, so be it. But you always have to be upfront. And most of the time, people want to have sex. It’s not like doing drugs where it only holds true for a certain percentage of people. You just have to put the trust there. You have to let them know that you wouldn’t do anything shitty.”
“What’s wrong Lu? You look uncomfortable,” Spencer said.
“I’m just shocked, that’s all.”
“What does it matter, I can tell Penny is like totally in love with you. Water under the bridge,” Ted said.
“It’s just shocking, she never told me about this.”
“Well it’s not the easiest thing to just say to someone out of the blue,” Ted said, “Like, I don’t know how the subject would ever come up.”
“Maybe I just wasn’t supposed to find out, okay.” Luther said.
“You just have to decide, do you care about each other’s pasts or not?” Ted continued on.
“Tell you what, I don’t give a fuck what a girl’s done in the past, so long as she doesn’t have herpes,” Marcus said.
“What about AIDS?” Spencer said.
“Well, I have AIDS, so it makes no difference to me.”
“You have AIDS?” Ted asked Marcus incredulously.
“I don’t know why anybody would want to fuck me, but they do!” Marcus went on, “They line up for the AIDS, they want to go on a journey with me. They’re looking for companionship in death.”
“Do you tell them you have AIDS when you first meet them?” Ted continued to bait.
“Yes, I say, ‘My name is Marcus, I have AIDS,’ and they are all of the sudden so interested to get to know me, and to understand what struggles I’ve undergone because of the virus. Eventually we get so close that they’ve decided they want AIDS too, because it really makes life much more manageable. It simplifies everything. The thing that matters is to survive. Plus once you give somebody else AIDS you don’t have to worry about not being able to fuck them anymore.”
“What do you think Lu, do you want AIDS?” Spencer asked
Luther flicked his cigarette off the deck and started to go back in, “AIDS is a degenerative disease. There’s nothing funny about it and I wouldn’t want to die that way.”
“You’re missing out!” Marcus shouted after Luther and he was shutting the back door to the apartment. “You’ll never know what it truly feels like to mix sex and death.” “Wouldn’t that be necrophilia?” Spencer asked.
“No, that’s just perversion, man. AIDS is a totally interactive experience.”
Luther passed Missy and Jeanne on his way back into the party. He stopped.
“Hey, can we clear something up?” he asked them.
“What needs clearing up?” Missy asked
“Okay, well wait, first of all, who are you supposed to be?” “Me, I’m Marilyn Monroe.” Missy said.
“Sylvia Plath,” Jeanne said.
“Okay, well you make a great pairing. But listen, Missy, I have to ask you, were you the girl who flashed me on the beach last Saturday afternoon?”
The two girls looked at each other.
“No, I think you must be mistaken,” Missy said, “We didn’t go to the beach in the afternoon, though we were there that night, if you remember.”
“Forget it. Listen, Jeanne, if you’re still seeing Marcus, I’m sorry but he just told everyone he has AIDS. I don’t know how you want to take that.”
“Oh well, he never told me.” Jeanne said.
At that moment the buzzer sounded. Lauren hit the button, and a few moments later Rory and Ireena entered the party.
“’My T-shirt shows everything?’” Lauren read off of Rory’s homemade t-shirt.
“It’s a Nation of Ulysses song. It’s about how bands get commercialized and lose their power and become parodies of themselves. I’m supposed to be a Nation of Ulysses fan.”
“Well that’s original,” Lauren said.
“I love them,” he said, as if to qualify his costume.
“I guess you’re just exaggerating one interest of yours and turning it into a costume,” Ireena commented.
“And you are supposed to be?” Lauren asked Ireena.
“The Black Widow, the typified character who murders her husband and gets away with it.”
“Ooh, good costume. Well I don’t know how much liquor is left so you better hurry and get it while you can!” Lauren informed them.
Luther passed them on their way to the kitchen.
“What’s up guys, what took you so long, the party’s almost over,” he said.
“Hey Lu,” Rory said, “We went trick-or-treating and just ended up doing too much coke, but we’re here, and we’re ready to have a couple drinks.”
“Well good to see you, I think I’m going to be getting out of here soon though.”
“Okay man,” Rory said, “Whatever you have to do.”
Luther walked back into the living room and sat down next to Penelope, who was chatting with Barbara.
“Hey,” she said to him as he sat down.
“Hey,” he said back.
Penelope resumed her conversation with Barbara, “So then I was just like, sure I’ll dress up as a revolutionary. I mean, we’re trying to change things, right? Everybody talks about being progressive nowadays, and nothing ever seems to get done. Why not just step it up a little bit, let people exhibit their real feelings about things instead of being held back by bureaucratic interests. Right, Lu?” she said looking over at him.
“Right,” Luther said, “Exactly.”
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Oh not much, just that Ted claimed he just slept with you.”
Penelope began to turn red.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said, “I know the timing must seem pretty bad.”
“Yeah, I mean, you sure grew tired of him fast. Are you planning on meeting somebody new tonight?”
“No, hey, it just happened. And then it just happened with you too, and I wasn’t expecting it to, but you just seemed so right to me.”
“I’m just so surprised. I don’t know how to deal with it.”
“Please don’t let this spoil anything for us,” she implored, “I know it makes me seem a certain way, but it’s not like that at all. I’ve gotten really attached to you this week.”
“Look I can’t stay here any longer,” Luther said, “I have to go home.”
“Well I want to go with you,” she said.
“No, I want to be alone, just give me some time.”
“Will you call me tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’ll call you. I just really feel like being alone now, okay?”
“Whatever you need to do. Just promise me you’ll call okay? I hope you understand.”
“It’s okay, I’m not mad, I’m just floored. Just let me be alone for a little while. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him before he left.
The liquor began to run out, and the partygoers began to disperse not long after Luther. Charles ended up staying with Lauren for the rest of the night. Spencer convinced Marcus to continue the party back at his apartment, and Marcus convinced Jeanne and Missy to come along with him. Rory and Ireena went back to her apartment yet again, and ended up staying there for the rest of the night. Ted and Barbara returned to Ted’s apartment, and Penelope returned alone to hers.
I left too, wearing my t-shirt that said Hallowee in blood-scratched letters and Ness in the trademarked Guiness Beer lettering and that pictured a tall glass of beer beneath it. A French cocktail waitress gave it to me years ago, saying I had won some sort of contest, while at the moment I had been wearing a home made punk t-shirt with safety pins, and telling people I was dressed as Johnny Rotten. Later on I met a French girl who saw my t-shirt and said to me, “I love punks.” Later when I was in the bathroom there, she came in, and everybody told me that it was a clear-cut sign. Yes, I miss that particular Halloween.