Twinkerbell
November 1, 2008
Although a lot of people go all out on Halloween, many more of them, like me, do nothing. Deborah says it's something she'd really like to change about me, but she's not likely to have any luck. Regardless, Deborah was wiped out from a busy work week and wasn't up for partying anyway.
I was working from home for most of the day, but in the afternoon, I went into Manhattan to run some errands. Halloween pushed the city's buzz beyond the usual bustle, crowding the streets with even more fairies, Jokers, and zombies than usual.
Some people's hint of costume was so faint it was impossible to tell if they were dressed up or not. There's a girl I've seen around my neighborhood with Day-Glo pink hair, so when someone simply puts on a blue wig for Halloween, it's hard to know if it' a costume or not. "Amateur night," as they say.
I noticed a Rubenesque young girl dressed as Tinkerbell walking side by side with a similarly endowed girl who I can only assume was meant to be Captain Hook, wearing gold stilettos, fishnets, and an ultra-short skirt. A "sexy" Captain Hook, I suppose -- the prerequisite prefix for Halloween costumes in general. With them was a fey, yet entirely too grown-up looking Peter Pan who, unencumbered by five-inch heels, was walking a few paces ahead of his co-stars, stopping now and then to let them catch up. Coming from the opposite direction were two sixty-something workmen dressed in dusty work clothes. "Check out Twinkerbell," one of them said as they stopped to watch the group pass. "Get a look at Twinkerbell." If it was meant as appreciation for the zaftig Tinkerbell, or a crack at the Peter Pan twink, I couldn't tell.
Even our black cat wasn't feeling the holiday this year.
Our friend Katrina stopped by the other night after rehearsing for the Halloween parade to give us a print she made in a silkscreening class -- a bright orange print made from a photograph I'd taken of Deborah. We asked about the parade rehearsal. She told us she'd signed on to be a beer maid on a Ferris Bueller's Day Off float.
"You know that scene where—" she kept saying, excitedly explaining the idea behind the float, but neither Deborah nor I had seen the movie in years and kept shaking our heads, no.
Her rehearsal had gone long, and she was late for dinner with a friend, but that didn't stop her from taking off her coat to show us her beer maid costume and entertaining us with her Ferris Bueller beer maid dance routine. "And then we do this—and we go like this—"
When she finished, she put her coat back on, and as she struggled to button it up over her costume, she asked what our plans were for Halloween.
"No plans," we said.
"There's a party in your building," she said. "On the roof. I might go after the parade. If I do, I'll come by and knock on your door to see if you're around."
But the party never happened. The landlord got wind of it and put the kibosh on the idea -- taping warning signs all over the building. As it was, our neighborhood was relatively quiet, the only hint that it was Halloween at all was a lone guy in a Penguin costume, pacing -- as well as a penguin can pace -- outside our building's front door.
