Halloween

Sometimes we forget what its about. Its not the drinking, or the French maids with their panties peeking out from the hems of their skirts, I don't even think its the candy (though I may have gorged myself on a few too many peppermint patties last night.)

I watched a tiny Flash Gordon jump up and down while his eyes smiled broader then his mouth ever could screaming " Mommy, mommy, look, Batman! Batman mommy Batman!"

I think I may have forgotten what it was like to find such joy in something so simple. I am an adult and must act accordingly. But for a few brief moments yesterday I too jumped up and down screaming to my mother and anyone else who would listen about the wonderful things I was witnessing.

The Halloween parade in the village, one of the few times of year that the neighborhood is stripped of pretension and is allowed to breathe and act as it once did. That once seedy den of crack whores and sex shops, now filled suburban transplants and yuppies with their Starbucks and Barnes and Nobles. (Oh how tired of me to jump on the same bandwagon as every other angsty born and bred New Yorker. But perhaps we have a point.) But as the trannies, puppets, stilt walkers and those who jumped the barricade to march, snaked their way from Washington Square park up sixth avenue I could see past the gentrification and remember that this is what New York was about.

I giggled as young thugs howled at the go-go dancing cop who along with her ass was shaking an entirely different package as well. It strikes me as odd that even though they appear to be the most vocal and insulting, I have yet to see these thugs in costume. They wear their baggy uniforms while their girlfriends squeezed into tiny outfits scamper alongside them, feet forced into tall skinny spikes in hopes of achieving that much strived for "Halloween hooker" look.

I walked into some random bar with Rob, Jake and Shashie, and drank a beer that was at the same time too warm and too expensive. A small reminder that I was not in the Village of my childhood but transported to the modern day.

I can still remember ditching class in 8th grade and hopping the C train down to Washington Square park. Hiding low behind the concrete dividers taking my first puff of pot, not yet knowing for it to work I had to inhale. Faking the high along with the rest of my friends as we traipsed up the side streets looking for Benny's Burritos, (which we never found.) Approached by a pimp who told us all how pretty we were and how someone like him could take care of someone like us.

I don't visit the village too much anymore. Somewhere along the way it lost its' charms. Perhaps its because its feel like a big campus for NYU, or maybe because the streets are cleaner then they have any right being.

But last night the village, just like the rest of us, was allowed to dress up in costume and pretend for one night without being called silly.