#22

Halloween: a group of us, bottles of beer in hand, dance together at Woody's, one by one departing until – two o’clock, the dance floor stilled by the shine of heavy fluorescent light – at last, only Blake and myself remain. Two “let’s-pretend” faggots in disheveled costume. A blue dress ending before his knees, blond wig resting in tangled slant upon his head. Myself shirtless, arms wrapped in electrical tape, my lower half sweating in pants of shiny black vinyl.

Outside, the evening is haunted by demon voices, drunken shouts of fright and merriment filling in the spaces between buildings. The city alive with the dead long past its usual hour of repose. There is nowhere to go, at that moment, but our respective homes. Except Blake, fumbling for non-existent pockets, discovers he has misplaced his keys, left them in the jacket of a friend who had slinked off towards bed at an earlier hour. We walk together to her apartment on the other side of town to retrieve them. Blake barefoot, high heels in hand, and my naked chest inflated like some wary chaperone.

An utterly unaccountable excursion. A diversion amongst trick-or-treaters too old and wise to be so. Oh! thanks be to those misplaced keys, those wasted hours spent in costume, on a night when the streets were filled with make-believe.