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Good evening folks,
It's an honor to be able to address you all tonight; thank you for having me. I'm a big big fan of all of your work here on Blognigger, and I'm going to try to live up to the enormously high standard by which you all have built this wonderfully sick and twisted community.
I have the honor of being Bob's best friend, an enormously gay term which I wish he would stop using. We've known each other since we were very young, given that we grew up together in a pre-war co-op on the Upper West Side. My parents bought our apartment there for 90k in 1979, and sold it in 1990 for about 450k. Today, in this buyer's market, it would be worth about two-and-a-half million bucks.
Sit back and relax: This is one of Bob's favorite stories, and it takes place 23 years ago tonight. It's a Halloween Ghost Story that really happened to Bob and me, so hold onto your hats. It's not that Bob really loves the way I tell it, it's just that I've remembered it all these years while he is basically in denial, has blocked most of it out, and enjoys being reminded of it every so often... Like on Halloweeeeeeen!!!!
[cue music]
It was the roaring 80's. 50 cent was what you spent on Dragon's Lair, and a young Michael J Fox taught us how to dress. Bob and I both had Velcro shoes at one point that year, but Bob then switched to Reeboks before I did, a feat which literally made him more popular in our 5th grade class. I'm not joking. I learned that Velcro shoes were un-cool the hard way - I have a vivid memory of the two most popular (i.e. the hottest) girls in our grade looking at my shoes in disgust, and one of them saying to the other, trying to be quiet but still audibly and in awe, "I know... and look at his pants..."
Reeboks or not, these girls didn't love Bob either; Being Black was still weird back then. He was the Black kid, and that made him a notably odd standout. It's not like the kids were racist per se, but it was just weird to everyone that he was a completely different color than everyone else in the grade. (Except for Latisha and you did not want to look like her)
In my experience, his time as an outsider is something Bob forgets. (I guess I do -ed) He's a very good looking gentleman (pause) but he didn't start cleaning up on girls and becoming a celebrity until about 1989. (Just so you know, the second digit of the 80's is what grade Bob and I were in! This will work for any of you born in 1975 who graduated high-school in 1993. Best trick I've ever learned.)
Well, one Halloween night in our building, Bob was dressed as Mr. T, and I was dressed as Rambo. Interesting Sylvester-Stallone-based racial selections, I know, but I honestly don't think of race having played into it at all. In fact, Bob's mother had bought him this wack little mr. T mohawk-wig which had Caucasoid "white" skin! If only we could see him now... he looked like a surgically bi-racial skinhead with burn trauma and ear feathers.
Halloween night in a pre-war co-op on the upper west side in the 80's was completely different than it is now. Walk into one of those buildings today - right now - and you'll see a sign up sheet in the elevator. Sign-up sheet?? What the f is that? Back in the day, every single kid in the building (and their friends from other buildings) would go to every single apartment on both sides of the building and ring every single bell with joyful abandon.
Trick or Treat!!
Almost every single house, I would say easily 90%, would answer the door and have something for us. 5% would leave stuff outside in a little plastic jack-o-lantern or salad bowl, and 5% wouldn't answer the door at all but we'd still lean on their doorbells.
Health nuts gave you raisins and crap like that, and we thought they were weird and disappointing. Old people gave you utterly useless crap like fingerpuppets stuffed with pennies. I remember one old lady on the "other" side of the building - when she opened the door you were hit with the smell of death (she's dead now, in fact) and she presented you with a large salad bowl of pennies. Taaaake a haaandful! Jesus, old people are scary and clueless. Pennies! For you youngins, that's like if tonight in Park Slope I gave all the kids who came to my door 58 free hours of AOL.
Plus, 1985 was the year of the great Halloween scare. There were reports of razor blades in apples! Pins in marshmallows! Our moms got notes safety-pinned to our jackets reading: No apples! Nothing unwrapped! No big deal: most unwrapped stuff stunk, except for candy corns, which I loved and were usually unwrapped. Damn.
On this particular Halloween, 23 years ago tonight, Bob and I (Rambo and mr. T) were trick or treating by ourselves for the first time ever. Now here's how everyone did it: You took the elevator to the highest floor, which was 17, and then trick-or-treated the apartments on that floor, then took the stairs down one floor, trick-or-treated there, and so on and so on, working your way down to the lobby.
I lived on 5 and Bob lived on 6, so under normal circumstances we were never above the sixth floor. Every day we'd bolt down the stairs to the lobby and go outside to West End Ave to catch the "Varsity" school bus. Because of this daily routine, we'd see those first six floors between the lobby and Bob's house on a daily basis. The only time we ever saw the floors above 6 however, we were either holding Unicef boxes, sponsor-me-signup-sheets, or trick-or-treat bags. This gave all those higher floors an air of mysteriousness that transcended even the cobwebs and tissue-papered lighting decorations that donned the halls on Halloween.
On one of those strange, na'er visited floors, is where this story takes place.
[shift music]
We came down the stairs onto a particularly undecorated floor, and as we generally did, we proceeded to the end of the hallway and then trick-or-treated our way back to the stairway. We had gotten candy from 2 of 3 apartments when we rang the bell of the door by the stairs - the one remaining apartment on that floor.
No answer.
We didn't hear any stirring, so Bob started walking down the stairs, ready to bail, safe in the promise of hundreds of other doors still pregnant with hope and Snickers. I started to follow Bob, but first, from the top stair, I reached out to the doorbell to give one last where-the-f-were-you punishment ring.
The ring wasn't obscenely long; it could have lasted a total of an honest one-and-a-half seconds. After releasing the buzzer, I continued down the stairs, but when I was halfway down, Bob and I heard the door open behind us. Bob did an about-face spin-around as if he had dropped a dollar, and we both started heading back up the stairs toward the door.
We were taken aback by the presence of the apartment's owner, who was standing right up by his door's threshold - not back and inside and welcoming like most providers. We were also startled by his appearance - he was covered only by a ratty blue bathrobe.
As I got older and learned what it was to be "drunk," my mind tended to wander back to this incident at times and imagine that the guy must have been drinking. He didn't seem quite with-it, and at the time I thought it was because we had woken him up with our illegal ringing. In my adult mind though, I realize that since we were ten years old, there's no way that it was past 8pm. I remember that my bedtime was 8:07, and even on Halloween I wouldn't have been allowed to come home much later than that. So there's no way it was past 8, and there's no way we would have woken a normal person up. I guess the guy was wasted.
I remember his grayish stubble looked like my grandfather’s, and I remember looking down at his bare ankles and shins. He had those smooth, hairless areas on his shins that I used to see on men in the locker-room at my grandparents' country club in Florida.
What are those things? I guess they come from years and years of wearing suits five days a week. Do you know what I'm talking about? Can anyone tell me what those are? I'm a software geek, so I don't wear suits, and maybe I'm too young to have them even if I did. Do executives shave there because it's more comfortable to wear dress socks that way, or are the hair follicles simply beaten down from years and years of smothering? Perhaps capitalism scars even the very rich... are those patches like slave lashes from 30 years of Brooks Brothers sock-burn?
He stood there looking at us for a few seconds without saying anything. At the time, I could only think of two things. First, I thought that I was going to get in trouble for ringing his bell for too long. Second, I thought he was looking down at our Halloween costumes, getting ready to say something snide about how my machine gun's trigger was busted, or that my Rambo Headband was slipping down around my ears, which were both true. At ten years old, it never occurred to me that he might be just standing there drooling over a couple of ten-year-old boys.
He kept looking at us, probably for about four seconds total, while we waited for some kind of retribution as punishment one of our numerous sins. Instead, he said something that I've thought of a billion times since then. I know Bob doesn't remember it but it's burnt into my brain forever. I don't know why he said it this way, and I'm not sure exactly where it came from or exactly what he meant by it, but I do know that these were the exact words he said:
"How 'bout if I kick a little ass?"
Jesus, that's just so intense. I'm pissed that Bob doesn't remember it because I wish I had someone to remember it with. Maybe my hope in writing all this down for you guys is that it will jolt his memory like a scientology auditing.
Regardless, I remember. We sort of chuckled at having a grown-up say "ass." - Like he trusted enough to say it, but was still big and scary. We were still waiting for our candy, but also waiting to get punished for ringing his bell for too long. It was a weird moment.
A little ass. Like a pastime? Play a little golf? Kick a little ass? Or kick a little ass, as in our little asses? Ten Year Old Boy Ass? (don't get excited Bob)
Then he did this: he looked down at Bob, and I swear, one moment he was just standing there lumbering over us, holding his bathrobe up with one hand, and then all at once, he lunged down toward Bob with his free hand, and pinched Bob's dick through his pants. It was hard and scary and violent and I can't believe Bob doesn't remember it. (That part I do vaguely remember but I think he was punching me in the stomach, not the pinching my dick. -ed)
We freaked out and started to walk down the stairs, even at 10 knowing we should be getting the f outta there. I felt like he had given us "Trick" instead of "Treat," but that hey, we got off light, seeing as he didn't tell our parents on us or report us to the building and we didn't get into any trouble.
Then, as we were going down the stairs, he started calling for us to "wait, wait - I want to show you something. Get in here, I want to show you something. Hey boys - get back here."
We just kept going down the stairs, driven by g0d, intent on getting away from him. We didn't run, we just kept walking. As he kept yelling at us from above, I remember thinking how now we were really going to be in deep sh*t for ignoring him and walking away.
Neither of us told anyone about it - I mean jesus, Bob blocked it out right away while I was left with my nervous jewish stomach to dwell on it forever. We never really talked about it until a couple of years ago, and now Bob loves when I tell the story to people. I need to get Tom Cruise or David Blaine to do a number on this guy and really take him back to that spot and re-live it like through the power of a sensory Tivo.
I never told my parents about it of course, I'm sure that goes without saying. In fact it was just the opposite- I was terrified they'd find out. I remember having this dwindling pit in my stomach for a couple of weeks that kept receding with my fear that the guy was going to tell on us. Maybe he still will, but the statute of limitations is probably in our favor at this point.
Sometimes I think about what would've happened if we had gone back and seen what he wanted to show us. Was it his testicles? His Atari? His Barbie Collection? His Fists? His Klansman or Nazi outfit? Was he gonna go all Mystic River on us? We won't ever know. We just won't...
Wish I had a punch line for you, but that's all there is to my Halloween ghost story. One of Bob's favorites. Just one of the many things that go into the fabric of making a person who he is. The story reminds me as an adult to be extremely careful, even as a non-pedophile, of what you say and do to children. One little drunken interaction can become the bane of someone's therapist's existence. As a parent, the story reminds me not to let the kids out of my sight, especially on Halloween.
Still have to carve up our jack-o-lantern. What are you going as? I'm being a Googler. See you at the parade?
Stay safe out there, and thanks for having me.
