Halloween kind of snuck up on me this year. In fact, the whole month of October snuck up on me. How is it already November?At any rate: Halloween 2010. It was fun, perhaps not as memorable as past years, but maybe I'm just finally reaching an age where Halloween is less fun for me. That's a depressing thought. Not going to unpack that at the moment.This year, I had a little impromptu gathering at my house, featuring pumpkin-flavored beer and homemade "spooky snacks": Sriracha-spiced deviled eggs and curry/cayenne roasted pumpkin seeds.
We watched a few scary movies (Little Shop of Horrors, Alien), then went to the obligatory costume party. My costume was I think funnier in concept than in execution. But really, it's all been downhill since my costume zenith from Halloween 2001: The Taco Belle.
I spent the whole night speaking Spanish with a Southern accent. Damn, I'm clever.Last year, I went as Baby from Dirty Dancing. I carried a watermelon around all night. And told people not to put me in a corner.
Tonight, I did little to celebrate -- no trick-or-treating, no parties. Ate take-out Thai food and orange and black M&Ms. Maude looks way more festive than I do, but she's sort of perpetually in the Halloween spirit due to her coloring. And her worship of Satan. 
Too much candy for Maude?
(hint: the answer is not Jean Valjean)
In my nonfiction writing class, we've been reading excerpts from memoirs and personal essays by authors ranging from E.B. White to Maxine Hong Kingston. For my first workshop piece, I'm focusing on the question of identity by telling the story of my crazy freshman year suitemate, Bashe, who desperately wanted to be British and spoke with a phony accent 24-7. Issues pertaining to my own concept of identity tie into the essay (what college freshman isn't unsure of who he/she is?), which got me to thinking about how others perceive me vs. how I perceive myself. What I am discovering is that context is everything.For instance, I have recently been detecting something unusual from Ali, the balding overweight man who runs the corner bodega by my apartment (the Linden Superette). The look in his eyes when he rings up my items....could it be pity? Why does this man feel sorry for me? Then I realized that I always come in alone, often unshowered, without makeup, and wearing sweatpants. And I regularly buy cat food and frozen Lean Pockets. He thinks I am a lonely cat lady! When this dawned on me, I felt compelled to dress up and enter the store flanked by an entourage of attractive friends...but this guy probably doesn't feel superior to many people, so I think I'll continue playing the role of single, homely, cat-owning woman.
At my new waitress job, Exotic Sushi and Tapas, they clearly have a different perception of me. Those of you who know me have heard me gripe about this place -- I'm trying my damndest to stay positive because the food is delicious and I think the owners mean well -- but the fact remains that I have worked there for 6 weeks now and not seen a paycheck. I'm making tips and my hourly wage is only $2.67/hr so it's not like the check is going to be that helpful, but still, it's the principle. Many employees have quit because they weren't getting paychecks and it's hard to understand how/why management believes they don't have to pay their staff. The only conclusion I can come to is that in their eyes, I am slave labor.
(In a meek act of protest, I have started giving my customers free miso soup. I fancy myself a sort of Japanese Robin Hood, distributing miso soup to the masses. We only charge $2 for the soup, but considering how cheap it is to make and how much gets thrown out, I think the end justifies the miso.)Finally, let's examine how one other party perceives me: my cat Maude.
Not to brag, but I am the center of Maude's universe. Maude is mesmerized by my presence -- I am all powerful. When I come home at the end of the day, she is always, without fail, waiting by the door, meowing. The unconditional love pets provide is pretty nice -- no matter how shitty I may feel or how people may treat me, I know there is one living creature who will always crave my affection and attention. It's almost enough to give me a God complex. Almost.
Maude is clearly ready for the big move to Boston. But am I?
The answer, as far as I can tell, is yes. I've had a rocky love affair with New York, but it's time to close this chapter in my life. Maybe I will live here again someday, but maybe it's just not in my blood. You can take the girl out of the Midwest but you can't take the Midwest out of the girl.
A good friend recently quoted Joan Didion's stunning essay on leaving New York on his blog, and not to seem like a copycat, but I'm going to quote it too. It perfectly captures the bittersweet feelings I have about leaving this exhilarating and bewildering city. To read the entire essay, click here. You won't regret it. Here are some of my favorite excerpts-- part of why I am going to graduate school for writing is to learn how to write something as powerful and true as this.
Goodbye to All That (1967)
It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was....
Part of what I want to tell you is what it is like to be young in New York, how six months can become eight years with the deceptive ease of a film dissolve, for that is how those years appear to me now, in a long sequence of sentimental dissolves and old-fashioned trick shots—the Seagram Building fountains dissolve into snowflakes, I enter a revolving door at twenty and come out a good deal older, and on a different street. But most particularly I want to explain to you, and in the process perhaps to myself, why I no longer live in New York. It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city only for the very young....
Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach. Just around every corner lay something curious and interesting, something I had never before seen or done or known about...I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep them. I could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of them would count.
