It was not a good thing.

I'm very ambivalent about Halloween. The one time I chose to celebrate it here in NYC, I went with Joey to the parade, and that was a disaster of crushed bodies through which I was pulled like a flailing water-skier, attempting to apologize in the wake of the large man-boy parting the crowds like Moses himself. I lost several of my home-made CDs off my jeans that night, which was sad as that project may have been the one time in my life I was artistically inspired.

Later that night Joey dragged me to an apartment party of some boy he wanted to schtup, where he left me in the clutches of a demented Martha Stewart from Leawood, Kansas. In case you don't yet know, being from Kansas is not a sufficient attribute to have in common to create good conversation, especially when said Martha was thoroughly drunk and insisted on shoving her cheap cupcakes (how I wish that was an euphemism) in my face.

This sad sack of a boy was from Leawood, one of the most tony of the suburbs in Johnson County, Kansas, a place which has as little to do with the rest of the state as bacon does with bagels. I am from Kansas City, Kansas, which is Wyandotte County, adjacent to the North of Johnson County, and home to an odd collection of gangsters, hicks, and old world Croatian families too stubborn (read: poor) to move to the 'burbs (guess which I was). The 'Dotte could be a very dangerous place, and those from Johnson County rarely found reason to go there, other than perhaps when tromping one of our high school football teams, which happened regularly, as tax income used for education in Kansas was by law only allowed to be used in the county in which it was generated, and Johnson County kids thus attended great citadels of modern education on lush campuses while kids in the 'Dotte sweltered in old buildings without even air conditioning, let alone modern physical education equipment.

So you see, meeting a demented and drunk Martha Stewart from Leawood was not exactly my idea of fun on Halloween. When it opened its mouth and began discussing how it drove a Mercedes in high school, I was appropriately vicious and venomous in my responses. I was not drunk and my bitch skills were well honed long before I arrived in NYC. This, naturally, soon earned me a cheap cupcake to the face. Johnson County boys can be so sensitive! I probably knew his father paid for his Mercedes by working some awful corporate job, rather than by making his mother walk the darkest parts of Prospect Avenue at night, but the latter seemed a reasonble guess at the moment.

At any rate, Joey was perceptive enough to remove us from that confined space quickly after the cupcake incident. Johnson County boys may have beat us at football, but they always hopped quickly into their luxury vehicles after the game, as they knew better than to stay around and face 'Dotte-style vengeance, some of which was nigh on making an appearance in a cramped Chelsea apartment.

The night deteriorated from that point, though I believe I began to drink enough to fuzzy up my memory. I know there was a very unwise trip through the projects of West Chelsea on our way to the Eagle, during which I was hit in the back by a thrown egg that miraculously bounced off me and spattered harmlessly on the ground. Rather than use it to make more cupcakes, Martha attempted to call down the wrath of housekeeping on the culprits using a wildly-wielded wooden spoon, though I believe she was distracted and led away by a Prada carrot on a stick. I vaguely remember an ill-advised attempt by an older patron to remove her apron at the Eagle, which prompted more girlish screaming than even the real Martha could muster, and after that I believe my brain quit functioning. Mercifully.

All of which is reason enough, I think, for a certain ambivalence about the spooky holiday.