i wish it was halloween every weekend

also why you should shop in-person

i have a lot of rules for myself as it pertains to having fun, one of my favorite is the insistence in securing as much party supplies in-person as possible despite the slippery ease of a*azon (this is also discussed in our fall ins and outs). on friday at 2:30 pm i bounce into the village cigar shop in a mini skirt and t-shirt, the bell above the dirty door dings and i walk up to the counter and ask the sales associate, “may i please have one cigar?” five seconds of silence fills the room until we finally both burst into laughter at the same time. he yells “a princess wants a cigar!” and i explain that i need it because i’m dressing up as tony soprano which is met with more laughter. we proceed to talk for half an hour and he tells me about his daughter who i remind him of (somehow this was not creepy i swear). i leave after he gives me a full tutorial on how to properly smoke a cigar so i don’t get “sick as a puppy” and i think about how i already gained a cigar and a new friend before 4 pm on a friday.

when i get home i shimmy into my tony soprano best which consists of boxer shorts, a tank top, a terrycloth bathrobe and a fake tummy because my friends told me i either had to wear a bald cap or a tummy and i am nothing if not a rule follower. i send a picture to my aunt who replies, “LOL!!!!!!!!! Fucking love it!!! Bada Bing!!!!!!” and start walking to anne’s apartment where i help her secure a 22 inch ponytail extension to her hair because it has to be the exact same length as margaret qualley’s in the substance (if you have no idea what that sentence means i wish i had your mind). we leave her apartment and in the elevator i am unconsciously clutching my fake tummy to keep it in place, a gorgeous woman in her sixties asks if i am actually pregnant. i laugh and say “noooooo it is for a costume” she warmly smiles and replies “you would look beautiful pregnant”. the remark washes over me and feels like ice water, i stand there feeling trapped inside the juxtaposition of hearing such an adult comment while existing in the juvenile act of playing dress up. we walk outside in union square and i try not to existentially obsess over how unseasonably warm it is for october even though the thought of it makes my fingers twitch, i make frothy conversation while ironically the climate clock is ticking above us mocking me and my attempted politeness.

later that evening my friend hands me a bottle of whiskey in the back of an uber and asks if i wanted any, i am faced with that pivotal moment that happens during a party where you decide how you want the rest of your night to go. the older i get the more i veer into ensuring i’m home by 2 am and drank enough water and will always have a workout class already booked for the morning despite finding all of things deeply boring. i laugh and say “i’m good thank you” and he responds and says “emily north you’re going soft on us” i roll my eyes and think of the girl with long bleach blonde hair who would always say yes to drinking anything straight out of a bottle in the back of a car and how instead i’m now someone who older women tell they would look beautiful pregnant.

on saturday i decide at 2 pm that i want to try to construct a nun costume for that night because after i was tony soprano all i wanted to wear was a pretty dress which i should probably examine but won’t right now. i post on my instagram story asking if i can borrow a bible from anyone and my friend stella replies immediately, i stroll to the lower east side where she hand delivers me the brown leather book. i ask her why she has a bible and she replies that someone threw it at her in new orleans (why this made it back in her suitcase is none of my business), we gossip and giggle for 20 minutes and i hug her goodbye feeling lighter after the exchange, only realizing after i left that the book was not in fact a bible but was a evangelical text. the show must go on. i text angelina and anne asking if they had any ideas of how i could make a nun habit, anne replies an hour later in a stroke of genius that she thinks she could finesse her GRADUATION STOLE into a habit. i go over to her apartment and am unable to stop laughing as we tape the fabric to a headband and i think about how much i value the effort she puts into all aspects of her life simply to squeeze as much joy as possible out of it and how every time i am around her i thankfully feel some of that static rub off on me.

it’s now the end of the weekend and my brain feels fuzzy from drinking and my abs feel sore from laughing and my voice feels exhausted from formulating an interesting but not annoying answer to “so, what’s new?” and i feel disgustingly earnest because i get to coexist in a world filled with so many people where moments of silliness briefly connect our paths. god i wish every weekend was halloween.

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i hope you had a silly and perfect halloween <3