Liq-or-Treat

On Friday night, I left my house to go out with my friend Yael and her friends for a glorious evening of drinking and revelry to mark the coming of Halloween, appropriately named Liq-or-treat. This (now) annual event consists of a number of silly, drunk people in various costumes wandering between apartments in some section of Manhattan, drinking a shot at each apartment and then moving on to the next station of debauchery, with the goal of the evening to end up at some bar somewhere close to the last apartment. Informed of this event at the last minute, I hastily get my costume together, I am to be a pharoah, but when I show up everyone decides that Moses is better, so here I am, parting the red sea all over Manhattan.

This evening it was raining, so we meet up at the first apartment, where Yael, dressed as a battered, drunken fairy with a Marlboro fiance , procedes to force everyone not in costume to wear something ridiculous ... because, in her own words, "its Halloween and if we just get together and drink its no different than any other night!!!" Wigs, construction hats, tiny sharks, beer cans and other random household? objects are moved around and relatively soon everyone comes up with some semblance of a constume. More folks show up, a librarian of the type I wish had gone to my high school, a black cat, some candy and numerous others and now from redneck to red-headed slut to red wearing go-go dancer, we are ready to go. We down the shot, something disgusting made of a clear alcohol and tabasco, and suffer mightily. Its truly foul.

We walk ten blocks in the rain to the next apartment, where shots are waiting. These are taken with gusto by half the group, the other half being MIA somewhere in the 50's trying to recover some friends. Things are beginning to get slightly out of hand, but people are generally holding theirselves together, although we did lose the cute black cat and the hot librarian at this point. We move onto the the third and final apartment, the red-headed sluts, where the shots are jello, and things begin to lose all semblance of control.

There were originally 75 jello shots but they begin to vanish quickly, disappearing even more rapidly when our lost tribe shows up a bit later. Around a third of the way through the jello shots the trash is full and I nobly volunteer to take it out, but manage to dump it down the stairs by missing the trash can. Hilary shows great good humor about it and helps me clean it up. People appear and disappear, shots are taken Mr. Construction develops a hareem and even Greg Louganis makes an appearence, much to the delight of all the lady folk. A dance party of sorts spontaenously starts in the living room, rapidly degenerates in a series of bizarre, canned photos, the crazy Mr. Fireman is lost on the couch and eventually to a cab, and events move on apace.

Then the beer is drunk and the shots are gone and we are moving to a bar, where some of us sit and chat and try to somber up a bit and other continue to drink and carouse, much to the amusement of the rest of the patrons. Mr. Louganis was a notable hit here. .

At around 2 am, I disrobe from being Moses, returning to my secret identity as a mild-mannered scientist, wander out from the bar in the pouring rain, stumble onto the subway and begin my trek home. It starts out fine, I get on the 2 and take it a couple stops to 3rd ave and 149th, just inside the Bronx. Then, I get off to switch to the 5. This is where I encountered some difficulties. You see, after midnight, subways in New York turn into pumpkins. There is no telling what will happen with them. In this case, nothing happened, and I stood, eventually sitting, rather drunkenly at the 149th street stop until around 3 am. I saw a number of 2 trains go by, some 4 trains, I even though I saw a 1, but they don't run there so I am attributing this to what I am calling subway goggles. This ability is similar to beer googles, allowing you to ignore reality and see only what you want to see, in this case that every train was a 5 train. At least until after I had gotten up to get on.

This enforced sobering up was alright, because it allowed me to get a look at some of the local wildlife, notably several rats the size of large dogs. I mean, from across the platform they looked at least that big. These were huge, scary animals. when the woman in Glacier this summer told me she was not scared of a wolverine becaus of New York rats I did not believe her. I should have. I saw them chase cinderella, wonder woman and a large gorilla up the stairs on the oppostie side of the platform. Finally, I gave up, got on the 10th 2 I saw and got off about 1.5 miles from my aparment, resigned to a relatively long walk. it was much longer than I intended, due to the torrential down pour I was moving through and the small oceans it left on the path. All my attempts to part the waters failed, I think I actually need to be wearing my costume to pull that off, and I found my self carrying a Moses robe and wear white (soon to be brown) khakis and a T-shirt, jogging up Pelham Parkway at 4 am through minor lakes a rivers that made the area resemble Minnesota, arriving home at 430, sober, soaking and grinning like an idiot.

Great night. I like it here.