halloween

For some reason, it is more fun to be in a big group of people that you do not know than with a big group people that you do know, and have known for years. There is still something to be learned from the unknown. Those conversations are not all some variation of: "So, what have you been up to since the last time I saw you?" They are more broad, more playful: What do you do, What's your story, What are you doing here, Wait, where are you from? And in those questions, as shallow as they may be, there is still a genuine curiousity exercised in the asking of them, however pruient the cause of this curiousity. Things are new, people are, and there are still things to be learned. You still want to.

And so, last night, after attending the parade in the village that was marred by cold as ice weather and mobs of people preventing good visibility, I went with Dara and Mariah to Chris Mitchell's party, which was the big party full of people that I already knew, that I had known for years. A New College reunion of sorts: Maggie Ray, Shellly, Anna Montanna, Jason Grimste, Brian, Sarah, Melissa, and on and on, more people arriving each couple of mintues, and so after about fifteen minutes or so, I said good-bye to Dara and Mariah and slipped quietly away into the night, back onto the street, where my slight depression about the party that had caused so much social anxiety in me disappeared at the first drunken call of "Peter Pan!" that I recieved on Bedford Avenue. I remembered that I was running around in green tights, was called back into the Halloween spirit with the repeated callings of my name by passer-by.

And I made my way back into Manhattan where I went to Josh's Halloween party (the boy whose window I vomited out of after going home with him). There were a couple people from my work there but it didn't matter, because they were dots, small little dots in a whole crowd of people that I did not know, dancing to really fun music. And I danced and sang along to songs I knew the words to, but even more importantly, to songs that I liked. And I talked to people that I did not know, asked them questions that I wanted to know the answers to, and I even made attempts at flirting with some people.

Perhaps all that talk about knowing a crowd and not knowing a crowd all comes down to whether or not you are so familiar with everyone there and already know that you should not flirt with any of them, that nothing would come of it, or that you would never in your life want anything to ever come of it that determines how exciting, or unexciting the party will be. And this second party was exciting because of this, because familiarity is the death of desire and here I was not familiar with anyone, because there were people there that I desired, and there were people there that I tried to flirt with, and really that's all I can ask for, all I really want from a party. Besides the booze and the dancing that are requisite of any party and as such, not even worth mentioning as neccesary, the neccesary thing for me to enjoy myself at a pary is conversation initiated and further propelled by desire. Conversations brimming with excitement because latent in them is a wift of potential sex, of naked bodies togehter doing things, and so I talk and talk.