Fright Night
“You’ve got a pretty face, kid,” you tell your boy. “A million-dollar face. Don’t fuck with it.” It’s an easy thing to say when that face isn’t your own. When your own face ain’t worth anything even close to a million—you know it, he knows it—and so he has to wonder on what authority?
Problem is, you’ve also told him—no, instructed him—to forget his face and defend the helpless, the weak, women and children certainly, but also weaker bucks—when they can’t defend themselves. Sadly, that’s an authority he doesn’t question—because it sounds right.
There are nights when females, kidlets, weaker males of all species just wanna have fun. Halloween is such a night for humans. Halloween used to be a night when pretty much anyone could have fun. Problem is, Halloween isn’t much fun anymore. Halloween now calls out the primitive—and primes for punishment. And first in line for punishment is “pretty.”
Your boy’s now out walking the sidewalk with his girl. They’re at least a year past trick-or-treating, so just walkin’. They’re big kids now, quite content to walk, to talk, to pass the little kids by. She comments from time to time “Oh, how cute!” He snickers, remembers just a year or two ago when he also came out in costume. But he’s a tough guy now—and yet not so tough. He stops the next little kid he comes across; asks to look into his bag of trick or treat; notices how the bag shakes a bit as the kid holds it out; notices how the kid’s cat whiskers also tremble as the kid looks up.
You boy’s a tough guy—yet not so tough. He crouches down to eye-level with the cat-kid, looks at him and snarls. The cat-kid tries to snarl back, but it comes out all wrong, comes out in a sniffle. And then the cat-kid looks down at his silly furry cat-feet and begins to bawl.
“Oh, stop it!” your boy’s girl says. She’s an old-time Brooklyn girl, after all. She’s a tough girl—not from these parts, not from this newer Brooklyn. She’s from a former time, a different ’hood, another worldview. And so really a tough girl—and not just pretend-tough.
Now he has to choose, and your time to counsel is gone. He’s at least a year out of costume—too old to dress up, too old to have a parent-guardian, yet still not old enough to chuck the feathered nest. Problem is—right now, this girl, this young boy in costume, these streets, this night, this moment—he has to choose.
He hesitates for a moment, but the cat-kid doesn’t look up. The cat-kid fidgets with his trick or treat bag, then drops it to the sidewalk. He raises his cat-kid paws to his eyes, squats down and begins to cry like a kid-kid.
Your big, tough Brooklyn kid hesitates no longer. He reaches down, scoops the kid-kid into his arms, raises him up into the air. The kid-kid stops crying. The kid-kid looks down at this big, tough bruiser kid who’s now smiling. The kid-kid smiles back through sniffles. The big, tough Brooklyn kid grunts. The kid-kid squeak-grunts back.
Your big, tough bruiser of a Brooklyn kid puts the kid-kid back down on the sidewalk, gives him another snarl, then a meow. The kid-kid returns a small snarl, couples it with his own small meow, picks up his bag. The kid-kid wipes his nose, shakes his body one time, and growls.
The kid-kid, now once again a pretend cat-kid—with freshly fueled ferociousness to boot—wanders off in search of more trick or treat.
Your big Brooklyn bruiser and his girl also wander off, and she pokes him once in the ribs. “Toughie,” she says.
Your bruiser and his girl walk into Prospect Park; walk exactly one hundred steps up to the summit of Lookout Hill; catch a clear, cold, crystalline view of Manhattan’s skylights glowering glumly in the ether; say nothing as he puts an arm around her waist, she puts one around his. They’ll shortly be moving on to their own bit of trick or treat, and they can already taste the candy. Problem is, their Halloweens are already well behind them—and they know it. There, off to the northwest and just across a river called the “East,” a bridge called “Brooklyn,” are bigger, tougher, smarter, and (above all) richer kids who’ll shortly test their stuff—and no doubt find it wanting. That’s the real fright of this night—and the souls of these two gently tethered bruisers can no longer pretend otherwise.
Copyright 2007 by Russell Bittner
Russell Bittner lives in Brooklyn, New York. His poems have been published on paper by: The American Dissident, The Blind Man's Rainbow, The Lyric, The Barbaric Yawp, The International Journal of Erotica, Wicked Hollow, Æsthetica, and The Raintown Review.
Online, his poetry can be found at: Quintessence, ken*again, Spillway Review, Erotica Readers and Writers, Edifice Wrecked, Girls With Insurance, Thieves Jargon, Salome Magazine, Laura Hird, Mad Hatters Review, 3a.m., Dogmatika, Mindfire, A Long Story Short, Opium Magazine, Southern Hum, Justus Roux, Different Voices, Void Magazine, PW Review, Zygote in my Coffee, A Little Poetry, Plum Biscuit (a journal of the New York Writers Guild), The Centrifugal Eye, and The Linnet's Wings. His calendar of poems titled "A Year of Musing Dangerously" is currently being published, one poem per month, from January through December of 2007, at A Long Story Short.
