Todd Levin

When it gets this cold outside it’s really hard to break into song. Everyone – even that nice lady – is struggling down the street, grimacing into the bracing chill. I’ve been told that Pennsylvania suffers from a damp, uncomfortable cold. In New York, the cold feels like rusty knives popping between your ribs. In other words, just as everyone pictures NYC.

Today was too much, though. Even babies in strollers had no choice but to swear out loud, to themselves and nature. I passed a double-wide stroller on my way to Dizzy’s Kitchen and I overheard one of the babies saying, “goddamn-cocksucking-motherfucker-cold diaper pin.” The baby next to him said nothing because it was in suspended animation. I walked into Dizzy’s, ordered a sonofabitchgoddamn brownie and a fuckface with honey and lemon, and longed for a damp Pennsylvania cold.

There is copy center in my neighborhood. I pass it nearly every day and enter it about four times a year – for holiday cards and faxes. Recently, I noticed a change in the sandwich board sign that sits in front of the building. The sign, which employs those slide-in plastic letters that make it difficult to correct a mis-spelling, now reads: “UPS AND FED-EX SHIPMENTS UNTIL 4:30 EVERY DAY”. And just below that, a new notice: “FROG FEEDINGS 3:30PM TUE. THUR.” And that is the difference between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

I have a children’s clothing shop near my apartment. Wait, I have about 300 shops dedicated to children right near my apartment. The whole neighborhood is actually a baby settlement for aging liberals who carry their groceries in recyclable cardboard boxes, shop enthusiastically for beeswax candles and regularly curse the absence of an I.R.S. Records boxed set. In short, I love it. I love it because, besides being absolutely bucolic at times, it presents no contribution whatsoever to my problematic self-consciousness. You are never reviled for hopping out of bed, sleep crust in the corners of your eyes, and heading outside in a sweatshirt and jeans to grab a cup of chai or a new potpourri basket from the area’s newest boutique, Something Wicker This Way Comes. This may sound like a ridiculous point of praise to most people living outside of NYC, but just try living in Williamsburg, where leather pants, wristbands, and post-coital tousled hair are still required uniform for an early morning cat food run.

So, yes, I have many children’s clothing shops in my neighborhood. But one in particular gets it all wrong. It’s incredible, actually, how wrong they get it. From their name, PEEK-A-BOO CLOTHING, which suggests something slightly more pornographic than it should, down to every last detail, this store does not understand its audience. The awning itself is a collection of violations of good taste. First of all, it’s BLACK, which is everyone’s least favorite baby color. But don’t worry, because the lettering is pink. Well, not pink exactly. More like fuschia. And fuschia on black is a great combination if you’re selling roller skates or dildos, but it doesn’t do much to reflect the soft joy of a newborn child.

Between the name of the store and the colors of the sign, you’re already sending out a mixed message. That confusion is only further agitated by the managerial decision to turn the “OO” of “boo” into a pair of leering eyes. Look once and you won’t be wrong to ask yourself, “face or titties?” And that’s not a good question to put in the mind of someone who might potentially want to buy some pull-ups or a onesie, unless it’s for himself.

It gets even worse because the owners of the store, possibly in an effort to diffuse some of the ambiguity raised by its name and brand identity, also added a pair of silhouetted figures to the sign. Judging by the few details that the silhouettes reveal via clothing and hairstyle, the artwork must be clip art dated from the 1950s. It depicts, as far as I can tell, a girl in pigtails and party dress, age 4 or 5, backing into a small boy around the same age. The boy is pressed up against the girl closely, intimately, as if attempting to mount her from the rear. And I can honestly say, after showing the sign to several people, the inference is not mine; the implication is theirs. New parents and friends and families of new parents might approach this store and wonder, quite correctly, “are these guys trying to get my toddler laid?”

If you even get past the sign – and shame on you if you do – and let your eyes wander to the window display, you are in for another horrible shock. As PEEK-A-BOO CLOTHING got ready for autumn, they prepared a “Halloween Sale” and holiday-themed window display. I have no interest in ever opening a children’s clothing store but if I did – really, if anyone without a total hatred for children did – and I wanted people to buy warm weather clothing or Halloween costumes for their new additions, I would borrow from a few fail-safe elements. Warm colors, gourds, silk leaves, trick or treat sacks, and the occasional baby mannequin dressed as something adorable, like a pumpkin or news anchor. This common sense somehow escaped the proprietors of PEEK-A-BOO. Instead, they filled the window with little baby mannequins in quilted jumpers, not unlike the kind worn by the evil spawn in Cronenberg’s film, The Brood. But even if that’s an obscure pop cultural reference that would be lost on most consumers, I don’t think the other decoration would: the baby mannequins were covered in fake spiderwebs and plastic spiders. Covered. Head to toe, they were entangled in cobwebs, waiting to have their fluids extracted by some unseen super-spider. It’s a really horrifying sight. So horrifying that it makes me wish I owned a digital camera so everyone could see as clearly as I do.

Addendum: Because I decided I needed my creative energy to be even more disposable, I recently procured a digital camera. This has meant many things – artsy, shaky, long shuttered shots; even more photos of my cats; a beard diary – but, to your benefit, it has meant I now have a dark, poorly composed photo of the Peek-a-Boo awning. Here:

There’s nothing more heart-breaking than a sad Dracula (or, as i like to say, “drackala”). But that’s what I saw last night, less than two avenues away from NYC’s annual Halloween Parade. A kid, maybe 12 years old, in one of those drackala-in-a-bag or drackala-on-a-hanger costumes, nicely done (meaning he bothered to use the chalky face makeup, including under-eye black for extra ghoulishness), sitting on a hyrdrant, drackala head in drackala hands. His treat bag hung by his side, swinging slowly, like a song from the cotton fields.

I always hurt a little when I see very young children displaying adult signs of depression. Low energy, exhausted sighs, too much drinking, sleeping with strangers, taking a job in public relations. But it hurts a lot when one of those same kids is acting like a depressed adult on Halloween, in full costume. If you’re 12 and you can’t enjoy yourself on Halloween, even if your mom is a bitch (which clearly this kid’s was), what’s next? Welbutrin Jr.? Is this where the cycle of medication starts?

I guess I can understand how it might be a little bit disappointing to go trick or treating in downtown Manhattan, where you’re more likely to be greeted by a night manager at Baby Gap than your next-door neighbor. But still – Monster Makeup! Stage Blood! Free Candy! Late Night! Cheer up, sad drak. If you can’t enjoy this stuff, you’re in for a big surprise when your armpits start to smell.

******

As for me, I did what adults do on Halloween, and every other day of the year: drank. The only difference was last night I got to drink in a false moustache and Bill Bixby steel frame glasses. Also had a strange experience. A friend of mine got together with several other apartments in her West Village building and had one of those drink flight parties. Very collegiate, except for the guest list and the large, bald black man guarding that list and the front door.

Here’s the thing: my friend, J, whose apartment made up 1/4 of the party, is a performer in De La Guarda. If you’re not familiar with this performance-based show – and that’s perfectly understandable – look it up, because it’s difficult to describe. Here’s my best shot: South American drums play as well-toned, attractive 20-somethings fly over your head on harnesses and occasionally land on the ground, where they try to make out with you or your girlfriend, or both. In other words, art.

That detail is important because the party was swarming with attractive De La Guarda performers and incidentals. And the women apparently got together and decided to bypass the traditionally coy female costumes – kittykat, devil girl, garbage can – and cut right to the chase. They were dressed like the kinds of whores that even real whores would be ashamed of. I refused to go near the dip. One of them explained to me, “I was told to dress in the style of “Moulin Rouge”, but no one told me whether they meant “Moulin Rouge” the place, or “Moulin Rouge” the video with Christine Aguilera and Lil Kim.” Guess which one everybody picked?

I just saw two thin men with assisted-walking arm braces leaving the Guardian Angels self-defense training center. Was this scene the premise of Disney’s next feel-good old-fashioned melo-dramedy? Were they reporting a bully? Were they victims of the powerful Iron Claw of Curtis Sliwa? Or just something I made up because I didn’t feel like linking to the Dancing Paul web site again? We may never know.

It’s 10:20am, which means they’re probably reading off the “E”s or the “F”s at the former site of the World Trade Center right now. I know I am supposed to reflect today – it has been demanded of me – but I keep getting confused about what, specifically, to reflect on. Loss? Anger? Solidarity in the face of disaster? Heroism? Villairy? The war effort? My city? My loved ones? Other people’s loved ones? The towers? The smoke? The safety of the clear, blue sky?

It’s a mess, frankly. And for me it’s only aggravated by an unwanted cynicism that keeps surfacing despite my best efforts to suppress it. I’m slightly confused and angry to see a nation rally together to promote its grief so globally, with such grandeur. If you’re not living in New York City, you might be missing the many posters and billboards commemorating our mourning, our need to remember. All the graphic designers’ dreams are being realized around the city – how fortunate for them that “September 11th” lends itself so eerily well to logo design, what with the two “ones” in 11 resembling identical towers and all. If you aren’t watching television or listening to the radio, you might be missing the reading of the names of our dead (moving) while a bed of classical music lies beneath (maudlin).

It’s incredible. Everywhere you turn, someone official (the ad council, sunoco) is saying “how are you?” and “do you need to talk to anyone today about your grief?” but that compassion is constantly undermined by a saturation of disturbing images accompanied by mock-profound simple statements and logos, all in the style of “strained restraint”. We’re being asked if we’re having trouble with the ghosts of last year’s Shitty Thing, while those ghosts are being constructed in effigy at every street corner, on every television broadcast. It’s like showing someone a photograph of his own future-death and saying, “now I know you weren’t meant to see that, but does this image make you sad? Be honest.”

Other forces, through pro bono ads, are instructing us on other ways to behave – use this day to be a better citizen, honor someone, etc. But I wish they’d leave me alone, and let me figure out how to feel about this on my own. Let all of us figure this out on our own, or with people who actually mean something to us. And by “mean something to us” I don’t mean Julia Roberts or Bruce Springsteen or Rudolph Giuliani. Old feelings are being constantly replaced by new and more complex ones, and no matter how many songs you write or how many web pages you consciously grey out, or what volume of tasteful 911 logos you design, it’s not going to smooth brows or crystallize emotions. In fact, it’s hard not to be distracted from your feelings today by all the feelings that are being manufactured for you. But try. And, really, wouldn’t it be nicer to just call someone you love? And not fake-love, but love-love. Make sure they’re still there. And thank God for that.

But don’t let me tell you what to do, either.