complicit glances

Posted on October 31, 2023 by Christoph Rehage

The King

As it turned out, the nearby city of Friedberg was the place where Elvis Aaron Presley had been stationed during his time in the US Army in the late 1950s. There were statues and posters reminding everyone of the city’s most famous temporary inhabitant.

I loved The King. There was no way for anyone to not love him if they’d listened to “Are You Lonesome Tonight” in the Laughing Version.

Friedberg seemed to agree. Even some of the traffic lights had little Elvises in them, striking poses in red, telling pedestrians to stop, and in green, telling them to go.

the spider

I was sitting in the park of Castle Friedberg having lunch when I finally decided to put on the spider. I had bought it for one euro or two when the weirdo and I were in Frankfurt, and I had never dared to put it on my head. Until now.

It was Halloween, which meant that wearing weird costumes wasn’t only acceptable, it was somewhat expected. And so I put the spider on my head and continued walking, and whenever I ran into people I would tell them it’s not a real spider to which they would reply something along the lines of: “I know.”

little witches

I had never cared for Halloween very much. It seemed like just another made-up holiday that tried to force people into spending money. Like Valentine’s Day. Or Black Friday.

But today, something happened.

As I was walking down the road, pulling the Caboose, with the spider on my head, as it was slowly getting dark, I saw an increasing number of children in costumes on the sidewalks. Almost all of them were tiny, most of them were witches or wizards, and many of them were holding the hands of their parents.

And when our eyes met in the light of the street lamps, we would often exchange little smiles and sometimes complicit glances. They were tiny witches and wizards, I was wearing a spider on my head. They were walking around looking for candy, I was just walking around. We were in a conspiracy.

I loved it.