Common Nonsense: The secrets we keep underneath our Halloween disguises

At this year’s Halloween party with my coworkers, Mallorie went as grapes — purple balloons hanging all over her body-vine. Joey went as the Macho Man Randy Savage, sparkly sunglasses and all. Nik went as one of those wacky, air-filled tube men you see outside of car dealerships.

And me, I went as a guy in a T-shirt.

For some reason, though, people kept heckling me about this costume choice. They had no clue that I’d taken the time to craft an elaborate back story for this character — this character who happened to look like me and be wearing all my clothes. And sure, he had my name, too. But shush.

What mattered was that he was well-adjusted. He liked classical music and had a Roth IRA and ate ridiculous food items, like wheat germ.

He was happy.

The theme of the party was Nostalgia Snack Night, so everywhere you looked, there were Nutty Bars and Pizza Rolls and tater tots and sour gummy worms. What’s that? You want to snap into a Slim Jim? Yeah, we had those, too.

It was one of those nights when the Florida weather gets a freak chill and friends drive in from out of town to remind you why you need them in your lives. It was one of those nights that was meant to be scary but was sort of soothing, instead.

“Ah, another successful Halloween bash,” Joey said, deflated on the couch, after the rest of the party had hightailed it.

Rachel crashed in the other room, snoring. And then there was Moey, in denial that it was 3 a.m. and that the world was shut down, even though, like fools, we were sticking around to see what would happen next.

“Come on,” he said, “have another drink with me.” And I mumbled, “Not a chance.”

But he just shrugged then headed for the fridge. And Joey and I shot each other a look just then, as if he were crazy to push it any further, to pretend that anything good could happen at 3 a.m.

But, we understood that he almost needed to force it, force his eyes open and his heart pumping and his limbs to do the charades move for Never Ever Grow Up.

Tonight, we were all in costume as renegades, rebelling against the stupid moon and the dumb stars and the insane idea that good times had to end just because the clock said so. And for one night a year, maybe they didn’t.

We stayed up and talked another hour, just the three of us. It didn’t matter what we talked about. The fact that it was pointless was exactly the point. We didn’t need to go to sleep. We didn’t need to do anything.

This was Halloween. We could be anyone we wanted to be — even children.