My most vivid Halloween memory is of a haunted house in Encino that had a trough full of slimy goo. In a pitch black room, a stranger, presumably a zombie, would take your hand and guide it into this strange confection. It was warm like urine, and full of what felt like bones, cartilage, sea anemones, rubbery sausages, livers, hearts, brains, cigarettes, and dead goldfish. It smelled of blood, rubbing alcohol, open heart surgery. We’d try to imitate it in the school cafeteria. Tom La Verdi would dump his milk into his half-eaten bowl of spaghetti. Jeremy Dash would add a banana peel. Ronnie Sachs would spoon in some chocolate pudding. John Thorsen would pepper in some pizza crusts, an apple core, and a regurgitated peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We’d decorate it in swirls of ketchup and mustard, and sprinkles of Pop Rocks. Peter Bishop, bully that he was, would add what he referred to as “the cherry on top”: a deeply hawked loogie. Then we’d dip someone’s hand in it, or hurl it at an enemy.