Someone's Very Merry Christmas

Originally Posted Wednesday, December 25, 2013

O.K.  I give up.  I don't feel it this time, this year.  Everything tells me it just isn't happening.  It's me, not you.  Maybe I didn't even try.  Perhaps I've gotten too old to care.  Maybe I'm bitter or sick.  I don't know.  But I can only give you the accouterments of Christmas.  It is already over for me.  It is done. 

Still, there are a pile of Christmas cards I haven't opened and a pile of gifts waiting to be unwrapped. 

I could leave them 'til next year. 

I had the usual drinks with the usual miscreants on the Boulevard late yesterday afternoon (I had only Campari and soda, thank you), and it was, as alway, engaged and fun.  Afterwards I went to my mother's house to unwrap our gifts.  We never know when to do it anymore, but since we were not elaborate in our gift buying this year we decided to open them early so that there would be no anticipation of something grand on Christmas morning.  My mother got my the usual giant container of pistachio nuts and a smoked salmon, some ghetto basketball shorts (she, like all the girls, still believe that I am incapable of aging) and a box of chocolate covered Macadamia nuts.  Then she gave me a card that said she was paying to upgrade the electrical system in my very old house.  Hmm.  I, in turn, gave her a keyboard and cover for the iPad I got her for her birthday and some kick ass Bluetooth speakers.  I got those babies wirelessly connected to that iPad, and--oh, my--any kid with adventure in his or her soul would kill to have them. 

My mother was deadpan. 

"Nice," she said.  O.K.  Maybe I'm trying to hard to keep her current.  The goddamned things were expensive, but I think I might have to have some.  I connected my iPhone to them.  What fun.  But I felt the need to say,

"Mom, just so you know, this all cost more than the big flat screen television I bought you." 

That got a rise from her.  She turned and looked quickly. 

"Really!?"

"Mom, I'm telling you it costs to be so hip." 

"Will this work at McDonalds?" 

"Do they have Wi-Fi?"

"Yes." 

"Then sure, it will work."

"Maybe I'll take it up there and show off." 

There you go.  Now she's living. 

After we were finished, I came home and thought about a drink.  I really wanted one.  There was a little left in the bottom of the scotch bottle, so I poured that.  Mmm.  I sat and savored it and thought some desultory things for a bit, just sad things about life in particular, not general, and then I thought I should have the rest of the missing drink, so I poured a little Hendrix gin.  I got the idea to Google an old girlfriend who is famous enough to Google and get recent results, but that was a mistake.  I had not done that for about a year.  I have waited to hear from her one Christmas and maybe this one in particular.  What I found, unfortunately on Christmas Eve, was that she got married in May.  There were pictures from the wedding.  I felt a bit blank on the inside, of course.  There was that and the missing texts from many others who I might have wanted to hear from, and there were the messages from others that didn't say quite what I wished for them to say, and there were more immediate concerns as well. 

Another gin, of course. 

"And when those blue snowflakes start falling, 
That's when those blue memories start calling, 
You'll be doing alright with your Christmas of white, 
But I'll have a blue, blue, blue blue Christmas."

 (DO go listen to this)

One thing about drinking is that you never feel quite as lonesome.  There is something very communal in a bottle. 

And then I Googled Cole Porter and listened to some of his recordings for a bit.  Jesus, that fellow was a genius.  And while I was listening, I read the news and found that Alan Turing had broken the gay code some sixty years ago but had recently been pardoned.  I wondered at that for awhile.  And after any number of Porter tunes, with no Santee in sight, I decided to take myself to bed with my own speaker-less iPad where I downloaded "A Preparation for Death," by Greg Baxter, the book that was recommended to me when I mistakenly downloaded "The Apartment" which I enjoyed thoroughly. 

One more gin. 

And then. . . slowly at first, then quickly. . . .