A Christmas Story

I can blog to procrastinate. Being unemployed is still great. I've calmed down. I need to work and I'm blogging but perhaps I also need to consider my beliefs and my life. What a serious girl. Serious is my crazy.

The holidays are something I have to compartmentalize. It's not because I'm Jewish - it's because I had such a complicated childhood. I mean, I think that is why I'm so analytical. Anyway, most people are really into Christmas it seems. I approve the most when there is a lot of baking going on (and wine). On my step dad's side there are some close families. At Grandma Betsy's we'd stay with all his brothers and sisters and cousins in Springfield, Illinois, Land of Lincoln. We'd sing and bake and some grownups would go to Midnight Mass. Seriously, his tall gorgeous sisters would sit up late Christmas Eve by the tree singing "The Lemon Tree." One year it snowed three feet of perfect packing snow, but I was sick. As a result of Grandma Betsy's compassion for the awful injustice of that, I got to eat cocoa puffs 'round the clock. I remember hearing jokes from my aunt on my Mom's side about my stepdad's Episcopalian family times vs. our Jewish dysfunctional disasters- which is a Woody Allen bit from Annie Hall and pretty on-the-money.

A friend of mine recently assumed that I forego Christmas somehow, or wouldn't know about Christmas or something, because "You're Jewish!" (My response: "You think I'm a Communist?") In reality I had many Christmases with my stepdad's family in Illinois, and encouraged my younger cousin bed-sharers to listen for hoofsteps and all this. Santa was big in my life for a time, even predating my stepdad's entrance on the scene. (As was Jesus - thanks to Ted Turner and a Sunday cartoon called "Superbook.") Anyway, I wasn't being raised religious, so you have to give a Jewish kid Christmas if they're in public school for goodness sake. I imagine it just happens. :-) I had a lot of questions about the big man and Mrs. Claus, but I got funny answers - "A big telescope." "They try to match the paper a family is using." "Well, really, it's more like Dad and I are his elves." (I could read the writing on the wall but liked the imagination belief inspired.) My step dad relied on Santa heavily as a negotiation tool with my younger siblings which is sort of sick and funny. He relied on two things, sarcasm and Santa, for the discipline of his children and it really didn't work at all. They'd hit each other and scream bloody murder about it. He'd yell: "Hey! Santa is WATCHING" and laugh.

He employed this sarcasm with me too. When he married my mother, I was five. He made a lot of jokes about "Okay that's it; Go get me my belt," and stuff (His father said such things in seriousness back in his day in what I picture as Tom's "A Christmas Story" childhood). Tom would NEVER have hit me with a belt but I was five and didn't find his humor at my expense so funny at all. There was one day I was punished in the Cafeteria at PS 158 and made to go stand on a perp line with BAD 6th GRADE BOYS for a shaming before hundreds. His delight at the humor of this and support of the principal and her methods was not very understandable to me. When we moved to New Jersey and I hated it, I was unhappy with him. We did a thing called "Indian Princesses" to improve our relationship.

The main way he drove me crazy was that he devised this punishment where I couldn't talk at the table for half an hour or something. And I would basically cry and that got a lot of headshaking disbelief and delight from him. "Crying!? It's been five minutes!" I don't know why I'm thinking about myself as a child so much. I guess it's unemployment and clearing my mind. :-) This Indian princesses story is funny though if you want to bear with me. (why?)

So we do this Indian Princesses thing. He is Tall Timber and I am Little pine cone. Girls and their dads go around town doing crafts at eachother's houses and wearing feathers. Pretty fucking cute.

And then there is a winter retreat weekend to Camp Mason in Blairstown. It's the statewide Indian Princesses gathering and our tribe are all sharing a cabin. I am seriously pissed at one Tom, my stepdad. Children aren't as hard to analyze as adults. I'd say this retreat must have been timed with my first winter in New Jersey and a seven year old's grasping sadism towards Tom was born of not liking NJ one bit and taking his jokes very personally. I hated New Jersey and it wasn't funny!

So the first afternoon we have to rehearse a fable play that we'll perform at dinner that night for all the other tribes. There is a wart hog on the character list. "That's you." I tell my stepdad. "You will play the wart hog."

I didn't like, really, to be so mean. Deep down I felt the same heat in my person that would come with welling tears. Tom and the other dads were good about my (completely Tom focussed) sneering. The other dads laughed it off with Tom. So it was fine. I continued to be just bitchy enough that we could move on with things.

I think I thought it was a pretty big deal. My attitude. Now I realize a mean seven year old is a lot funnier to an adult than she is powerfully scarring.

So Tom played the warthog and I ignored him in the cabin. The next day was so much fun. We went sledding. I was not angry at Tom that day, but I was obsessed with sledding. I ran off with Aaron who was there with his Dad and his tribe of Indian Princes. He wanted to show me another hill. Tom freaked out when I didn't come back up the hill, so he ran down it, falling, and seriously breaking his arm. Well, I felt terrible. Aaron's dad took Tom to the hospital and I went back to the cabin with the other dads and girls.

I wouldn't have been surprised or felt anything but the guilty and deserving party had they then commenced an inquisition into how I had broken Tom's arm. I imagine I was probably asking Jesus and Santa to forgive me even though neither were real. I was trying to steel myself to confess the kind of terrible person I knew that I was to the assembled cabin of community fathers and girls my age with dignity and without tears, but I think I failed, and cried incoherently, unable to explain what I had done - making him the wart hog and hating him yesterday and now he probably thought I didn't like him, as he was screaming out in pain at the hospital.

I broke Tom's arm.

The other fathers assured me this wasn't true. He would be fine. They distracted me and I had the finest night I've ever. So much hot chocolate and such a grand party we had in the cabin.

Tom came back to the cabin around four or five and told me he was fine and I mumbled a little about how much fun we had while he was gone.

His arm was in a cast and a sling and we were dropped off. I ran up to the door to explain things to my mother. She was absolutely horrified.

A Christmas Story of everbody dealing with everything in the holiday spirit. :-) Sometimes people do right. Life has charms.

It's 5:00 am.

A cab ride to Queens at 4:30 is... at 4:30am New York is so... manageable. I mean not quite. That's not quite true. It's only how I feel. Every building still has lives beyond accounting in it. Nothing has changed. Only the time of day. Of night. But from lower west to chelsea to drop off Jen over and up 6th and then over to third moves so fast and quiet and there it all is There's old midtown, a cold, arted place, empty squares, loose snow, and we're over on third now and here is the start of the bridge. Cocaine, you have me lucid. Hello New york. I've done nothing wrong.

Everything is good right now, for what it's worth, which I suppose is very little, but drugs are okay once a year, once every seven months. i like to be lucidly able to feel that all is alright right now though. I don't feel it's bad.

I do feel a revolution of some kind must be near. I do wonder why it can't be like the sixties, not that I was there, but i am fascinated. But I don't find mushrooms. I find theater. I find this endless trying... that is theater in New York. And I like it - i don't care. Does that make sense? i don't care that it asks me so little. No free love. No anything. Just we know. That we are trying. to be a thing that can't be nostaligic or fails.

Oh wow - nonsense I write. Yoda I am. :-)

I look real pretty in the mirror. I am my own everything you know. I don't have good steady sex. I have hot baths and lying on my back. I have home at 5 am, look in the mirror, I'm pretty. I really have everything to give. I really am all of it myself. I feel unafraid now. I feel I'll put it in plays. I feel I'll put it in effort. I feel I will try to moisturize and this package i am will survive. Something terrible could happen. Any time. But I'll just keep having fun. Seeking out what New York is being me, living not in manhattan and not in Brooklyn, partying the theater party. Loving who reaches out and asks, lighting design nerd or beautiful Nick B who I will never because he has a lovely girlfriend.

And with a little of the non-sixties drug, that's alright. it's not falling into a heap of love. That's not the spirit of the times. It's staying out as late as we can. It's putting the sloppy drunks in a cab. It's being happy to get out of corporate. Writing. Applying. Lazy and beautiful and able to write. Big eyes and able. Tonight it's all alright. We deserve to know we're alright 21st century disaster children.

X

Wow

Some real shit goes down upstairs about 1:00am-3:30am some nights. I paced around listening to their argument last night. it was monumentally stupid and upsetting. Now that it's 12:38pm and lots of coffee in my system I feel sorry for the poor girl. " Kept awake, I was pretty mad at her too for letting this fellow know where she lives. They go: "Look at you!" "No, No Look at you!" They hit each other last night. I wasn't sure, but later they were arguing about who hit whom. But from 2:00 on it was the man doing this horrible working himself up sobbing "Don't do this to me! Please please..." I believe it was "don't go" She's on the lease though so WOW SO DYSFUNCTIONAL AND KEEPING ME AWAKE.

I guess I buy earplugs because I'm not comfortable going up with a cup of tea? I don't know this person at all. My neighbor tells me she's divorced and she's Spanish, so when she met her when she was moving in she was with her whole family. That's all I know - and the upsetting "Get off me. Get off me. Don't touch me." content of her terrible fights with her ex-husband? Is this her ex-husband - poor thing? "I've helped you more than your mother ever has!" Man, I want her to get a restraining order. I wish I was going up there with a cup of tea and advice for a restraining order? Does anyone have any suggestions?

I really do feel bad for her. She's got to get rid of him for our sleep.

Pop Culture reporter cont.

Johnnie Walker Black print ad on subway:

"We only shake hands. We call each other once a month max. I still think you're adopted. And although I'd rather streak across a crowded stadium than tell you this - you're a great little brother."

The idea is that you can give a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and say this to the giftee in so doing.

A) I would really really appreciate if you would say maximum instead of max, asshole.

B) Let's imagine that this is the dialogue of a character. This character is on "In Treatment" - because he has issues. (Or she. She would be interesting. But let's just keep this literal. The character is a subway print ad. the ad itself is gendered by our preconceptions, but in fact has no gender, is an ad.) "Why," asks Paul "would you prefer to streak than to tell your brother that you think he's been an excellent brother to you?"

"Dude" says the subway print ad.

"Wait- let me just make sure I'm clear about what you're saying," says Paul, "Would you like to streak across the field in front of a stadium of people?"

"NO man!"

"Alright - that's what I presumed. But that would be quite a sensation wouldn't it? I mean how would that feel?"

Subway print ad smirks. Finally,: "It would be embarrassing."

Paul: Ah. What I'm hearing... correct me if I'm wrong but I'm hearing that you'd find it terribly embarrassing to streak across the field but even more embarrassing- am I right?- to tell your brother he's been a great brother. Now... bear with me if you would, you say you and your brother talk at the most once a month, and that you only shake hands. Would you rather express affection with something more like a hug... would you prefer to speak with him more often... do you imagine that you could speak with him about... well, you tell me, what would you like to talk about with him if you could?

Subway print ad: I've gotta go Paul - sorry man. Early tee time. But I've gotta say - sorry man- but people are supposed to want to be like me. I'm an ADVERTISEMENT.

Paul: So what's the point for me then? What am I doing here - we're now aspiring to be unable to express ourselves, embarrassed by affection for even our literal brothers, looking for gifts that say I'd rather go to jail than talk to you but I do sort of like you enough to give you a gift? Boast our distance from our feelings. That's a way people think it's cool to be- is that what you're saying, Advertisment?

Advertisement: Isn't that, like, the definition of cool? Like cooled off- like not warm - warm is goopy, disgusting.

Paul: But look at the world, look at the headlines. Isn't distance from one another the last thing anyone needs? Not to mention it is literally very cold out there...

Advertisemnt: Thus, dude, JOHNNIE WALKER BLACK. Be cool, stay warm.

Paul: My goodness Advertisement -I like that: Be cool, stay warm. Clever and so inoffensive.

Advertisement: You just don't get it.

Paul: Right. Right. Assholes. Life is about becoming a cool asshole. That and money, max.

Advertisement: (sigh) It isn't you Paul.

Paul: I know. i'm going to kill myself tonight.

Advertisement: DUDE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY THERAPIST.

Paul: Hold on a sec.

(Paul unzips his pants and wags his penis in Advertisement's face)

Paul: I like exposing myself. I feel so alone.

Fin.

Pop Culture reporter

MTV has a show called When I was 17.

It was my intention to joke about how all these people were just 17 yesterday but no--- the episode I just clicked to is actually all old people like myself. People more than 10 years past 17.

Um, Melissa Joan Hart's mom took her to the Limelight. Rapper Flo Rida named himself Flo Rida - and it was perfect because that's a place he likes, Florida, and he flows and was ridin' on all the people - perfect, and Sammi from Days of our lives fell off a horse while exhibiting and got a very small back eye which was gone a week before her audition for Days of Our Lives - perfect.

When I was 17, Advanced chorus had to go sing at some competition near Six Flags Great Adventure. While we waited to perform, Megan and I tried to guess numbers and colors we were thinking of using telepathy. We had enormous success at this and I kept on shrieking at our extra sensory feats of perception. Later, back at school, maybe a week later, Mrs. Corelli told the class, the class called "Advanced Chorus" we would not be asked back as we were too loud and obnoxious. Yet she did not seem to know who was too loud. I don't know if it was true, don't know what the nature of this chorus competition was in the first place, do not think we really weren't asked back. I don't know though, because I was a senior.

When I was 17.