Another One Down

(December 26, 2002)

Right now I'm listening to Extreme, and after this I am going to listen to Must, and following that, the Chorus Line soundtrack, and I don't care WHAT you think of me.

So. Fucking Christmas. It's crap. Or CHrap. Chrapmess. Not one fiber of my being was instilled with holiday cheer this year. I just wasn't ready. I was so far from "ready" that the light from "ready" would have taken a million years to reach me. Sometime around Monday night, I got in from having a few drinks with Wolf followed by dinner with Hub, and I logged into Diaryland to put up a new entry. The window popped up and said "December 23rd." I was all, "What the fuck, Diaryland's date is wrong." It wasn't. It was ME. I still hadn't fully internalized the fact that I had to drive to Connecticut the next day and have Christmas Eve, because December 24th is the day they have that.

Fuck. What's worse, I didn't even feel like faking it. Oh yes, I've faked it in the past. I'm GOOD. Maybe I'd have felt like spraying my fabulicious can of synthetic cheer if I'd gone to a single holiday party in this scene. I didn't. Not Soundcheck's, not Q Division's, not the Weekly Dig's, not even private ones. Define irony: Most of us seek all our lives to belong, to get invited to the cool kids' parties. Then when we're invited to every cool kid's party, we don't go.

Ugh. I suck.

Longtime Jungle readers know the drill: Hub and I usually go to my grandmother Maggie's early on Christmas Eve day, then to my parents' for Christmas Eve dinner, sleep over there, then to Hub's parents' on Christmas Day. Well, this year we skipped Maggie. I called her in the morning. She was making the cork fish death pucks. I just couldn't. I swear to god man, I COULD NOT DO IT. We just saw her on Thanksgiving, so I've had all the sickening insults I can handle for the winter. I'll go see Maggie in, say, March. Yeah, March. Or April. Maybe May.

Part of the problem with not making it to New Haven to see Maggie (who, by the way, has moved again since this time last year) was that my mother wanted to have dinner earlier. She needed us there by four, because THIS year she was having people over after dinner. The house finally has sheetrock on most of the walls, and there's heat. So...party on! Well, the post-dinner thing turned into a drunken bash.

How much pot is too much? When Karaoke in your mother's living room, because your brother got a Karaoke machine for Christmas, seems like a good idea. I learned that no one in my family can carry a tune. We are just so bad. I mean paint-peelingly, eye-crossingly bad... though me and my brother did okay on "YMCA," except when he stopped singing to make comments that sent me into hysterics.

It's fun to stay at the Y M C A
It's fun to stay at the Y M C A
They have EV-ery-thing for you men to enjoy--

"These lyrics are really gay, aren't they? I never knew."

How much Vodka & cranberry juice isn't enough? When you see your aunt after five years and you still can't stand the shallow bitch. And when you realize that one of the bathrooms is in your brother's room and is open to the room on one side, with a window on the other side, but which has no curtain; and the other bathroom is in your parents' bedroom and has no sink or door. "Mom," I said, "You HAVE to put a DOOR on these bathrooms!" I mean seriously, what the fuck? During the party I saw people peeing that I don't even want to see...doing...pretty much anything.

Though I barely drank and I was able to catch some sleep for once, I woke up (in a hotel, we bailed on trying to stay with Louie and JoAnna when it looked like the party wasn't ending and we'd had enough) and I was already headachey and cranky. So I wasn't looking forward to the loud, raucous day of presents and food and kids. I wanted very badly to go HOME. Hub's family, by the way, doesn't even know that I moved out, and I didn't feel like making conversation that avoided that topic. But, through the snow and headaches and all, we went. OH yes, it was snowing. Like, a lot. And guess what? Well, there's five boys in the family including Hub. All have wives, some have kids, some have in-laws that also come for the day, so it's usually this whole big thing. Because of the snow, it was only us and one other brother. NO kids.

No kids? Just a quiet dinner with relaxation and conversation?

There really IS a Santa Claus.

God Bless Us, Everyone.