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URBAN ADVENTURE: Happy Holidays!... oh, blow it.
The
massive egotist in me would love to believe that the following 1400 to 1500
words will be gift enough to everyone who clicks on over to the
all-too-briefly-resurrected Crapper. I'm dying to believe that people
have been clamoring to hear from me, Jane C. Nolan, once again, get an
update on how things are going in my little corner of the universe.
"Gosh, do you have any more stories about riding public transportation," I
imagine a fresh-faced young tyke asking me as I walk down the snowy street
of Anytown, U.S.A., barely able to get my Christmas shopping done because of
the mob of admirers shadowing my every step. "Say, any crazy homeless
guys whip out their dicks lately," inquires another Norman Rockwellian old
lady who smells of rosewater and circus peanuts. In my dreamy dream, I
hold up my mittened hands to silence all the eager fans and I chuckle
knowingly while ruffling the hair of another gee-whiz kid.
"Dudes, I can't even remember when the hell the site went down," I announce,
and dash into the department store, where I proceed to tell all the children
Santa doesn't exist and that Christmas is nothing but a sick farce
perpetrated by retail giants and the people who make the Clapper and Chia
Pets.
Okay, so maybe my dream isn't the kind of perkalicious holiday sentiment
you're looking for. But sentiment, especially Christmas sentiment, has
never been my strong point. I'm the kind of curmudgeon that thinks the
kids today get too much shit and they ought to be toughened up (as if I had
to walk 30 miles to school in snowdrifts up to my ass each and every day).
I don't get very warm and certainly I ain't fuzzy when carols and festive
odes to the fabulousness of Christmas crank up, because most Christmas music
sucks, frankly. And if I hear anything by Manheim Steamroller one more
fucking time, I'm going to choke myself to death with some very merry and
festive red curly ribbon. I couldn't even tell you when my hate-hate
relationship with Christmas began. All I know is that the dread begins
to climb up into my belly starting around the end of October, seeps into my
spleen as Thanksgiving nears, and bile of revulsion and angst sits squarely
in my throat the second the calendar page flips to December 1st.
The
bitter spinster in me would like a moment to tell you why Christmas blows.
You're reminded consistently for a minimum of a month (well, I do believe
the Christmas season begins July 25th—after all, Christmas is
only SIX MONTHS AWAY!!!!!) that you're ALONE. You have no husband.
You have no boyfriend. Fuck, you don't even have a GIRLFRIEND.
It's just you, some rancid eggnog, and a pet of some kind: dog, cat, sugar
glider, lemur, whatever. If you're really "lucky", you have a massive
family crammed with all manner of nieces and nephews who all regard you with
some modicum of fear because of the way you talk to yourself and smell
vaguely of onion all the time. Or, if you aren't nuts and
onion-smelling, it's an endless barrage of questions about why you haven't
snagged a man and what on earth is wrong with you. My problems are
multi-fold—I'm slightly nuts, I'm fat, I'm sarcastic, and I haven't smoked a
cigarette in almost three weeks. So at the moment at least, it's
probably wise for anything with a penis (unless it's Orlando Bloom, thank
you very much) to stay as far away from me as the penis possibly can.
The
cynical bitch would also like to step up to the plate to let you in on what
is so wrong with this Christmas crap. What, I'm supposed to believe
that my fellow humans have suddenly been rendered kick-ass simply because
Tis The Season? Tis the Season for what? Tis the Season for
houses to burn down, kids to go hungry, and people to die in really nasty
ways? I should be embracing the people who would give me a look of
utter evil the other 364 days of the year. Yeah, okay, sparky.
I'll be sure to start doing that right after this pig dislodges itself from
my ass and takes flight, jackhole. And don't even start me on the
incessant commercialism that has everyone in its grip. Commercial
after commercial, exhorting everyone to buy everything for everyone else or
they're failures as human beings and selfish pricks. Well, no shit.
I had to fight with a credit card company caller-type person not two hours
ago about how I'm not "overextended", I'm BROKE, and that you'll get your
money when you get your money. This, of course, after "out of area"
phone calls kept popping up on my Caller I.D. every half-hour from the
second I walked in the door at 4:45 p.m. My primary concern is the
shit that can get turned off (electric, cable, phone) and the shit I can get
kicked out of (my apartment). When the dust settles in my checkbook,
THEN we can chit-chat about what kind of dough I can send you. So knock it
off, and a Merry fucking Christmas to you, sailor.
Sometimes, I envy the insane love people have for Christmas, like I
sometimes envy the people who are really, REALLY into Jesus. You know,
the ones who wear the WWJD bracelets and knock on strangers' doors asking if
the person answering has thought about the Lord's Prayer lately. Okay,
that just happened to me last weekend, I shit you not. I have
monumental issues with organized religion, so people who are going from door
to door to talk Christ aren't going to do well with me. I'm at my
parents' house (where Christmas is in full swing, including a Department 56
Dickens' village display that would blow your goddamned mind, trust me) and
we spy women in their winter finery working the neighborhood. And we
had them pegged at 100 yards: JEHOVAHS. "Jehovah's Witnesses at 10
o'clock! DIVE! DIVE!" So while the Catholics cowered and
hid, it was left to me, the former Catholic and current, um, whatever it is
that I am (asshole?), to work the door and try and give the JW's the boot as
nicely as I could manage. The two ladies were polite enough, but they
were quite into talking the Lord's Prayer (that's the "Our Father, Who Art
in Etcetera" thing, FYI). I had to tell these two ladies, who I'm sure
could smell the evil wafting off me, that I wasn't interested, I was
shutting the door, and no, they couldn't leave their literature. But I
did wish them luck. And I'm sure if these two ladies thought they
could curse without being sent to hell for it, they would have been
muttering "fuck you's" all the way down the driveway.
For
it would be so very lovely to not hate this time of year. A part of me
would dig decorating a tree and hanging a wreath and making mulled wine
before going caroling around the neighborhood with Biff and Muffy and the
gang. I'd love to "gee whiz" my way past holiday displays of light and
moving Santas and reindeer and shit, or take real joy in writing Christmas
cards to all my friends and family. I might even wear a sweater
that has holiday appliqués upon it of ornaments and candy canes and holly.
But it's not in my nature to tra-la-la-la-la. It's just more fun to be
a bitch about it all. Every year, I threaten to a) get picture cards
made and send them to everybody as revenge for all the picture cards I've
received over the years (you know, the ones of everybody's cute fucking kids
in their cute fucking Christmas get-ups—or, what's weirder to me: the
couples sending pictures...of THEMSELVES) and b) write a Christmas Letter.
My parents always get one or two Christmas Letters, and it's inevitably a
laundry list of infections, death, and various horrors. For the year
2003, my Letter would go a little something like this:
Dear
Friends:
I
got up, rode the bus, the train, and the shuttle bus, worked, rode the
shuttle bus, the train, and the bus, walked home, changed into my
lounge-about-the-house outfit, ate dinner, watched TV, dicked around on the
Internet, perhaps watched some Skinemax, went to bed. I've been
smoke-free for almost three weeks, and no one's been slaughtered.
Yet.
Merry whatever.
Yours sincerely,
Jane
C. Nolan
P.S.
Go Cubs |
