White Trash Christmas: Aftermath

People talk about "The Holiday Season" and frankly I have no idea what they're talking about anymore. They probably mean that feeling kids get around the end of November, the anticipation and the swirling, engulfing, all-encompassingness of Christmas. You know, back when Christmas was a whole season and not just a day filled with obligaion that speeds towards you and leaves you exhausted and empty. I think people who talk about "The Christmas Season" are just longing for that feeling they remember from childhood and think they're supposed to still have. As if anyone with a job and a life actually feels that.

I don't mean to sound cynical. I've tried so damn hard not to be one of those now horribly clichéd people who hates the holidays. I've tried to be enthusiastic and throw myself into it with an open heart and warm intentions. But for me, Christmas is one of the great disappointments of adulthood.

The weeks slip by filled with crowds and soul-less marketing nonsense. Everywhere you look people are frantically purchasing meaningless gifts for people they barely know and don't seem to like all that much. It's a time of consumerist panic, as we try to fill the gaps between us with stuff; not heartfelt tokens of true affection, but stuff. Stuff we don't need and don't want. Stuff that makes us wonder if the people we love know us at all. Stuff that we now have to lug home in overstuffed suitcases that are over the airline's maximum weight limit for checked baggage, costing us not only emotional distress, but also $80 extra in traveling expenses!

The orgy of gift receiving is over and the hollow places inside me seem to be expanding. That imagined feeling of home and safety, of a family brought together in love and peace by the holidays is replaced by freshly minted memories of sniping and bickering, of impatience and dissatisfaction, of spoiled children, glassy eyed with greed, screaming and throwing tantrums. Of imperfect people incapable of putting their petty disagreements and resentment aside for this one day.

White Trash Christmas: Part II

Uncle Joey walks out on his wife of six months the day before Christmas Eve. There was a fight over someone's prescription pain killers, so he shows up at your house with his eight year old daughter—he's trying to get custody from his ex-girlfriend, who was arrested a few months ago in Ohio for child neglect and endangerment—in his white work van, and proceeds to have a shouting match with your grandparents on the phone over the dubious affect this may have on the greater custody battle.

The general consensus is that everyone—those of you merely involved by way of blood relation—should just ignore the situation.

White Trash Christmas: Part I

Mamma wants you to know she just can't get over those Coach pocketbooks in New York. We don't have nothing like that here in North Carolina. Maybe a few styles, but nothing like the selection up there. Of course, Kate Spade is her absolute favorite, but the Belk store in the mall won't carry them because they wanted to put them where the Coach pocketbooks are displayed. She hates Dooney & Burke, though. They're so heavy!

They're opening up a new mall sometime in the next year or two. Mamma just can't wait.

The Goddess’ Chosen People

I was at a party last night, and there were all these Radical Faeries there. It was at this really swanky place near Gramercy Park, where none of us belonged. But the place smelled of cat piss, like some senile 76-year-old lady’s apartment. People kept complaining and wondering if maybe there really was a cat somewhere like at the corner bodegas, you know? To catch mice and rats and whatnot. But then I realized, no, actually it was the Radical Faeries and all their unwashed beards and fake feathers and cheap fur. Cause you know these guys glam it up—they turn. it. out.—but they don't wash the shit!

This guy came up to me and started talking about something or someone, and I was just baffled by what he was saying to me—I don't even remember what it was.

"I'm not a faerie," I said.

And he looked at me and said, "You're not? You don't feel a deep centered, primal connection to the earth? You don't feel the goddess calling you and manifesting herself through you to be a gatekeeper to the spirit world on this plane of existence? You don't feel that in your heart?"

I said, "No. I live in New York."