Christmas memory – Boy Outa Brooklyn

Crap Christmas #3

Okay. Ready? Here’s the final installment in this mirth-killing series about Yuletide disasters.

When we last saw our hero, (That would be me.) he was slinking home to Brooklyn after debasing himself in a Times Square porn movie house on Christmas Eve! I have entitled this cautionary tale –

Christmas In Queens

**Yes, people actually choose to live here.**

Remember how mean old Scrooge wakes on Christmas morn a man transformed? Remember how nasty old Ebenezer dances a merrie jig and sends a boy to buy a turkey? Not on this Christmas morn. Not in Brooklyn. I awake to the single worst toothache since Cicero’s oration against Catiline. It drives a spike into my head with every beat of my heart.

Ever try to find a dentist on Christmas Day? Don’t bother. Even Jewish dentists don’t work on Christmas. They want Christians who have been dumped by their bitch girlfriends on Christmas Eve to suffer. Bastards. Desperate for pain-relief, I swallow every pill I find in the medicine cabinet, including the unlabeled ones.

Is this my cat’s de-worming pill? Aw, fuck it.

Then, it hits me.

Oh, Christ, I gotta go sing for Ralphie’s fuckin’ mother in fuckin’ Queens!

My friend Ralphie will pay me one hundred dollars in cash to go to his mother’s house on Christmas afternoon and sing her a surprise Christmas song. I would rather have South American fire ants shoved up my ass but I need that money. God, do I need that money! So, heartache or not, toothache or not, I have to haul my sorry ass out to the sorry-ass end of Queens. No one goes to Queens. Ever. Why would they? I’m not even sure it’s open on Christmas.

Then my damn actor’s integrity kicks in and I determine to give this old gal a rousing “plum pudding” carol sing. It’s not her fault that “Lana the Cunt” dumped me or that Jewish dentists are getting revenge on me for centuries of the Blood Libel. So, I practice my song with a tape-recorder and even pack my pitch pipe. I put on my best “Dickensian” garb – a stovepipe hat stolen from a Victorian play and a scarf wrapped around my neck just as I’d seen carolers do in every production of A Christmas Carol. Then, with my tooth throbbing to an excruciatingly painful Tito Puente beat, I head for Queens – wherever the fuck that is.

**Actual photo taken in Queens, NY in 1981. Honest.**

It is cold. It is very cold. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, it is very, very, cold. The subway is running slowly. Very, very, very slowly. I just miss a train and wait on the unheated platform for one hour. (Throbbing tooth.) I just miss a bus and wait on the unheated street for another hour. (Throbbing tooth.) It begins to snow. It is getting dark. (Throbbing tooth.) It takes me four hours to reach my destination.

Why does Queens exist?

My frostbitten fingers ring the doorbell and a sweet old woman answers.

“Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! I have a special song for you from Ralphie!” I tweet through chattering, throbbing teeth. My scarf is now wound around my head Victorian-toothache-style. Mom lets me step into the vestibule where I whip out my pitch pipe and sing I’ll Be Home or Christmas. But, why haven’t I seen this coming? I am teleported back to the California 7-11. By the miracle of bi-location, I am sobbing next to the Taco melted-cheese dispenser in Oxnard while sobbing in a vestibule in the ass-end of Queens before an embarrassed, confused and frightened old woman. I get through the song and wipe my nose while mentally evaluating my vibrato. (Once an actor…) Mom invites me in for cake and coffee.

“Oh, no, thank you. I have several other stops to make. I don’t want to be late and disappoint anyone. Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

The return journey is colder, snowier, slower. It takes me five hours to get back home. I eat a can of tuna fish for Christmas dinner, carefully avoiding my throbbing tooth. That’s all the food in the house. A can of tuna. I then bounce off the walls until dawn with toothache and heartache my only companions.

___________________________

To my long suffering readers –

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and an even better New Year!

_________________________

Available as a paperback and eBook here and here and as an eBook here

Crap Christmas #2

Told ya I’d be back with another installment of my seemingly endless memories of disastrous Christmases past. This time we grab the Red Eye and jet from LA to NYC for yet more Yuletide misery. Enjoy!

O HOLY NIGHT

One year after being dumped by Monica I’m back in New York. Another Christmas Eve. Another girlfriend. Another dumping. This time – Lana. Something about me having no money and being a loser. She has a point. I am once again gainfully employed as a full-time starving actor – fucking adorable but broke. Not what Lana has in mind so –

“Merry Christmas, you’re dumped.”

“Oh yeah? Fuck you! I’ve been given a free ticket to a Broadway show – so there.”

Lana is a model. A beautiful model. With perfect lips. Succulent lips. Dreams are made of such lips. If you don’t believe me just ask the radio station that has chosen Lana’s lips as its new logo currently splashed over every available space in New York City. Walls. Billboards. The sides of buses. Trains. Taxis. As I hurry to the theater, her luscious lips confront me at every turn. In Times Square, Lana’s lips, luminously captured in neon light, tower above me. I am almost hit by a cab decorated with Lana’s lips as I run to touch those very same lips that adorn the back of a bus. Her lips smile at me, seduce me, invite and entice me. Then they chase me down the street taunting, “Loser, loser, loser” until I escape them by ducking into the theater lobby.

When I settle into my seat, I realize that I’ve seen this play before. With Lana. (Choke. Sniffle.) So, there I am contemplating throwing myself off the balcony and thinking – Well, at least I’ll crush some Jews. I am surrounded by Jews. Who else goes to the theater on Christmas Eve? But, overtaken by the spirit of the season, I decide to live and let live. I imagine these theater-loving Hebrews bustling home to enjoy their Chanukah bushes and to drink Christian baby-blood. As I leave the theater a heavy snow is blanketing yesterday’s filthy white pile. The Jefferson Airplane’s lyric comes to me –

City streets in the dead of winter,

Stop your mind with dirty snow.

But, my mind won’t stop. It zooms. I am in my thirties. I’ve limped back to New York after failing in L.A. – limped back for a second dose of the same medicine. A glutton for punishment. No money. No food. No job. No woman. No hope. Walking in Times Square on Christmas Eve with nothing and no one waiting for me at home. Not even a Chanukah Bush. Again, I become Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. I lean into the biting wind and trudge through the heaping snow, not in Bedford Falls but in Midtown Manhattan searching for a smile, a break. Searching for my life. It was here a minute ago. Crazed, I search for warmth in passing faces but they hurry away. I press my nose against restaurant windows ’til frightened diners have the waiter tap on the glass and chase the bum away. Then I see the brightly flashing lights ahead. Red and green. Not a Christmas tree but the marquee of a porn theater. A sin-pit of the lowest sort.

**Hmmnnn…perfect. Dump me on Christmas Eve, will ya? Fine. I’ll wallow in it. What’s the movie? “Snowblowers.” Ah, a seasonal theme. Perfect again.**

I buy my ticket comforted by the thought that I will have the Snowblowers all to my lonesome. Enter theater and… the place is packed. Jammed. I have trouble finding a seat. Who knew there were this many sad, lonely, desperate losers in New York on Christmas Eve? But, maybe they’re just killing time ‘til Midnight Mass.

Snowblowers is neither Christmas In Connecticut nor The Miracle On 34th Street. In fact, the movie is so out-of-focus and out-of-sync that it’s difficult to discern who is doing what to what part of whom. I think the plot involves flabby-assed actresses performing a variety of sex acts while on skis with hairy-assed actors also on skis. I worry the performers risk frostbite on their asses, whether flabby or hairy.

Divertimento on Porn Etiquette

In those golden days of yesteryear, there were strict codes of conduct in porn theaters and dirty bookstores. In the latter, it was thought rude to pick up a porn magazine immediately after another sticky-fingered voyeur had put it down. The girl in that magazine was still his girl. It was best to let some time pass and allow the couple to come to terms with their recent break-up. Then you were free to paw over Teenage Enema Bandits.

In porn cinemas, as in all cinemas, it was held inconsiderate, threatening and sexually provocative to sit right next to, directly in front of or (worse) directly behind someone when there were other seats available. It pains me to report that some lost souls went to porn theaters expressly to jack-off or to be jacked-off. I was never among their number. My preference was to sit far apart, all the better to enjoy the mise en scène. And, to avoid being hit by recklessly extruded seminal fluid.

Porn theaters, like strip-shows, were remarkably somber affairs. The men hunkered down to watch and/or wank in silence. No chitchat. No popcorn passing. Definitely no eye contact. You didn’t want to risk being recognized.

“Murray, what the hell are you doing here?”

Furthermore, a wisp too much eye-contact with the flaming Black fairies who walked up and down the center aisle, licking their lips while looking into laps, might suggest you were happy to let them get a lip-lock on your love-monkey. No. And again, no! Eyes straight ahead.

fine

In the middle of Snowblowers just as the star blower is fellating her shivering co-star on a toboggan, I become aware of a commotion at the end of my aisle. A suburban daddy is awkwardly climbing and tripping his way over the masturbating men while loaded down with his Christmas treasures. He is juggling bags from Saks, Macy’s and Bloomingdales.

“Excuse me, Merry Christmas. Oops, scuse me, please. Merry Christmas. I’m terribly sorry to trouble you but could I possibly sneak past. Merry Christmas.” And, he is off to catch the last train to Westchester. The erotic mood destroyed, I let Mr. Westchester run interference for me through the aisle-fairies and follow him out into the blizzard.

Lights get turned off even on the Great White Way and much of Midtown is now dark. Lana’s neon lips are a grey ghost drained of all erotic power. I tramp downtown as far as the Village where, ashamed and ascared, I grab a bagel and the subway and make for Brooklyn. I make for home.

__________________________

Crap Christmas #1

You lucky people. I have decided to share with you a few juicy Christmas morsels from my murder-memoir – Boy Outa Brooklyn. They are simply too wonderfully depressing to keep to myself. After all, Christmas is a time for giving. So… put your feet up, pop open an egg-nog and enjoy!

Pages fly off the calendar until they reach Christmas 1981.

The place is Oxnard, California.

Your reporter is a struggling actor working as a minimum wage security guard at a hospital when… the screen goes fuzzy… fuzzy… fuzzy…

Then things got bad. My girlfriend back in New York dumped me. By phone. On Christmas Eve.

While working in the security-guard game, I was living in a mini-trailer – let’s be kind and call it a “trailerette.” This particular trailerette was in the Wagons West Trailer Park right off Route 1 in Oxnard, California. When I say, “right off,” I mean I could reach out the window and adjust the rear-view mirrors on passing cars. (It has been said that Oxnard is something that comes out of a bull’s nose. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can testify that Oxnard, California smells like something that comes out of a bull’s ass.)

Strawberry fields surrounded Oxnard to the horizon. The fruit was grown under long strips of black plastic sheeting, so the fields looked as if they had been wrapped in an enormous garbage-bag. But, in a certain light, those garbage bags were beautiful. They shimmered in the sun and radiated heat waves so that, at sunset, Oxnard was a mirage city afloat on a glistening, black-plastic lake.

Wagons West Trailer Park, an island in that lake, was infested with illegal immigrant Mexican families. Wetbacks. Like their Puerto Rican cousins in Brooklyn, they spent their days screaming the Mexican equivalent of “mira, mira,” blasting the Mexican equivalent of Tito Puente music and shoplifting. Wagons West had a swimming pool the size of a toilet bowl, so the Mexicans used it as such. All in all, this wasn’t shaping up to be one of the more festive Yuletide seasons of my life. Besides, Christmas and Southern California didn’t go together. It was just plain wrong.

To be a good scout, I volunteered to do a double shift at the hospital on Christmas Eve so that another security guard could have holiday time with his family. Never mind that he was a stuttering semi-retard who beat his wife. (“The b-b-b-bitch ja-ja-ja-just d-d-d-on’t li-li-li-lissen.”) For I was aglow with the spirit of Noël and decided, “God bless us everyone” even violent, stuttering semi-retards.

My girlfriend in New York called as I was suiting up for work. Let’s call her Monica since that was her name. It was Christmas Eve and the movie It’s a Wonderful Life was on TV. The trailerette was so cramped that to answer the phone, I had to sit with my head touching the TV screen. I turned down the sound – the better to hear the splat as Monica dumped me from a great height. As I listened, numb, I stared at Jimmy Stewart running silently through the streets of Bedford Falls desperate to find someone, anyone, who could save him. I melted into the screen. I melded with Jimmy. I was Jimmy. I mumbled to Monica that I understood and there were no hard feelings. (I lied.) I picked up the Santa Claus hat I was going to wear to work and fed it to the kitchen garbage disposal.

I stepped out of the trailerette into the humid inferno that was Christmas Eve in Oxnard, California. It wasn’t even dark yet, but the Wetback kids had already ripped open their shoplifted presents and broken all their toys. Bent bikes and headless dolls laid abandoned in the dust beside the flat wheels of the trailers. I heard beer bottles being smashed and Mexican curses being hurled. Feliz Navidad. I made for Happy Valley Hospital. MerryfuckingChristmas!

At 3 AM, I took my lunch-break. The hospital cafeteria was closed so I couldn’t even get hospital slop from the slutty, pink-haired punk who worked there. Instead, I fantasized about fucking her four-ways-from-next-Tuesday in my trailerette. She would be wearing my Santa hat and nothing else. “If the trailer is rockin’, don’t bother knockin.” But, Pinky was probably rockin’ that night with the hospital’s jailbird janitor. So, I walked to a 7-11 that was ablaze with light and found it full of Martians – the ancestors of today’s Walmartians. The nurses who had rejected me because I talked “funny” were correct to have identified me as an alien species. But, they had their morphological categories backward. I was the only Earthling in Oxnard and certainly the only Homo sapiens in that 7-11. The true aliens were the shapeless blobs of carbon-based life-forms buying Slurpees and Slim Jims at 3 AM on Christmas Eve.

What are they? Where did they come from? Why can’t they go back? How does any organism become this greasy, ugly, fat and stupid yet still live?

As I struggled to find something to eat related to any known food-group the Muzak played I’ll Be Home for Christmas. I lost it. Right by the Taco melted-cheese dispenser. I wept copious tears, perhaps aided by the chopped onion in the jalapeño bean dip. No Martians noticed. But I sucked it up and manfully determined to finish my double-shift. I wanted those ex-military tools who hired me to mourn losing their best man.

But I also had to face the facts that were as plain as the pus-filled pimples on the oily forehead of the 7-11 clerk – I hated California and California hated me. I had tried to be an exemplary employee but despite my efforts, I had somehow offended someone so grievously that the cunt-lapping, shit-eating, fuck-face went and trashed my Mercury Comet in the hospital parking lot while I was making my rounds.

Goddam, I loved that car. Fuck these California cretins.

Propelled by a sudden, baffling surge of nostalgia for being pissed on by drunken Negroes on the “A” train, I made for New York.

_______________________________