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I take your point. I am down here among the privileged during the worst economic downturn of my lifetime. I’m the little pig going back for the third time to the breakfast buffet while many of my countrymen are going without breakfast at all. I am screaming about these kids but, truth be told, I am the irresponsible one in this whole scenario.

I am the one who should know better. I should be out with Habitat for Humanity, only I am worthless with tools. But I should at least be putting my money where my mouth is. Okay, I admit it. I am a piece of shit.

But I am a piece of shit trying to relax on a beach. I don’t need these kinds of thoughts racing through my brain while I am supposed to be on vacation. I will be home soon enough, where I can properly berate and loathe myself in the quiet solitude of my own apartment.

So thank God I have more than one voice in my head. There is another country to be heard from. Forget about tomorrow, Lewis, you’ve got some sort of native rum concoction in front of you, and there are the notes of some Costa Rican love song lingering in the air. You’re not standing knee-deep in the rising tide of the Christmas onslaught. And you deserve a rest, that’s why you are having these crazy thoughts. Really, everything is going to be just fine. Just the way God and your accountant planned it.

God, what is that? Is that a retching sound I hear? Oh Jesus, little Pip is throwing up. Too much sun, I guess.

I can hear my shrink now: “And when did you lose your ability to empathize with others, Lewis?”

“Oh, this past Thanksgiving,” I will reply.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m not ready. I’m still enjoying it.”

I turn to Neil and his wife, Machiko (he has remarried and now the three of us go on these trips together). “It’s been a great vacation,” I say. I almost believe it. “We leave tomorrow and I haven’t been upgraded to first class. But I can handle it. Unless Pip is sitting in a first-class seat.”

And of course he was. You know what a three-year-old needs most is ample legroom and free cocktails. To me he’s a little shit, and it’s not even his fault. It’s mine.

It was a long trip. I took a short nap. We landed. We went through immigration. I was home.

And the Christmas season had arrived.

With a vengeance.

I was ready for it. I had girded my loins through epic battles with Pip. I would let the Christmas madness pass over me like all of those warm Costa Rican breezes.

And I didn’t miss the turkey dinner. It was easier to handle Pip than my mother’s Thanksgiving meal. Pip had also taught me an important lesson. I learned maybe it was a good thing I didn’t have any children. And the no-kids thing certainly cuts down on my Christmas shopping.

THE HOOKER AT ROCKEFELLER CENTER

It is as hard for me to escape the Christmas season as it is for me to forget about sex. I mean, it does seem to me that popular culture and advertising spend an awful lot of time and money to remind my psyche that the season of Santa is upon me every year. Those same forces spend the same time and money talking to my penis. Between the two, my penis listens more often. Let’s face it, if it’s not the display of boobage in order to entice me toward drinking a certain beer, it’s the boner pills, the hair gel, or body spray that gets you laid. And all these messages are transmitted before I even make it to my morning coffee. So while my penis pays close attention to everything, my psyche sometimes wanders. It’s a problem I’m dealing with. But whenever I actually forget for a few moments that it’s Christmastime, the tree at Rockefeller Center, much like a hooker working her favorite spot, is there to remind me.

I admit that there is something magical about a Christmas tree all dazzled up in lights. It’s almost as breathtaking as a hooker gone wild in spangles. It gets to me. Maybe it’s just that having a Christmas tree makes a living room just a little cozier. But I think it goes deeper than that. Maybe it’s the sense of rebirth that the lights give to a very dead (or very artificial) tree. In the midst