I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas - Lewis Black [33]
After a while your brain can’t stop screaming, “It’s fucking hot as hell” as you gaze down at the child in your lap and try to utter with some semblance of a smile on your face, “And what would you like Santa to bring you for Christmas?”
“Rmph cahhblooe sna pootay.”
“What did you say? I didn’t hear you, my dear little angel.” I didn’t hear you because all I can hear are the screams from my overheated scalp. Or maybe they’re coming from that area that lies between my brain and my skull. Maybe it’s just because as much as I want to, I don’t really give a shit.
“Anda yelpx dafutti conna socala puche froome and hahahaha tee tee.”
“Oh yes, I will get you the dafutti and everything else you asked for,” I reply, praying that I’m close to understanding what the kid asked for.
“What’s a dafutti?”
“I don’t know, you asked for it. And you’re going to get it.” Sweat pours down my brow like water over Niagara Falls. I feel like I’m running a marathon while basting in my own perspiration.
The whole thing isn’t right. I am dying. Right now, dressed in a fat suit and fake beard, I’m dying. No one sweats like this and lives. Please get this kid off my lap before I am forced to tear these clothes off so I don’t die of heatstroke.
Who the hell does this to themselves more than once? What sadistic world do we live in that allows such abuse to occur?
A raging alcoholic is who. Someone who throws back six tumblers of chablis before going to work, and brings with him a flask filled with crème de menthe just to get through the day. It’s the only way you could possibly stand this. I drink, therefore I am Santa.
I know, you’re not supposed to drink around kids. Which is why I didn’t. But to do this more than once demands more mind-altering substances than I have access to.
After playing Santa, I now think that at the end of that wonderful old movie Miracle on 34th Street, when Maureen O’Hara and John Payne realize that the nice old man played by Edmund Gwenn is actually Santa, they should do the human thing:
Electrocute him.
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1:45 P.M.
Here Comes the Old Giftless Jew!
Thank God my friends don’t ask me to dress up as Santa. I’d have to kill them.
“Here we are,” the driver informs me as we pull up.
As I enter the home of Willie and Jenny, I encounter the first Christmas tradition: the disappointed gazes of Gus and Leo.
“Oh, it’s you, Lewis,” they say, sounding let down. I know what they are thinking. “We believe in Santa. We know he doesn’t exist, but we still believe in him. We just don’t believe in you, Lewis. No gift? Really? Again?”
Then they hightail it to the back rooms of the apartment. No doubt to hide their disgust at the stinginess of their dad’s stupid, cheap friend.
Wait a minute, why am I letting them upset me and undermine my festive fuck demeanor? They didn’t buy me anything, did they? They didn’t make an effort either. Yes, I feel better now.
The living room is filled with members of Willie’s and Jenny’s families. (And, of course, a Christmas tree, which towers over me, even though I am taller than it. Figure that out, genius.) They are hovering over the hors d’oeuvres. There is, however, always something a bit existential about the gathering. (“Existential”—now there’s a word you rarely use anymore, unless you’re in college and are wandering the campus, feeling ennui because you just read Camus’s The Stranger and didn’t understand it. In fact, “ennui” is another one of those rarely used words that only comes to mind when one thinks about existentialism. It really is a vicious cycle.) It’s not the folks themselves who make it feel strange in that existential way. A few faces may change from year to year, but the people Willie and Jenny invite are all folks I enjoy spending time with. Not an asshole in the bunch. And everybody knows that, come the holidays, assholes make things