I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas - Lewis Black [45]
There are no children who are in desperate need of the attention I can’t give them. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!!!” they would wail. And a wife crying out, “Where the fuck have you been? You said you’d be home by nine. The kids are making me crazy. You make me insane. I hope you had a goddamn good time.”
There is nothing but the sweet sound of silence.
I am alone.
And to be honest, I am happy.
Once again, my friends have given to me more joy than they could ever imagine. I have shared their lives, and they are blessed for having them, and I am blessed for not. Every year they share with me the road I didn’t take. Every year it reminds me that I just couldn’t do it. As much as I know I have missed in my life, I fear I might have missed more.
It’s why I write. If I am not going to be a father of a child, then I’d like to leave some messages behind to those who roll on through life behind me. It’s like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it in the ocean that is time. If I am not going to have a child, I’d like to think of even this silly book as my legacy.
I realize I am married to my career. I am married to what I do. I am married to who I am. Maybe if I had spent more time alone and not out searching for my soul mate, things might be different today, but they are not. Maybe if I had reached some real success when I was younger, but I did not. It’s the way it is.
And it’s good. Very good. Oh, sure, I have regrets, but that’s the nice thing about age. Regrets fade. And eventually, you die.
I realize I have given myself the best Christmas gift I could:
The ability to live my life on my own terms.
Of course, by morning that choice could bite me right in the ass, but for now, to be honest, I couldn’t be happier.
And does that ever piss me off.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
AN ABNORMAL APPENDIX
The Chairman’s USO Holiday Tour
In 2007 I got a phone call from a guy named David Steinberg, who is Robin Williams’s manager. He said that Robin wanted to know if I would go on the USO Christmas tour with him and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. We would be performing at bases in Afghanistan, Iraq . . .
As soon as I heard Afghanistan and Iraq, I stopped listening.
“There’s a war going on there, David. I’d hate to impede any progress we are making with my humor.”
“Lewis, you’re not that funny.”
“Are you sure they want me? Did anyone tell the USO?”
“Yes.”
“And they didn’t flinch?”
“Not to my knowledge. They say they’d be thrilled to have you.” That David is a smoothie. He can sling the bullshit with the best of them.
I didn’t believe him. “Naaaaah.”
“Yeeeeaaaaah. Do you want to go?”
“Of course I want to go.”
“I promise you won’t regret it. It will change your life.”
It did.
My mother didn’t want me to go.
“I will declare that I am on my deathbed if I have to,” she said when I told her. “Lewis, what are you doing this for?”
“I am doing what I have to do for people who shouldn’t be doing what they have to do,” I said.
And I meant it. This is a request that you can’t say no to. These people are our military. They do the job that so few of us want to do. They are literally putting themselves and their lives on the line so that I can argue with my mother about whether it’s too dangerous for me to voluntarily go to entertain them for a few days. I owed them my time and whatever else the USO thought I could give to them. These are men and women fighting a war I don’t believe in. But I believe in them. Though some idiots will continue to insist that you can’t be against the war and for the troops, they are wrong. It’s easy. It’s easy because it’s logical and moral.
It was one of the