“x”mas marks the spot

at least the dining table looks like christmas even if the rest of the house does not; what with the cards we’ve received in a bowl (the ceramic sleigh we usually bring out for that purpose still stored away), gift wrap, tissue paper, ribbons, half-wrapped boxes, re-gifting as necessary (btw, got my christmas present early this year, $715.00 car repair, thank you swedish-asian auto service!), greeting cards in their boxes awaiting addressing and note-writing–you did notice that today’s date is the 23rd, didn’t you?  we are seriously behind on this whole “celebration/holiday/giving thanks/hosanna/lamb of god mewling in the manger-thing”.

and i’ve been particularly reluctant to get going on it.  now mind you, it’s not that i don’t love all of my friends and what family is left (and of course, i do have all of m.’s extended family that i absolutely adore–if they’re reading this, anyway), but that sense of wonder of the season has just not arrived with little reindeer hooves on the roof of my soul this year.  for a moment yesterday, when i was being driven from work to the auto service place-a-ma-bob and was chatting with  armando, their go-fer, about christmas and his little two-and-a-half-year old daughter who loves the lights and has figured out what presents are hers under the tree already–to hear his voice soften with love as he told me about her joy was, well, it was joyful.  for the moment.

but back at home later that evening, even with the loving attention of our billy and joey and the sweet baritone of m. that sense of malaise (could it be ennui–the guilt of the downwardly mobile?) seemed to settle over me like the cold that i just cannot shake (3 damn weeks, enough already!)

however today dawned, as they do, the days that is, you know the sun came up, and after a night of serious contemplation and a look back at some christmases past and a lovely note from a friend this morning, well, i thought i should get over myself and wish you a merry christmas, which i will attempt to do in less words than you can shake a stick at and perhaps along the way i’ll manage to mix metaphors or over-indulge in hyperbole and other grammatical legerdemain that, like it or not, are a part of who i am (crown me with a non-sequitur of holly berries and mistletoe, which of course is not your traditional non-sequitur, but what did you expect in 2011 anyway?)

consequently and without further ado or not too much ‘do’, but maybe a bit more, it is the holidays after all and a little excess may be de rigueur when celebrating the birth of a son of a god–even zeus would agree, although by now zeus may be a bit of a stretch for you traditionalists–but regardless of whose god you may celebrate, the holiday is about love and friendship and i am prepared, yea, verily, i am ready to distribute my love and extend my hand in friendship to all who cross my path today, who may have done the same yesterday, and to those who may come tomorrow.  i love you.  i really do.

wolcott st. (ghost of christmas past)

christmas 1988 at 6817 n. wolcott avenue, chicago, illinois.  although we had started modestly enough (just one guest on christmas eve that first christmas six years before this one), our ‘tradition’ of hosting a christmas eve party quickly went viral (used in a 21st century way & not in the musty old 1980′s way,) and among our group of friends and associates became the much anticipated event of the season (or so they told us, & one still does, when she calls around this time, she always asks what time she should arrive & could she bring something.)

sometime shortly after thanksgiving, m. would bake the fruitcake & start the process of embalming it with cognac, a cheesecloth laid over it like a shroud (if you looked closely you could see a map of turin,) & then the cleaning would begin; wood floors to be waxed & polished, dusting, windexing (so much glass!  so many tchotkes!), the crystal washed & checked for chips (those damn donghia wine goblets), touch-up paint, wash & iron the curtains, table linens & associated presentation cloths, serving pieces to be silver polished, the immense fitz & floyd vegetables-in-the-shape-of-a-turkey soup tureen to be taken down from its roost on top of the china cabinet & cleaned (ready for m.’s delicious nouvelle cuisine version of polish borscht–yes, yes, i know, so many paradoxes in ‘nouvelle cuisine’ as a qualifier for ‘borscht’ but the fact remains, that is exactly what it is, a nouvelle borscht.)

then the menu must be planned; we had a framework on which we hung new foodstuffs over the years.  the evening would start with champagne & hors d’oeuvres, just little somethings to keep everyone somewhat sober before dinner, because we served crates of wine.  in fact, the whole wine selection that came after the menu was set was a job unto itself–we would drive over to sam’s/joe’s/mordechai’s (a name i could never remember even then, like those secret handshakes between straight men that have eluded me all these years,) at southport & armitage or somewhere equally out of area, in a run-down brick building with sloping foot-worn wooden floors & a basement ‘cave’ with low ceilings & stacked cases of wine leaning in at you in any & every direction you turned (you would suffer vertigo and claustrophobia simultaneously) & somehow, m. would — occasionally with my input — pull together a wine menu that perfectly complemented this:  the nouvelle borscht with mushroom uszka, the fish course served as a terrine in white, green & red strata with bibb lettuce reduction (more wine!), a meat course (this year it was rack of lamb with herb/garlic mustard rub, but we rarely repeated ourselves), the meat served with a medley of vegetables & new potatoes, followed by a salad & a cheese plat (did i mention that appropriate wines accompanied each course?)  by this time, miraculously, everyone was still sitting upright.

because after all of that, then the desserts began rolling out, unveiled, curtains up!  christmas cookies (5 or 6 or 10 different kinds, maybe not that many kinds, but dozens nonetheless), fudge & candies, followed by a pièce de résistance, a cake, baked from scratch & decorated & perched provocatively on its cake stand, worshiped like the virgin birth (hosanna!),  us the animals in the stable,  & m., the north star showing the magi the way (true.)

& then we would push back our chairs & groan & grin foolishly at each other in abject love & friendship & there would be hugs & kisses (& cigarettes, because when you’re drinking & eating that much, you should break it up with smokes.)  & someone would remember the dog with a “where’s nicky?” but by then, he’d given up on begging & gone to sleep curled up by the christmas tree in the living room, patiently waiting for his presents (he had his own stocking.)

& through the whole evening there were the carols of conversation (this dinner in 1988, there were a dozen of us at the groaning board) & the giggles of delight at a well-placed observation or sly joke or jab of outrage at a previous comment or a whispered “i love you” as many of us by then were couples & you’d catch a wistful look & a hand clasped in conspiratorial ardor.

the coffee service  & dessert plates (bavarian bone china by haviland, my mother’s last gift to me before she died; she’d bought it in germany & for all those years had kept it hidden until, until one of the last times i went down to visit her before her death, there it was sitting out & she said, “i was going to give this to you when you got married, but i can’t wait any longer, i want you to have it now.”)  & so, for many years, just the act of using it made me cry, which is why it seldom got use, with its translucence & delicate hand-painted roses & gilt edges  (i am better about it now, or i mean that i cry less often now when it is used.)

& with our coffees & armagnacs & after dinner spirits (the remains of wine, champagne) we would adjourn to the living room where the shimmering tree would witness our groans of relief & at the sight of so much friendship & camaraderie we would share our love for each other with gifts & laughter & the splendor of giving & receiving.

wolfram st. (ghost of christmas past)

christmas 1982 at 1343 wolfram street, chicago, illinois.  it took a long time to get to this point.  celebrating christmas took a back seat in the years between 197_ and 198_ to my wanderings (although i went nowhere other than a few trips hither and yon & back again, always back again to chicago, my comfort zone.)

[a note about this apartment:  this was one of those apartments that was never empty.  a succession of gay men (and notably, one pregnant woman) inhabited it for many, many years, passing it down as if it were a dowry or a hope chest accompanying a new bride.  one found out about it from a friend of a friend, or yourself when it was time to move on with your life.  i like to imagine that it harbored the lonely, the lost, a last place to park your life before time ran out.   nobody who came into it ever forgot it, years later, friends would (& still) say, "i loved your little place on wolfram, that little attic apartment."  & it was little & it was in the attic of a 5 flat, but designed by someone with a subscription to mechanics illustrated circa 1957.  everything about it was thought out & beautifully made.  at least at one time; as time does, it had taken a gentle toll on the finishes, burnishing the copper  &  oak tiles that covered most of the walls, the cork floor, the bathroom painted gray with pink & blue stars on the ceiling & above the matching tiles.  the bed pulled out from the eaves of the attic (an extra long single, it held my 6' 4" frame perfectly & seemed comfortable enough for a second person as well, it was a refuge against a storm-tossed life.)

from the large multi-paned window in the dining area i was able to see the john hancock center & the other notable skyscrapers of the downtown chicago skyline & in the winter it was the perfect place to watch the snow fall. a fourth floor walk-up (& down,) i painted the stairwell one year when money was tight in exchange for rent ($45.00 a week, yes, that's right, a week.) i was there  for just about 5 years, although when m. (see photo above) & i betrothed ourselves to each other, & my life took a turn for the better (it had started to before, but m. was the booster rocket) we took the downstairs front 2 bedroom apartment, but jealously kept this one as an escape route should it be required (it wasn't.)

i haven't done justice to what this apartment was in terms of its delightful idiosyncrasies & so much happened inside of it (& outside) or even about the building's manager, violet & her boy toy ______, two down-on-their-luck ukrainians (or perhaps some other eastern european country, they were evasive), violet saying "i only like to rent to single men (as if single were code for homosexual) because they are neater & more honest than other men & their women."  you did not want to get into it with her, but she had a certain amount of love to dole out when needed & her baleful eyes & her blue-veined hands & flyaway hair & the carpet slippers & the hard-to-place accent all contributed to the ambiance of the place.]

but christmas 1982:  m. brought with him a more ingrained culture of holiday celebration than the one i had set aside for so many years.  & this christmas, our first together, was a celebration of our own & soon (as you’ll see) our christmases were affairs to remember, anticipated by close friends months in advance (& talked about for months afterward.)  look at those smiles & you’ll understand what i mean.

willsie st. (ghost of christmas past)

christmas 1970 at 918 willsie avenue, rapid city, south dakota.  (after looking at the google street map, the neighborhood has devolved since my last visit there in 1984, sad.)

this year we ‘flocked’ the tree ourselves, copying what the martha stewart of our family (my aunt) had done the year before.  that big white box with the red cross bow is an antique lamp that i had bought for my mother (it was silver plate, a kerosene lamp repurposed for the edison century with a lovely, milky glass shade, a few years later, my mother had a local artist paint blue flowers all over the shade & somewhere in the depths of my garage, today, it rests in a box, carefully wrapped & cushioned, most likely never to be used again–although i did try to scrub the flowers off once, but they seemed to have been applied with car paint, tant pis & yes, i know that adding ‘tant pis’ was a gratuitous use of the french language, but if i don’t use it, it will languish like the lamp, wrapped in old paris match magazines, stored in a musty corner of my brain.)

secret: sometimes when i would get home from high school in the afternoon & i would have the house to myself for a couple of hours before my mother got home from the air force base where she did something relatively important (high security clearance, no less,) i would draw the drapes in the living room & the dining room (a great room before there were great rooms, but small, because you know, we lived on the other side of the tracks and the creek, the house was no bigger than a cracker box with a roof on it.)  i would fill the house with music, my music, my generation’s music (i had a fondness for female singer/songwriters/poets: joni, joan, janis, laura) & i would take off my shoes & move furniture out of the way & would dance.  dance by myself & tip & swirl & jeté & dream of being partnered by nureyev or any other magical, masculine creature (pan perhaps), stopping between tracks to catch my breath, look at myself in the mirror & dream of a life where what i hardly understood would/could be true.

as soon as i left home to go to university & then, later, i set aside christmas, but now, now in 1970 i was committed to christmas as were my friends, we went to the same evangelical church, we sang in the choir, we did deeds (good ones, i think) & after church, we would go to a & w on 8th st. (hwy. 16 to mt. rushmore) in my car & laugh & giggle & my best friend, a., would make out with s. or k. or any other young girl who would fall under his sway (he wasn’t particularly good-looking, but he was magnetic, with a gravelly singing voice & musical talent pouring off of him that the girls, our classmates, found irresistible.  he was not a crush of mine & i would look at him in the rear-view mirror with his arm around someone & he always seemed so happy then.  that particular happiness eluded me, but i never begrudged him his.)

 

wurzburg (ghost of christmas past)

wurzburg, germany, christmas 1954.  i am nearly two years old & it appears that i am the new year being ushered in or the steam heat in the apartment is out of control & everyone else not pictured is in their underwear too (my preferred version.)   what strikes me about this photo is how much of my character is on display; the tilt of the head, the smile (pasted on for the camera, had i been screaming just before the bulb went off, we’ll never know); the provocative dishabille, the hand on the chest’s handle as if i might fall off at any moment or like the pony of my dreams it might gallop away with me astride.

& the tree off the floor, as if i were a pet that needed minding (not a cat, though, a table a cat’s domain as much as the floor,) you know it’s partly that & partly to make it fill the space & look like a proper tree & not as if it were the top lopped off a taller, more graciously proportioned one.  if you’ve ever been to our home for the holidays (when we were still decorating a tree,) it’s possible that you may have seen many of the ornaments that are adorning this pagan fetish.  my mother carefully wrapped each glass bauble & sparkle & the birds with the horse hair feather tails in toilet paper (a ritual that has endured for as long as i can remember.)

what i wish i could retrieve (besides the parsing of the image) are the actual memories of this time (or at least i think i would like that, it’s hard to say whether or not i would be prepared or willing to relive those times were it possible to dredge them up from the sandy bottom of my temporal lobe.)  what would i learn?  it appears that i was loved & taken care of (please note the perfectly parted hair); i am not underfed, my eyes sparkle with the glint of the tinsel on the tree, but those are all outward signs of love & are now the only clues i have left to the actual events that passed for life in post-war germany for american soldiers & their families.

but here in this photo we are in the mid-point of my parent’s marriage; is it the apex or the nadir?   will there be moments, such as this one, where the love between them glimmers with the spirit of their first love/lust?  my mother was 10 years older than my father & they both made a decision to bring me into their family (a rescue, if ever there were one — how thankful i still am these many years later.)  that was a gift, was it not?  an irrevocable gift, wrapped in love, tied off with the bow of family (however imperfect or small) tightly knotted at the top.

11th st. (ghost of christmas past)

from that window, one dark night my mother let me lean out with a black piece of paper to catch the largest snowflakes i had ever seen.  the room was painted yellow (buttery & warm) in stark contrast to the night & the snowfall.  i remember her hand clutching the waistband of my pants so i could stretch out far enough to capture those beautiful crystals & she would pull me back in & we would quickly look at them with a magnifying glass before they melted, in awe of their intricate, fleeting beauty.

but the photo:  our first christmas in rapid city, my mother & hers parenthetically embracing me, in a second floor apartment carved out of a large house on 11th street (mrs. ruggles, the elderly owner lived downstairs & would ‘babysit’ me when i got home from school, which meant i politely knocked on her door to let her know i was home & she would say, “go on upstairs now,” & that would be that.)  i loved my boy toys (trucks, bow & arrows, western wear with pearl snaps on the pockets,) but this is also the home where i learned “sticks & stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” from my mother after coming home in tears from being teased by the neighborhood boys for being a sissy.

it may have been about this time that i made up mind that it didn’t matter what other people thought about me, or it may have been that i knew who i was & that there wasn’t going to be any looking back, no navel-gazing, no introspection; it was just being (a snowflake) that was important.  kids are adaptable & i think i found a niche & worked it into the fabric of who i was so that at some point in time (by high school, maybe, i don’t think it happened overnight) no one cared to bother me about it.

but still, i had a relatively happy childhood, i like to believe.   loved by the women in the family, smart enough to be respected by the men.  that knowledge has sufficed for me & now it provides just enough nostalgia to make this time of year glimmer & shine (albeit with just a touch of tarnish.)