Jeff's Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire the commune's Omar Bricks is paid a visit by the Ghost of Christmas Past
Monday, Dec. 24, 2001
Lately it seems like every-damned-body has been asking me what I’ll be doing for
Christmas, as if I’m going to say that I’ll be attending a Roman Orgy and then
invite them along, or that I’m going to slip up and say that I’m taking my
doped-up sex zombie out of the closet to beat him with a big rubber tit or
something. Then they can act all offended and then say they’re not surprised
and knew what I was up to all along. I know their game, the bastards. I don’t
know what gets
into people around the holidays, you’d think the eminent threat of an Amtrak
train slamming through their living room while they’re right in the middle of
watching “Furby Christmas Feast” would be plenty of excitement for them, but
you’d be surprised. Most still have interest left over to get all up in my shit
on a regular basis.
So before I start catching any nosy pricks going through my desk drawers
looking for a turkey baster full of heroin, I’m going to set the record
straight: I plan on spending this Christmas holed up at the Bricks estate, wrapped
around a jug of Mike’s Hard Eggnog and watching the Benny Hill marathon with
my trusty basset hound, Foghat. And before you start ripping on Benny Hill,
know that Foghat doesn’t take kindly to such thick-headed slander, and the
last fool to attempt such a breech of etiquette discovered later that the
“Gravy Train” had made an unscheduled stop in his
pennyloafers that night, if you follow my colloquial English here.
Now, I’m sure that the few of you who aren’t asking yourselves why you don’t
own such a top-drawer canine are just itching your britches to ask why I’m
spending the holidays alone this year, why I’m not nestled in the heart and
hearth of friends and family and all that Hallmark shit. Well, the truth of
the matter is that I’m still recovering from last year’s Christmas debacle,
when I spent the holidays with my friend Jeff who was visiting from Tampa and
it damn-near turned me into a Buddhist, or some kind of non-Christmasing
religious pain in the ass anyway.
Jeff and I go way back, we met during a spontaneous after-bar barfing contest
back in college. We became fast friends after Jeff heaved one on a Hell’s Angel
and we had to dive into the back of a taxi to get away. It turned out that it
wasn’t even a taxi, just some dude with a yellow car, and I was in the middle
of calming the guy down and explaining the situation when Jeff bjorked on that
guy, too, and we had to jump out of the car in the middle of the expressway.
Man, those were the days.
After college Jeff moved to Tampa to start a Ponzi scheme and I didn’t hear
from him for I don't know how many years. Though I was pretty sure I saw him
in a security
camera clip on “Bonehead TV”, taking a digger on the wet tile coming out of a
bathroom stall in Miami. Then, out of nowhere he calls me up last December and
says we should get together and do something for the holidays. The next thing
I knew he was on a plane.
Now, just for old time’s sake, I played a little joke on Jeff and sent a bunch
of guys
dressed up like Klansman to pick him up at the airport. Bad idea. I don’t know
if he’d already paid for an airport shuttle or what, but he was in a seriously
bitchy mood when he got to my house. There was a quick remedy for that at the
bottom of a case of Safeway’s cheapest beer though, and before long we were
having a Christmas Eve for the ages.
In no time at all the hard liquor was out, Benny Hill was on the television and
there was a roaring fire in the fireplace. We were all drunker than a couple of
southern cops on a Saturday night, except for Foghat, who was lost in a world of
Benny Hill’s slapstick antics.
At some point in the night I asked Jeff what he’d been up to. I mentioned that
whenever I’d asked around about him, I’d heard alternately that he was married
to an entire tribe down in Peru or Ecuador or some shit, that he’d taken over
the role of Birdie in the McDonaldland commercials, and that he was a
door-to-door breast pump salesman in the Midwest. In response, he just stood
up, dropped his pants and cut loose with a torrential stream of urine into the
fireplace. I’m not sure quite what this meant, probably that they were all
true, but before I got a chance to ask for clarification the flames leapt up
Jeff’s pee-stream and he flew about half-way across the room, screaming like
a gopher running from a riding mower. Now opinions may differ on the subject,
but I thought it was about the funniest thing that had ever happened in the
Bricks living room, but then again it wasn’t my Ballpark Frank that was getting
plumped.
Before I could think to offer him an icepack or something, or even stop laughing
myself, Jeff bolted out the door and into the wintry night, half-naked and still
smoking. And I'll be damned if I ever saw that crazy fucker again. I doubt that
anyone in my neighborhood will forget that night any time soon. Some say that on
certain dark and quiet winter nights, you can still hear his woman-like shriek in
the wind.
Personally, I’m
getting low on old friends to blow up, so this Christmas Eve it’ll just be me
and Foghat basking in the warm glow of the television, turned up just loud
enough to drown out the shrieking of the wind. Bricks out.
Milestones
the commune's scratch 'n sniff look at last year's office potluck
Opportunities
Pants a Capitalist
Free Virus Baggies
Take a Kitten, Please
the commune book selections
the commune's Bear in Rearview
the commune's Big Book of Duke
Faces of the commune
the commune 100: Leaders and Revolutionaries
the commune 100: Traitors and Noodledicks
FAQ Shwartz |
Site Map's Somewhere in the Glovebox |
Search In Vain |
Contract Ick
Privacy Police |
Terms of Gary Busey |
Reprints & Persimmons |
Press Eject Now
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