Fairytale of New York

Remember the feeling of going to bed on Christmas Eve? I suppose it wasn’t always so good for everyone. If was just another knife prick in a little kid’s life for you, I’m sorry. Seems like it should be a given for everyone until they reach like 10 or 11. It just seems like it should be this way. Giddy, excited and ultimately exhausted, drifting off into sleep on Christmas Eve. Counting off the minutes tangled in dreams of things that don’t hurt. Christmas Day was always my favorite day of the year, but the going to sleep the night before and popping into consciousness in sun-filled Christmas day bedroom light was the essence of it. Even during the Bad Times, nothing could really puncture that bubble. I loved running into my parent’s room to wake them up. As sleepy as they were, they’d get up and act excited. They’d get into the feel of it. They did it for me mostly. It was just the three of us. I guess they liked Christmas as well, but it all revolved around me.

I’d run down to see what was under the tree while my Mom put on coffee in one of those Sunbeam percolators. Was it Sunbeam? I remember it being white enamel with some sort of snowflake design hugging it around the bottom. Dad would ask me to bring in some wood to start a fire. I’d bolt out to do it. We all had our roles, and I loved fire; soon, the fireplace would have its once-a-year blaze of paper wafting up into the chimney, and the dogs would be running around inspecting all this unusual activity. They never remembered. It was a new experience for them every year as they sadly changed places and replaced each other. I can’t wait to see all of you in Heaven. You must be quite a herd by now.

              I loved all of it. I have for most of my life. I poke fun, tease and outright mock the simpletons who’d complain about hearing Christmas music in stores after Halloween.. pretending you hate something because you’re afraid they’ll kick you off the team for not hating something. Hate for real or love. You don’t play around with this stuff. It’s too important. Figure it out. Hate for real or love.

              There was a part of me, the last little pieces of the little kid in me who missed all those mornings and all the dogs throughout the years and just the coming together of the whole thing. This was the part of me that was still looking forward to coming home for Christmas after our first year and a half in LA. All of us were going home. Leslie and I and Marion and Lynn. The truth is that maybe Lynn stayed back with Nigel. That would have made sense. But maybe it was the whole lot of us. I think this was the first time we’d been home since we moved to LA and witnesed life get slowly so very unwieldy. It went wild mustang-like chaotic. Chaos wrapped in slow, steady despair. There was that part of me that was looking forward to Christmas at home, but the other, larger, smarter, more cynical part of me kept whispering, “this is gonna end in tears. just no chance of you pulling this off.” I looked down at my feet at the airport in some sort of resolved shame. How was this ever going to work?

              I told you about the Propaganda Christmas party, which featured me smoking crack for 3 hours in a ridiculously large men’s room in some old but beautiful LA theatre. Remember the guys in tuxes working for tips while people like me hid in stalls and got high? I always think of them. The stories they must have. The party was the night before this flight home. I have memories of being at the airport and navigating our way home to Bel Air, and I seem fine in these flickets of memory, these little flicking pages of a flip book. I just know that can’t be true. I can’t imagine having dope with me. I surely would have done it all the night before. I think I was a stumbling wreck, but I guess I pulled it together because I remember our parents, maybe just my parents or maybe just Leslie’s meeting us at the airport. They didn’t all collapse around me in heartbreak and shock. I must have been fairly human-like, but I distinctly remember feeling like a bug. Just some little creepy thing that might dart right underneath you if you took your eye off of me.

              We were edging closer to The Collapse.

Eventually, I wound up at home in my house, and Leslie and Marion were at theirs. My parents were so excited. They were so happy to see me again, and Jesus, here I am, knowing that I’d become a horrible thing they couldn’t even imagine. And this is not hyperbole. There were truly unprepared for what eventually came gushing out. Once my Mom found a joint in my bedroom and decided not to tell my Dad. Another time, my Dad found a pill in my room and decided not to tell my Mom. Both thought the other could handle it. And maybe they both told, but those things weren’t within a lightyear of where I was and had been for years. Long before dope, I was so fucked up, but I pulled it off by getting good grades and staying under the radar. Don’t ask for much. Play it cool. But this was a whole different animal. This was a volcano considering a flickering match. And to think of all I put myself through trying to keep being molested a secret. I was sure they’d hate me for that. But that was nothing compared to this. I chose this. I worked for this. This was all my doing. I had no older kid predator to blame. Now they’d find out about it all, and it was inevitable. We hung out a bit, standing around the kitchen, letting my Mom show me new things and changes here and there. They were both so truly happy to have me home. I certainly tried my best to keep it together. I was never sullen or in any way anything other than desperately trying to seem happy. I had a beer, but eventually, we all went to bed. I had a paycheck and asked my Dad if I could sign it over to him so I could go Christmas shopping the next day. He always had cash somewhere. “Sure. leave it out before work.” I went and laid down on the couch, which is where I slept every night since being molested. Dad never knew. Mom and I kept it from him until the end. It was exactly the right thing to do. As I lay on the couch flipping through channels to try and go to sleep, I heard my Dad walk back downstairs and come into the room. He just said, “It’s good to be home, huh, Buddy? love you, pal.”

              Fuck., Jesus Fucking Christ, I wanted to just cease. More than that, I just wanted him to have no recollection of me. It just killed me. What do you say to that? I know that his entire world is going to be completely turned upside down and all the good bits shaken out and into the Christmas paper ashes if we even got to that. “It is Dad. love you too.” He just smiled, paused for a moment and went back upstairs. I waited for a few minutes and listened, and when I was sure he was upstairs, I walked into the other room and opened the liquor cabinet. Do people even still have these? I just grabbed some bottle that seemed fuller than the others and just swigged it down.... Blot. It. All. Out.

I wonder what was on TV when I finally fell asleep. I wish I had a list of every show that was on at the very moment I fell asleep on that couch over all these years. Let’s say about 12 years, away at college and in LA for some of it, let’s say 7 years of nightly shows flickering as I fell asleep, too terrified to have anything like reflections, only titanic intrusive thoughts and looping rumination. I wonder what it was I fell asleep to that night. Maybe we can find some trauma-focused intervention in it all. Some shows must mask getting raped by an adult more than others.

              The plan was to go “Christmas shopping” in Towson the day before Christmas Eve with my friend Jack. Towson was basically on the outskirts of Baltimore but not quite the city. Not really suburbs either. Jack lived there. You’ve met Jack. Jack was my friend who turned me onto pretty much everything I loved in high school. He was getting loaded by now too. Today, he’s at least 15, maybe 20 years passed away. His family kept it a secret. No one knows how he died. But he was ready to go that day. He was ready to go on that day before Christmas Eve day as well. I drove my Dad’s corvette into the city to get Jack. Dad always had some sort of crazy fast sportscar deal. Ever since I was little. He loved them. I think he got a kick out of me driving it into the city to hang with Jack. Dad was very much into having a good time if at all possible. He was super organized and almost militaristic with his finances, but he loved people, and they sure did love him. When he passed away, and I set up the funeral service and Irish wake/party that I knew he’d want, the church was completely unprepared for how many people showed up. It was like everyone in the town I grew up in loved Jim Coulter. It wasn’t just ”like that”; it was fucking true. My Dad was a Godamned good man. There was just nothing I could do that ever stopped him from loving me. He sure got handed a weird deal when I came along. I always knew he loved me. I still know it. He’s standing right behind me, rubbing my hair and telling me he loves me as I cry onto this shitty keyboard. “Get a new one,” he says. “Just get one. charge it to my card.”

              The rest of the day is just filmstrip style. All of the moments are single frames. Flick! I’m at Jack’s front door. Click. I’m sitting on his bed, excited. The machine moves a step forward. We’re in some parking lot. Flick. We buy cigarettes. Advance! We’re in the city, the ghetto, The Wire corners. Jack has some connections. Next frame, I’m back on his bed with a syringe registering from my arm. The socket turns the film and stops as I’m almost home, realizing there are zero Christmas presents to show for my day. It hadn’t even occurred to me to pretend. Not to buy the simplest, most thoughtless gift. All I thought of was getting high. Try to imagine being that utterly selfish. The cogs turn. I’ve pulled the corvette into the garage. My eyes look down as I watch my hands push dope and an outfit into my socks. The filmstrip ends with me looking up and seeing that the door to the house is open and my Dad is standing there.

              There are moments in life that are so are singularly awful that they defy description. I look at him with a veneer of guilt and fright, covering my face as he’s looking at me with disbelief and rage. We’re locked in time and space together. I make the first move and open the car door. I get out empty-handed. “Where have you been?” he asks to which I mumble an ineffectual, “with Jack.” “Come inside” he says. He looks away and closes the door behind him. It’s as if he’s giving me one last chance to evaporate, to disintegrate into the cold Christmas air. But I can’t do it. I surely would have if it was possible, but I’m stuck here in this thing in the shape of me. This is it. It’s all out in the air, and so I stumble, still high, into the family room. My Mom is sitting on the edge of a chair, just praying there’s some mistake, “So what did you do today? Where were you?” I want to know what he knows, and he simply says, “Leslie told us everything. Do you have any idea what you’ve done to her?”

              I’ve never been one to get defensive or resort to denial. It’s not a noble thing. It’s just how I’m wired, and it always struck me as so incredibly pointless. I didn’t say anything. I just stood there looking down at the floor with the dogs, happy to see me. I remember the feeling, though. Just the feeling you get when you know that you’ve just destroyed or, at best, injected grapefruit-sized tumors of pain into the very two people you’ve been trying your whole life not to let down. Surely I’d let them down in the past, but nothing on this level and nothing so sudden and unimaginable. At some point earlier in the evening, they were at home, happy I was back with them and looking forward to Christmas. And then the phone rings, and it’s Leslie and everything changes in a flash.

I never really knew how Leslie explained what was going on but I never for a moment had anything but respect for what she did. Jesus, the balls to do what she did. And sure, she’d had it and wanted an out for herself as well but to tell my parents directly what had happened to me could not have been anything anyone would confuse with easy. At some point, my Dad asked if I had any more drugs left. He was furious. And I did what we do. I lied and said no. I told him I just had a needle, and before he could say anything else, I told him I’ll throw it away, and I walked into the garage and threw it into one of the garbage cans. I had to be out of sight in order to get it out of my sock without them seeing the dope. God works in mysterious ways, and he allowed this to happen. They didn’t follow me out. It was actually worse. Even now, they trusted me to just throw it out as if it would forever be unusable, having lied atop some trash in a cold garage. I think I had maybe two bags left. Maybe one.

              I don’t remember much of what we talked about or, more to the point, what they said to me, but I think it was decided to just all go to bed and deal with it in the morning. Christmas Eve. I remember sitting and wanting to sleep in this reclining chair perched in front of the TV. I never slept there, but I was still a little high, and it felt good. I was also obsessed with the dope I still had in my sock and the outfit lying in the garage. I so wanted to just do it all and be done with it. No point in saving it for tomorrow. But I also knew that to be caught would be just too much. So, I just laid there and waited and sorta nodded a little. I must have at least snorted it and very well may have waited until they went to sleep and snuck out and got the outfit. I have a vague memory of cooking up a shot while everything was hidden behind a picture on the mantlepiece of the fireplace. I’d do one little operation at a time, then go back and wait in the chair to see he anyone was coming. Eventually, it was ready, and I think I just muscled it. That is, I just pushed it into my arm in the muscle. I doubt I’d had the patience to try and find a vein. Who knows? I just know that by Christmas eve morning, there was nothing left but a very unhappy little family in Bel Air, Maryland.

              The next day started a whole new life. Some of it was good, and so much of it dragged on through decades of just futile attempts at trying to not do just one thing. Just one fucking thing. One thing can be really hard to cast aside. Christmas Eve that year was a leather blanket wrapped tightly around a suffocating man. People mean well. They love you. But they just have no idea what there’s up against.

              In a way, Christmas came early that year.