Fuck Me, There's No Room At The Inn

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It has been mentioned to me, in some less than polite tones, that I've not been posting for much of this year. I've been directing most of my creative energies towards a novel, the first draft of which is nearly done. Also, I bled out much of my life essence working on a multi-city, period piece, sports movie and it took me some time to recover from the psychic beating.

That said, here is a childhood memory germane to the impending holiday.

My grandmother, the matriarch of our family, had always taken great care and pride in decorating the house and in making her favorite holiday a major occasion for all concerned. This included both a bevy of presents that defied all concepts of humility and a decoration regime that stretched to all corners of the house. Upon moving to Georgia in my eleventh year, my mother followed her own mother's example and set herself to a month of Yuletide hall-decking.

Sometime in the third week of decorating, with the holiday itself only a week or so off, Mum unpacked the nativity scene that normally adorned our living-room end table to discover that the hideous three inch plastic doll representing the baby Jesus had gotten lost in our cross-country move some ten months before. This was of no great significance; the doll, purloined from my aunt's childhood toybox, had no emotional or religious attachment. However, the loss of our family's stand-in for the newborn King of Kings did mean that I would be sent to the store with a mind to putting the Christ back in Christmas.

So I schlepped the mile and a half to the neighborhood Wal-Mart and had a go at the toy section, but nothing appropriate or within my five dollar allotment made itself apparent. Undaunted, I tried the rear corner of the store that housed the bulk fabric and sewing notions, products I don't believe big-box stores even carry these days.

While perusing this least-accessed portion of the store, poking around among the thimbles, seam rippers and bolts of felt, I was approached by a man that might have been Garth Brooks' stunt double. He was perhaps thirty-five, two heads taller than I, sporting a cowboy hat, a loudly striped shirt and a belt buckle the size of a turkey platter.

Unprompted, he informs me, using oddly flowery language that, were I to place a live chicken on my manhood and then decapitate it, the bird's death spasms cause a mind-blowing sensation that cannot be equaled by any other act of carnal deviance. And, he begins this bit of instruction with the heavily accented statement, "I got somethin' that's better than sheep."

He then smiled at me and asked what I was doing in the farthest and least traveled corner of the store.

"I'm looking for Jesus." I said nonchalantly.

"Oh," he replied as he turned and walked straight away.

There was a point to this story, but I've forgotten it. I told you I was worn out. Merry Fucking Xmas.