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7 february 2002

single holidays

Hi, Denizens! Today, enjoy a special Life and Stuff by Will Wright. He's one of Winston-Salem's own: poet, writer...guy whose apartment must be a curious, curious place. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow. Cheers.

We wish you a merry humbug. We wish you a merry humbug – maybe I covered that in the first sentence.

Single men get labeled (unfairly) as Scrooge-like when it comes to the holidays. While it’s true that Ebenezer was a bachelor, it would be unreasonable to say that he was typical of our type.

First of all, Ebenezer hardly lived alone. He had four ghosts in residence, including his Rasta ex-business partner Jacob Bob Marli. Secondly, the man had servants and never once slept in an unmade bed or ate a bag of microwave popcorn for dinner. Finally, I can’t think of a third reason but who ever heard of a position without three points?

You might think that just because single men throw Christmas cards away unopened and snarl at shopping mall Santas, that we lack an appreciation for holiday spirit. What you fail to take into account is that we, the unwashed denizens of studio apartments, have legitimate holiday traditions of our own.

Now please remember that tolerance begins with appreciating the differences of others. Single men are rarely PC (at heart) but we have no qualms about invoking such tripe on others, so stuff that judgmental attitude where the sun don’t shine and enter the world of the Bachelor Winter Wonderland.

Deck the halls with dirty laundry. What? Surely, you’re not so close-minded as to insist on pretty lights, peppermint sticks and frosted Dollar Store figurines to make a home festive? A chair is just a chair, but a chair with blue jeans, jockey shorts and one odd sock is a festooned celebration of peace on earth and good will till laundry day.

I’ve always taken great comfort in that old favorite: God rest ye single gentlemen, and sleep through church this day. At night they light the candles, so wait for the display. To save us in that darkened hour so we can slip away, without bindings or promises of toil: promise of toil. Such as deacon-work, our holiday to spoil.

Of course there’s the twelve days of Christmas (in the sink). On the twelfth day of Christmas my scrub sink held for me: twelve spoons from coffee, eleven knives from toffee, ten forks spaghetti, nine pans Crocker Betty, eight cups a-soakin’, seven dishes broken, six things best-not-spoken, five drops of Joy (la – la – la), four tupper ware, three sauce pans, two really grungy pads and a crock pot I got from Aunt Marge.

Let’s pause a minute in the midst of our euphoric gaiety and salute the very reason our kind survives, sometimes for decades, past college graduation: the female relative. If it weren’t for Aunt Marge, Mom, Sis, Grandma, Niece and Soft-hearted-neighbor-lady-who-adopts-strays, your average bachelor would be eating wet sawdust on the floor before his twenty-eighth birthday. (I mention twenty-eight because that’s the year most women, quite correctly, recognize that the bachelor, so appealing in years past, has now spoiled liked a soft cantaloupe and will never be trainable as a proper husband.) These noble women (If you’re having trouble following this paragraph, just ignore all parenthetical asides) provide edible food and helpful laundry tips in sufficiently frequent intervals to keep bachelors from such feral acts as eating raw tuna-helper while peeing in the shower. (Only the ignored single man does both at the same time.) Their visits to the bachelor’s home insure that he will wash (or throw out) the dishes, do his laundry and hide debris regularly.

Back to traditions.

Oh Little mound of Doritos bags, how still I see thee lie. On my trash heap and way down deep in my laundry not yet dry. Yet with your sparkling presence, your green and red doth glow. When from my seat, I see none to eat; to the convenience store, I go. For Christmas, many single men turn to the hot Doritos. If the trashcan, like a merry heart, is overflowing, it just makes sense that bags should be green as well as red. It’s not that we want to eat Doritos actually, it’s that we know they are so nutritionally balanced. There’s nacho cheese (dairy), corn (grain) hot peppers (fruits and veggies) and the hydrogenated animal fat (distant cousin to protein).

Away in a futon, no room on his bed. The cherubic bachelor with dreams in his head. That Jesus and Santa will work side by side. And bring him an X-box and a Porsche-a to ride.”

Of course we know that Jesus was born a baby, ignorant of social customs and incapable of caring for his own needs. Sound like someone you know? Perhaps we, the full-sized infants known as single men expose our pathetic ineptitude during the holiday season as a public service.

Or maybe we’re just hoping that Scrooge’s ghosts will stop by and do the dishes.