Eileen

Chrismakkuh, early morning

The sky through my picture window is gray and rolling, but this day still feels auspicious as hell, having gotten out of family obligations in Jersey. I’ve been sort of greedy for me-time this year, which comes with its own special kind of guilt, I suppose. Anyhow, I’ve finished my online school assignments, and so I reach gingerly for my copy of Dirt, an oral history by the bandmates of Motley Crue. The book is all-consuming, to say the least, and Christmas is mentioned no less than six times in its pages, often in the context of hot couples beefing by a hot tub on that sacred day. In fact, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the band, it’s that they love to beef: with models, moms, Axl Rose, producers, each other.. There’s every flavor of disgust and empathy and intrigue in reading about the members of this quasi-family that for the moment feel like an ample substitute for my own. As I read a passage wherein Nicki Sixx learns that his institutionalized mother kept an entire sister secret from him for decades, I mutter an “oh, yeah..” and scribble find therapist in new yr on an orange post-it.

I Did it All for the Cookie

I put down Dirt and polish off the rest of my cookies from baking the other day with Chris, Em and Angela. We piled into my turquoise-colored kitchen and listened to The B-52s, Altered Images, and Gerry Rafferty, whose hit “Right Down the Line” Em referred to as divorced dad rock. The cookies themselves came out kind of couture. Each one had its own look, its own name, even. I dubbed one all-black goth cookie “The Crow” (it was an ube flavored peanut butter cookie, haloed with a solid black icing circle and at its center, a schmear of sour cherry jam).

On this morning, I devoured my favorite cookie, “Bunnies Hopping Over Stones in a Garden” (which contained four cheddar bunnies sunk feet-first in a sugar cookie, and was off-set by green and yellow m&ms, the grass dribbled in pink food coloring - kinda Henry Darger-y) before Em and her dachshund puppy, Plum, stopped by for a visit.

Plum and my cat Meadow are absolute bros, and whenever they get together it’s like watching Looney Toons fight at the WWE - just a whirling blur for a body, with two teensy-fanged heads. I chat with Em who looks on cavalierly as Meadow puts Plum in a chokehold. Em is bona fide cool mom. Meadow hops over to bite my socked foot when they leave.

Demon dick-pilled at the movies

I take a chilly walk before meeting up with Chris to catch a bus to the Ritz Bourse. I pass the fake aquarium hotel on Spruce and the football fields, and a row of homes that always seem to have a pile of really gorgeous shoes for sale out front. Chris and I exchange hello’s and board the 21 bus. We are meeting Angela and Francis to see Nosferatu. I am sleepy from a weekend of inhaling cookies and dancing and reading about hot women and metal shows. I knew it was a stupid thought to have, but I almost felt some kind of demonic kinship to those Motley Crue boys. My own sense of fun of course lacking sadism, misogyny or speed, but these last few months in particular it seemed I’d lost virtually all interest in matters mundane, appointed, or prescribed. If it wasn’t fun I for sure wasn’t doing it.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie on Christmas Day. I think Leslie Nielsen’s Mr. Magoo was the last Christmas Day movie I’d seen. I’d forgotten how particularly electric a theater audience can feel on the holidays. Maybe it’s all that concentrated sugar and ham radiating out from the collective fingertips and follicles. Whatever it was, Nosferatu left no crumbs and was p hot. I can’t remember what my reaction to watching a sex scene in a crowded movie theater has been in the past (gosh, I may have actually bitten my lip at a showing of Salt on the Ocean City boardwalk in 2010!!!) but I think sex in movies will only ever be unfunny for the remainder. What we lost in the amount of 24-hour diners that serve the tri-state area, we have gained as a society in resorting to head-shaking, belly-clutching, “nuh-uh”ripples of laughter at staged missionary montages. I’m still thankful for Robert Eggers and his horny vision, because now I know I really enjoy laughing at bad sex in the company of friends (:.

Now What

I eat Tom’s Dim Sum and catch up with Chris and Francis after the movie. I feel a mental lag, as my body never feels quite caught up to the frenetic pace of the holidays, even when I’m just eating some eggplant over rice. This winter has been sweet but strange in its newness. Soon I am back home, and I sit at my desk, turning over paper mache fruit forms that I was working at the night before. They look like silly bloated bugs. Working on this stuff helps pull me away from self-serious brooding and the constant temptation to watch Gossip Girl instead. I go with Meadow to the kitchen and light the candles. Night time is our time, so I toss him over my shoulder like a sack of bread and slow-dance his ass to Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself”. Guess I’m the cool mom now.