Nurse the Hate: Hate The Christmas Party

 

I woke up this morning with the disorientation that can only come from an odd dream.  In this one I had scabs all over my face from a series of what were possibly shaving accidents.  In the dream, I was almost unrecognizable in the mirror as I stared at the old bandages, browning at the edges that covered my face and neck.  Scabs revealed themselves past the shabby bandages, dry and crusting.  I woke up running my hands over my head, searching for these horrible wounds.  It’s really no way to wake up…  I have no idea what this dream means, if anything.   

Freud would try to connect some sort of sexual dysfunction or problems with my relationship with my mother.  Humanistic psychologists would suggest my subconscious has told me about healing that is occurring yet not completed.  Maybe it means I shouldn’t eat so soon before sleeping.  If I told a relative stranger about this, they would shift uncomfortably in their seats with darting eyes laughing “hehehehe…” hoping I would just stop talking.  I know what it is though.

That dream is directly related to my fear of attending the increasing number of holiday parties currently on my docket.  I may break out in hives if I continue to dwell on the small talk I will be forced to make standing around buffet tables of cheese cubes and room temperature chicken wings.  If I hear someone else ask “Almost ready for the holidays?” I could respond in swift violence that shocks and awes the person asking me the question.  “Almost finished up with your holiday shopping?”  Seriously.  Shut the fuck up.  If you don’t have anything of actual content to say, let’s just stare at each other and nurse our lukewarm light beers.  It’s for the best. 

The great holiday party of the past where all decorum and social niceties are forgotten in the name of debauchery and pleasing the id are long gone.  While that is probably for the best, it has also made these events much less interesting and much more predictable.  One of my favorite company parties included such events as the General Manager of the radio station singing “Fortunate Son” poorly at karaoke before retiring to his room so intoxicated that he shit himself like a barnyard animal.  At that same party a fellow employee brought an actual “escort” as his escort who as I recall discreetly offered to blow various male employees in the cloakroom for $40 per.  I was reprimanded at this event by hotel staff for trying to throw the furniture out of the window of a guest room after I was told “I was too chickenshit to do that”.  Now, that was a party.

Society has changed.  People get too nervous now to be around anyone that just doesn’t care about The Social Contract.  As much as I would l like to unburden myself and totally embrace a brave new world of limitless chaos, I do have a healthy fear about being shuttled off to a re-education camp in the hinterlands.  Even voicing the opinion that the Christmas cookies on the plastic serving platter totally blow puts you at risk.  Happy Holidays.  Make yourself a sandwich from the congealing cold cuts placed like crime scene evidence onto the wilting lettuce.  Look at the sad little cardboard Santa as you sip your diet cola from your red plastic cup.  Listen to the poor quality sound system wash Mariah Carey Xmas carols over you like a blanket of sorrow.   

Throwing that red plastic cup across the room and screaming “Fuck this!” while upending the deli tray will only result in you ending up in a professional office of some kind with a specialist that has been brought in to handle behavioral problems like yourself.  You will be asked uncomfortable questions as this specialist fails to make eye contact and scribbles notes on a clipboard.  In the end, you will be placed in the back of a nondescript domestic sedan and driven to a facility you have passed a hundred times before but never really noticed.  You will be there “voluntarily”, though if you attempt to leave a group of powerful men in white scrubs will guide you back to your room with the self locking door.  “It’s for the best.  We agreed to this.  You agreed to this.”  

You will participate in “group therapy” in a windowless room with the dull hum of fluorescent lighting, your brain unable to fire quickly thanks to the psychotropic drugs that are ground up into your meager food allocation.  People with dead eyes drift through the halls, humming tuneless songs to themselves.  Eventually you will ‘graduate” from the program and be allowed to return to society with a tracking device implanted under your skin.  Despite how much you scratch, you can never seem to reveal the microchip, yet you can feel it just out of reach.  You sit in your house, watching television, unable to quite remember the events that happened only minutes ago.  Unable to sleep, you become comforted only by the constant drone of infomercials and their promise of a better tomorrow as they flicker in your dark bedroom. 

Or you can go to the party and just say “Almost done with the shopping!  Boy, the mall was crazy!”. 

Merry Christmas.  J