Christmas on Crack (8 page)

“Good
day, Sir,” said Frosty.

The
man, whose name was Alan, beamed the biggest smile he had in years. Instantly,
he was transported back to those childhood Christmases and remembered how in-
between his dad beating him and putting out cigarettes on his arms, he would
escape into the magic of those television specials:
Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,
A
Garfield
Christmas
and his
favorite,
Frosty
the Snowman.

So
Alan offered Frosty the one thing he had.

“Hey
Frosty, wanna do some ice?”

Frosty
assumed, since he was a snowman, that “ice” must be something good for him. He
did not know what was being offered was methamphetamine.

Frosty
hit the pipe and the drug went straight to his head and heart. Euphoria
overtook him, he loved it! As it turns out, snowmen are quite addiction-prone.
Frosty was instantly addicted.

*
  
* *

Bing
Crosby stopped singing and the PA began to blast The Beach Boys’ rendition of
“Frosty the Snowman.” The sweet sixties pop had been specially remixed by the
Club’s DJ to include a booty-shaking, boot-stomping bass line.

The
bikers cheered louder, this was their favorite song for Frosty to dance to and
every set he did ended this way.

A
skinny and sickly looking biker climbed onto the stage and rushed at Frosty.
His lust making him forget proper club decorum.

From
the shadows, two obese bouncers moved with surprising agility grabbing the
biker. They lifted him up, one putting him in a headlock and the other grabbing
his legs. They carried him off the stage and through a door. The stage invader
would be found in the hospital the next morning. This was not the first time
the club had to aggressively enforce the no-touching rule. It was that kind of
club. The rest of the gang paid no mind, their beer-and- boner-goggles keeping
them enraptured with Frosty and his stage show.

*
  
* *

So
Frosty spent his days smoking and hanging in alleys with other bums and wastes of
life, and it was a happy time. Each day blended into the next in his drug haze
and Alan and Frosty became the best of friends.

But
one day the money ran out and Frosty and Alan found themselves with handguns
holding up a liquor store. The store clerk had a shotgun. The first shot took
Alan’s head clean off, splattering the snowman with blood and brains. But when
the clerk turned the gun on Frosty, the buckshot passed through Frosty’s torso
of snow with no ill effect.

Frosty
fired back and ran, leaving the clerk to bleed out. In a short time he was
caught. The red-stained snow made it an open and shut case.

On
his first day in federal prison, he was cornered by a group of Crips. They
mistook the blood stains in his snow for Frosty reppin’ the wrong colors. They
formed a circle around him and pushed him back and forth hurling insults. In
the jostle his hat got knocked off and Frosty immediately turned back into a
plain old snowman.

When
a guard finally put his hat back on, Frosty found himself covered in sticky,
white goo. After a trip to the med ward and a few meetings with the prison
counselor, Frosty understood what happened to him.

That was
how he learned to perform “snowjobs.”

He
used this peculiar talent to get through his time in prison. He was able to
trade snowjobs for protection, smokes, and when the prison served ice cream,
extra dessert. This gift to leave his body proved vital for the survival a
snowman who, for some unknown reason, aroused the lust of the biggest and
meanest inmates.

*
  
* *

Frosty
sat in his private freezer/dressing room. The club owner had been nice enough
to build a special room for Frosty to refreeze his snow after every dance.

Frosty
took a drag from a cigarette and placed it into the ashtray on his dresser. He
looked at his reflection in the mirror. The years had been hard on him; his
once pure white snow was now an ugly grey.

In
front of the mirror was his only personal possession, the corncob pipe he came
to life with. He thought of all he had been through and all he had smoked with
that pipe: meth, crack, marijuana, and on the rare occasion, tobacco.

There
was a knock at the door and Cinnamon poked her head in.

“You
got a private customer in booth three,” she said and shut the door.

Frosty
sighed and took a hit of ice from his corncob pipe.

He
stood up and left the room. The private booths were just down the hall, each
one labeled one through six. Frosty walked into number three.

* * *

Eventually
his sentence was up and Frosty’s debt to society was paid. But what was a
living snowman with no job skills and a criminal record to do?

He
found that his snowjob skill from prison had use on the outside as well. In no
time at all, Frosty was trading snowjobs for his precious ice.

One
day he was lying in an alley, the same alley where so many years ago he met
Alan, stoned out of his head when a fat greasy man walked by. The man stopped
when he saw the snowman. This man owned
Jezebel’s,
the city’s most notorious strip club.

He
had been looking for something new for the club, something to revive customer
interest and looking at the down on his luck snowman, he had an idea.

The
man helped Frosty to his feet.

“Hey
kid, I gotta business proposition for you.”

*
  
*
*

The
booth was small, barely enough room for the burly biker and the portly snowman.
The walls were lined with mirrors and a single bare light bulb hung from the
ceiling.

Over
the room’s private speakers,
Alvin
and the Chipmunks were singing.

And
the children say he could laugh and play just the same as you and me.

That
damn song. It didn’t matter what time of year or what month it was. His
customers always requested the same song. Sometimes different artists—The
Jackson 5, The Ronettes, Ella Fitzgerald, Cocteau Twins, Fiona Apple

—but
always the same damn song.

Frosty
wondered all the time about the song. Was there another snowman that came to
life before him? Was that one lucky to lead a happy life? Or was it really
about him? Everyone did call him “Frosty.”

The
biker stood up and approached Frosty. No matter how hard he tried, Frosty never
got used to this. He felt the heat of the lightbulb above his head. A tear ran
from his button eye but was indistinguishable from the just beginning to form
slush.

The
biker kissed Frosty softly on his lips of coal. Flecks of snow dotted his bushy
beard. He gently removed Frosty’s hat and unbuckled his pants, preparing for
his snowjob.
U

Kevin L. Donihe
is one of the originators
of the bizarro fiction genre. He was there in the beginning. He’s one of the
most intelligent human beings I’ve ever met, as well one of the most eccentric.
Whenever you’re around him you feel as if you’re hanging out with a younger
version of Hunter S. Thompson as portrayed by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing
in
Las Vegas
.
Although his books have yet to be among Eraserhead Press’s bestsellers, those
who have read his work always rate him as one of the best. From
House of Houses,
about a man who is so in love with
his house that he goes to house heaven to be with her after the great house
apocalypse tears them apart, to
Washer Mouth
, about a washing machine who becomes human in order to
meet his favorite soap opera star. There is no writer on the planet quite like
him.

In
this Christmas on Crack story, Donihe shows us the more tender side of Santa
Claus. It’s a very special down and out Miracle on

It was a few minutes past final
call when I first met Santa Claus. I’m a nice guy, you see. I often take
homeless men back with me to my apartment and let them sleep there for a day or
two, sometimes longer. It’s according to how I feel about them, and how they
make me feel.

On
the street, there was hardly any traffic. On the sidewalk: no pedestrians other
than me. My fellow drinkers, freshly expelled from the taproom, had all gotten
into their cars. They weren’t comfortable walking alone this late at night, but
I felt at home amongst broken buildings, broken people.

Once
the roar of engines faded, I turned my attention to the little things: the
sound of refuse blowing in alleyways, the pattern of lights in apartment
windows and concrete as it exuded steam from a recent rain. Beneath my feet,
pavement felt strangely soft and giving. Traffic lights up ahead jiggled or
looked like dancing smears.

Turning
a corner, I noticed something slumped against an alley wall. It looked like a
sack of garbage, ignored by the sanitation crew. I thought I knew what was
hiding under all that voluminous, dirty fabric, though. And I was right. I
regarded Santa. His overcoat encased him like an unzipped body bag, only
woolen. His beard was long, white and flowing. A streetlight made his face seem
the color of piss. He was old, too—one of the oldest homeless guys I’d seen
wandering these parts. I wondered how long he’d been living in alleys in
cardboard boxes, or defecating in weeds behind the old strip mall up the road. Santa
had a tart, almost gamy smell. Closer, I noted an all but empty bottle,
clutched in his bony right hand.

“Is
that whiskey?” I asked.

The
man nodded, but made no attempt at eye contact. He appeared to contemplate the
pavement. Maybe not even that.