Tasteful Nudes: ...and Other Misguided Attempts at Personal Growth and Validation (17 page)

Despite all the therapy, the Zoloft, and even the leaf blower, it was still a long time before I felt like I was no longer at risk of changing my name to Sparkles and moving into a group home where I’d be required to wear pajamas, mittens, and a helmet at all times. Fortunately, I never really felt suicidal. Sure, there were plenty of days when being dead had its appeal, but when depression is at its worst, suicide, for many people (including me thankfully), just feels like it would take way too much time and energy. Getting yourself to change the channel on the television is hard enough. Who has time to go to the hardware store or CVS for death supplies? It’s just too much of a scheduling hassle.

Gradually, however, as promised by the medical community, I started to experience tiny windows of seminormalcy where I’d not only have renewed interest in things like ice hockey, girls, and heavy metal but, perhaps more important, restored hatred of things like jam bands, people who wear sweatpants on airplanes, and the unpredictable coming and going of the McRib.
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These windows got bigger and bigger over time, too. And while I would occasionally find myself seemingly back at batshit crazy square one, it didn’t take quite as long to start feeling better again. It was kind of like being the pilot of a shitty airplane—the ride never quite felt smooth, but as long as I kept the engine running it seemed like I might be able to keep the thing in the air awhile longer, even if it meant coughing from fumes the whole way. My outfits slowly began to improve, too.

I was also able to get my OCD under control in a few months and all these years later it seems to only really make itself known in the form of me checking to make sure I locked my apartment door a little more often than I would like. But it took a good five or six years before I felt like I really had much of a handle on any of that anxiety or depression bullshit. It still pays me a visit every once in a while, usually after a perfect storm of stress, travel, lack of sleep, and a few too many open bars knocks me on my ass just long enough for it to show up like that annoying relative all over again. And, as unwelcome as it is, at least it comes with the surprising side effect of making real life problems like death, restraining orders, or the advance I got to write this book not necessarily any less upsetting, but, by comparison, refreshing in their tangibility. Also, like most things in life, it doesn’t take long to find others familiar with experiencing an occasional case of the crazies. After all, Norman Bates was right: “We all go a little mad sometimes.” It’s nice to have someone you can call to talk you down from the proverbial or literal ledge and for you to be able to do the same for them.

“Hey, it’s Dave,” I’ll say over the phone to a similarly afflicted friend or relative.

“Hey, Dave. How’s it going?”

“Not too good. I think I caught herpes from the StairMaster yesterday.”

“Again?”

Despite what all those made-for-TV movies, sappy commercials, and other things that don’t skimp on having sad piano music in the background might tell you, I don’t think dealing with depression makes someone a “survivor.” There’s only two groups of people in the world deserving of that title and one of them is Beyoncé. People dealing with clinical depression don’t deserve any special treatment, either, at least not any more than someone with a bad case of the flu, chronic back pain, or even two broken hips and a third testicle. But they do deserve the same acknowledgment and insurance coverage that all those other people get, no questions asked. (Even the three testicle guy. You’d think he’d be bragging instead of complaining but whatever.)

What the person suffering from depression doesn’t deserve, however, is pity. Not now, not ever. Unless, of course, that pity ends up leading to sex, in which case I’m all for it. In fact, I’m sitting here right now and I feel absolutely worse than ever.

Northeastern Ohio Velvet

When I was a kid growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, my favorite thing about Christmas was Santa Claus, that mysterious and bearded old man who traveled the entire globe in a single evening, breaking into people’s homes in the middle of the night, eating whatever food might have been lying around, and leaving behind gifts of all shapes and sizes, some of which weren’t exactly what the recipient had asked for,
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but whatever. And despite his on-the-go lifestyle, Santa still found time to sit in a big armchair and pose for pictures for hours at a time at the department store down the street from my house. I could go there, sit on his lap, and tell him exactly what I wanted for Christmas each year until he pushed me off his lap and signaled for the next kid in line to come over.

I realize my affection for Santa Claus didn’t make me unique. Still, I was pretty sure I was the only kid who really “got” Santa Claus. Even so, as eventually happens to us all, one day I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t “real.” Rumors already had been percolating for a few months in the second grade when I happened upon my sister Libby in my parents’ bedroom. Libby was just three years older but for some reason was allowed unsupervised access to the Scotch tape and scissors, wrapping a gift I had very specifically asked Santa for that year. Libby seemed to have her mitts in just about everything, so it didn’t raise that much of a red flag with me at first. I just assumed Santa had farmed out some of his busy work locally and my sister, an overachiever, seemed as likely a candidate as any. (My mom did that sort of thing with Libby all the time. Why should Santa be any different?) Libby, however, gave me too much credit, and assumed the jig was up.

“Sorry, David,” she said while putting the finishing touches on wrapping up an Evel Knievel stunt cycle. “There’s no Santa Claus.”

She tried to soften the blow by telling me that what really mattered was the spirit of Christmas and also some of the Jesus stuff we learned in school. It was a lot to take in, but in the end I figured, whatever—I’d still get all the presents and sit on the lap of some guy dressed as Santa Claus once a year. Everything would be just fine.
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But regardless of whether or not Santa Claus was real, I eventually learned that there comes a day when some people think you’re “too old” to be sitting on Santa’s lap. (The reasons for which I struggle to comprehend even as I type this years later.) And it was at this point, I guess by the time I hit my twenties or so, that I realized if I still wanted to experience the magic of Santa Claus each holiday season, my only choice was to simply
become
Santa Claus. To let the student become the goddamn master.

And so I made that my goal. Unfortunately becoming Santa Claus wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Most of the guys playing Santa at the mall, for example, hold on to that job like it’s a pair of season tickets to the Yankees behind home plate. But my time finally came during the holiday season of 1996 when I was living in Cleveland. Some friends were organizing a Christmas fund-raiser for the local public theater and insisted that I come. That’s when a lightbulb turned on in my head.

“Sure, I’ll come to your party,” I told them, “but only if I can be Santa Claus.”

“We already have a Santa Claus,” they replied.

“I
said
I’ll come to your party, but
only
if I can be Santa Claus,” I repeated while staring straight ahead into the distance.

It was a bit harsh, maybe, but playing hardball paid off because, as fate would have it, my friends had just replaced the theater’s Santa suit and the old costume was still lying around somewhere. So they eventually gave in and suggested that I could wear the old Santa suit, and be more of a roving Santa, the kind that just gives people a quick Santa fix on their way to the bar or restroom, while the jerk in the new suit would sit and pose for pictures and stuff. It wasn’t exactly the Santa debut I had hoped for but I knew this was my shot, so I accepted.

“You won’t regret this,” I told them as I marched away.

I swung by the theater a few days before the party to pick up the costume. It didn’t take long to figure out why they had decided to replace it. It was an old, red velvet suit with white trim that was so soiled and matted you’d swear it had been ripped from a corpse, a World War II bunker, or both. There were innumerable holes in it—presumably caused by an attack of some sort—and the beard had turned a urine yellow, seemingly half from age and half from whatever Santa got up to on break. And the smell—it told a story, a story I never wanted to know. It could kill crops.

Despite its compromised state, the Santa suit instantly transformed me as soon as I tried it on. No longer was I just some guy from Cleveland named Dave who might still live with his parents. Instead I was this magical, jolly, glowing Santa Claus, the kind of Santa everyone would want to be around, the kind of Santa that lady had absolutely no good reason to yell at for changing his clothes in the parking lot.

The big fund-raiser was still a couple of days away but I had a few Christmas parties to swing by before then, so I figured it might not be a bad idea to take the Santa suit for a little test drive. And I was glad I did because here’s what I learned pretty much instantly: being Santa Claus is
awesome
. I felt dashing, bold, and really, really warm all over. As I got into my mom’s car with the suit on, I could only imagine the kind of electricity Santa, the actual Santa, must feel every time he hops into his sleigh, grabs those reins, and tells those reindeer to hit it. And don’t even get me started on what it’s like to watch a fellow driver slowly discover Saint Nick sitting there next to him at a stoplight. I’ve never gotten around to smoking crack, but I doubt it could be much better.

My first stop was the house party of my friend Pat’s brother. I parked my car out front and slowly walked up the driveway, bracing myself with each ice-crunching step for the awesomeness of what was about to happen.

“Merry Christmas, everybody!” I bellowed as I walked through the front door.

“Santa!” they all cheered.

Every man, woman, and child in the place lit up with excitement at the very sight of me and it felt great. Really, really great. It was like I was Superman, Big Bird, and Barbra Streisand all rolled into one—everyone wanted to be around me, pose for pictures with me, and even sit on my lap. The rush was incredible, like getting a prostate exam in the middle of a roller-coaster ride at a women’s prison—the kind of thrill you never see coming in a million, trillion years.

But there’s another side to this sparkly little coin. As electrifying as it was when Santa first hit the scene, I quickly learned that the unparalleled rapture and pandemonium begins to slowly fade after about five minutes. Next thing you know you’re just some creepy guy shuffling around the house in a skanky old velvet suit, like you just stepped off a bus from Atlantic City. No one wants to make eye contact with you, everyone starts keeping tabs on exactly how much you’ve had to drink and how much time you’ve spent in the bathroom, and you can pretty much forget about holding anyone’s baby. Even the dog lost interest once he realized the urine scent on Santa’s pants wasn’t fresh.

Of course, my only choice after that was to move on to the next party. And so I did. And when that euphoria died down, well, I just kept moving on, party after party, as many as it took, to get my fix once more. Sometimes I’d barely make it past the front door before jumping back into my car and disappearing into the night.

By the night of the big fund-raiser, both the Santa suit and I had put on a few extra miles, but I still pulled on the velvet and headed down to the theater with my new girlfriend.

“You must be pretty psyched to be rolling into the party with Santa Claus,” I said to her.

She was speechless. And who could blame her? I’m sure some of you ladies reading this right now can guess how pumped she must have been. Walking in with Santa is pretty much the best way to go to a Christmas party, like going to a planetarium with Stephen Hawking. She was one lucky gal.

Since I needed to focus on being Saint Nick, and also because I didn’t own a car, my girlfriend drove us to the theater. We parked on the street out front and headed inside, which was just plain explosive. The rush I had been experiencing in the week prior was nothing compared to the rush I felt walking into that theater. There were at least two hundred people in the place and—even though there was already another Santa Claus on the scene—people still seemed really psyched to see this Santa, the roving Santa, the one that could not and would not be confined to an armchair, the people’s Santa. It was like I was Elvis casually dropping by the Flamingo for a quick round of blackjack.

“It’s Santa!” everyone predictably screamed.

“You’re damn right it’s Santa,” I replied.

Adding to the excitement was the fact that with a few nights of being Kris Kringle already under my belt, I was pretty much a pro. I told all the kids I’d get them whatever they wanted and sometimes even stuff they had never even thought of before, I bought shots for the men, and I flirted with all the ladies in that mostly harmless, Saint Nick kind of way that no one can make a big deal about in court. I even brought a paper bag with the word “naughty” written on the side and filled with charcoal briquettes.

“Merry Christmas!” I’d say as I pressed a lump of coal into people’s hands. “Santa knows you’ve been baaaaad this year!”

Then I’d give them a sexy wink that suggested I knew exactly what sort of mischief they had been up to lately. Other than the annoyance of having to find some place to dispose of the charcoal, they seemed to love it. It was an awesome night and Kris Kringle—yup, that’s me—was on top of the world. It was like I was starring in my very own Christmas movie, one in which a lot of chicks totally wanted to make out with Father Christmas.

Unlike my previous outings, there didn’t seem to be an end to that Santa Claus high to which I’d so quickly become addicted. If one cluster of people tired of my antics, I’d just move through the crowd until I found a new group eager to receive the biggest thrill of their holiday season. But it all ground to a halt when my girlfriend informed me that some guy had made lewd comments to her. I can’t remember his exact words but it was something along the lines of how he enjoyed her appearance so much that it was having some sort of impact on the situation in his trousers. He also seemed to be under the impression that if my girlfriend were to have sex with him, his prowess would impress her so much that she would struggle to maintain any sort of physical relationship with me in the aftermath. There might have been some profanity in there as well. In short, he was being a major a-hole.