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"Holiday"
from Toilet
Thomas Woolley
HALLOWEEN
1978
I want the biggest pumpkin I can find at the pumpkin patch. I want to spend the day running through the fields. Seeing the faces in my mind that I will eventually cut into the pumpkin. Mom is wearing a sweater and some funny rubber boots. She has a hat on her head made from green wool that looks beautiful with her red hair. Dad has some of those rubber boots on too, though they are black, not yellow like Mom's. His brown bell-bottom cords, worn smooth on the thigh, are tucked into the tops of his boots. When he smiles I can see his black tooth, though I don't think it is gross. I just think it is Dad. Anne, my sister, is heavy. She has to take steroids for asthma. After we get home the whole family goes to the kitchen to carve and clean out the innards. Sometimes we put one of the jack-o'-lanterns on the porch on top of a big stool and drape a long coat around it and put some shoes beneath the coat with the tips sticking out so it looks like a person sitting there! I am going trick-or-treating as a pirate and Anne is going as a flapper.
1984
I was going to go trick-or-treating with Wendall and some other guys that are in my class. We figured this was the last time we could go out since we'll be in the 7th grade next year. We talked a lot about how much candy we want to get and how, if we couldn't get as much as we wanted, then we would hide in the bushes by Wendall's house and steal some from other kids. Probably I am not going now, though, because when Wendall started calling me a fag at school everyone started calling me it. Jeannie asked me if John Travolta was my boyfriend and I didn't even know what to say. Wendall was the one who wanted to fool around. He told me he wanted to show me what his brothers did to each other and he showed me how to suck his dick and he tried to put his dick in my butt. So he told everyone that I tried to rape him, which is not how it was, but they all believed him anyway.
1995
I wanted to get that red kind of heroin, Red Devil, or whatever it is called. The kind that all the rock stars are overdosing on. But I don't know where to get it. I am not a rock star. And even if I were, I probably wouldn't go out tonight. Halloween belongs to the borough kids. There is something, a horror movie, on TV. I like the aggressive poltergeist-y ones best. Where the spirits take over a family or destroy a house and no one knows what is going on, just that everything got ruined. I have some regular white heroin anyway.
THANKSGIVING
1978
I think Bob and Betsey are coming over. We call them cousins though they really aren't blood relatives. We have just known them a long time. Betsey always makes the best desserts. I think she is a real chef. Once she was an archaeologist but she wasn't able to dig up anything good so she quit. Bob is a foot doctor. I don't like to shake his hand. I know later that I will be able to drink some Cold Duck though it will have a little bit of water mixed in. My mom says in Italy all the kids get to drink wine 'cause that is their culture. Some of my most favorite foods are being made by Mom. Brussels sprouts with chestnuts mixed in. Baby carrots with brown sugar mixed in, then a huge turkey. Is this the holiday they play The Wizard of Oz or is that Easter? I don't even think there are any Charlie Browns for Thanksgiving, but pretty soon that one about the really small, sad Christmas tree will be on. I like that one 'cause even sad trees get some love and that is a good story.
1984
Mom is quiet today; she is quiet a lot. Since she said she is going to run away and never come back, she doesn't talk much. I see her reading the Bible. When I tell her about something that is bothering me, she quotes from it. She isn't really cooking food for tonight, but there is a turkey in the oven. We all sit around and are quiet until is it ready. I guess it is just turkey tonight and nothing else, which is okay. Then Mom goes to pull the turkey out. It slips from her hands and falls onto the floor. It splits open at the breast. There is a greasy pool underneath it that is spreading slowly. Mom takes the pot holders off her hands, puts them down on the stove, and walks into the den. She sits down and starts to read the Bible. We all, my sister and me, just look at the turkey on the floor and then sort of walk out of the kitchen. Anne leaves the house and I go to my bedroom.
1995
This girl I went to school with works in a Chinese restaurant. Even though we have never hung out, sometimes she will steal a bag of fortune cookies for me. She knows I am broke a lot and they fill me up for free. I have some peanut butter to smear on the fortune cookies. When I call my mom to wish her a happy Thanksgiving, I call late. I crunch a peanutty fortune cookie into the phone and tell her it is leftover pecan pie one of my friends made me to take home after a really great dinner. She believes it. It makes her happy to believe things are good, or maybe too sad to catch me in a lie. They still haven't made a Charlie Brown for Thanksgiving.
CHRISTMAS
1978
Mom and Dad and Anne and me are going to go to a tree farm today and get the perfect tree. I always say I want one that is at least eleven feet tall. I know it won't fit in the house, but if I say I want a smaller one then I bet we wouldn't even get a six-foot tree. When we get to the tree farm, there is a horse ride on a flatbed that has hay all over it. You can look for good trees from the back of it while you are pulled through the woods, though really you have to go way inside the woods to find the special one meant just for you.
1984
Mom put a small tree in a pot on top of a table in the den. There are some ornaments on it but no lights. It is hard to string lights and I think Mom is too tired to go through that. I haven't told her what I want for Christmas this year 'cause probably, like the last few years, there isn't going to be anything. Not even something I don't want. My sister, Anne, might get me something. She buys me and her shampoo and soap and toilet paper when we need it. She is working at a restaurant now. My mom had to sign something to make it okay for her to work because she's fourteen, and I think you have to be sixteen to really work. I guess she likes the job. Sometimes I visit her there and she lets me eat anything I want. Sometimes she brings food home because Mom can forget to buy any. Anne might buy me some underwear, which is what I really want. It is hard to go to gym class and have to change with all those guys and not have any good underwear. I'm not going to ask her though, because at Christmas you are supposed to get what you really want just by wanting it extra hard. That is the magic of Christmas.
1995
I have been playing the Carpenters' Christmas tape all morning. Karen Carpenter has a voice like an angel. Sometimes I think I would like to spend Christmas with someone, but it is easier not to. I finish the bottle of Frangelico liqueur a tenant who lives in one of the buildings I super gave me. I don't think liquor stores are open on Christmas. I am going to go to bed. It's still early but it gets dark early now. Very dark.
Thomas Woolley currently works in Manhattan at a national magazine in the marketing department where he is afforded the opportunity to create a lot of material dotted with excessive exclamation points. He lives in the much-maligned state of New Jersey with his lover and a cat so ferocious it had to be declawed.
Read more about Thomas Woolley's Toilet.
"Holiday"
from Toilet
© 2005 Thomas Woolley
This work is under copyright protection and may not be
duplicated or reprinted without permission.
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