Christmas or S'not

“I gave my best friend a Christmas gift, but she didn’t like it! She threw it on the floor, spat on it and kicked it away!”

“Tommy, please do your homework, now!”

“Stop it, Cow. Stop it!”

“Why won’t you come with me to the park? Please, please!”

“Just do it. Now, and now, and now and now!”

“No way are you going outside like that. Put real clothes on, please.”

“We’re stopping at several places. Put your foot down off the—”

“I said, ‘Make a mess, and you’ll be cleaning it up.’”

“Rip the sheet of paper in half, and then fold it, and then rip it in half again.”

“Why is that so hard for you to contemplate? Just make the brownies.”

“Brown is better with evergreen. Don’t you think?”

“Snow is better with the cold. Oh wait—”

“Wind is sometimes suffocating. When it’s rushing past you, and you have your mouth open.”

“Talking with your hand raised defeats the purpose of raising your hand. Either raise your hand or wait to be called on.”

“Mistletoe is a deadly poison. Eat it, and you’ll die.”

“Cookies are good, and cookies are better at the holidays.”

“My boots are missing! Where are they?”

“I looked everywhere for those earrings! Yes. I found them.”

“Did you call the dentist? I did.”

“Puppers the new puppy is whining in his cage. Let him out, and he can get a giant Christmas bow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Everywhere you look, you see a rainbow. Magnificent, right?”

“Cotton candy is sticky.”

“Glue is tacky.”

“Holding hands is a wonderful experience—for couples.”

“Pressure is never fun. Fun does not describe chores. Homework is hell.”

“Use alliteration—it’s like the biting cold wind to the world outside the way you have to say the same worded letter over and over.”

“Gregory, Ana and Matthew are all names.”

“Purple, yellow and ginger are all colors. Except ginger is also a spice.”

“Spice is nice, but so is—”

“Can we make sense here?”

“No—everyone’s enjoying—”

“No. I want to make sense. We’re—”

“Where are you from?”

The narrator stops and perceives the men and women all singing and dancing their way through life, because feelings govern their every decision. They don’t think—they just feel like saying things that might make sense, regardless of the randomness. Everyone’s deceived. No one knows the truth. That’s why I interrupted. But when I interrupted, I had to be quiet. Strange, right?

“Please—please, could I—”

“Sure, here’s a cookie! Yum, yum, right?”

“Sure—but—”

“No, please, here. It’s delicious.”

This is the part when I back out, throwing the cookie away. I hurl it across the room, it smacking and breaking against the burgundy wall of the high school cafeteria-turned-ballroom. I don’t hate musicals, but I don’t run by feelings. I’m outside of time. I’m outside of nonlogic idiosyncrasies. I don’t believe in just doing things because my feelings rule. But when I’m trying to tell someone something, they don’t listen!

“Please—”

“No! Come join us.”

“No!”

I walk away, hoping the ballroom guests with their azure masks and silver necklaces and burgundy and black suits and lime green silk gloves extending all the way to their elbows all fade away. I’m the one who knows what’s going on. I can’t get a word in edgewise. I wish I had someone to turn to—

Oh wait. I can’t, because I have no feelings. Feelings are for those without a logical sense of reality. So…

The narrator checked out of the ballroom, searching for someone who’d be his best friend. Everyone here had a lover and best friend. They were lucky. But the narrator? None. Until—

“So you don’t run by feelings?”

“No!”

The narrator scrambles to formulate a sentence coherent enough to—

“Wait. I thought it was a Christmas movie. But…they don’t wear Christmas colors.”

“They don’t…” The narrator gasped, just noticing this. The narrator shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever. They deserve it. They’re not Christmas folk.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then why do you want them to be led by their logical sense of reason instead of feelings?”

The narrator smiles and says, “I don’t know. I get carried away, you know?”

He embraced his long lost lover. She cocked her head. “Come on,” the narrator invited, sweeping an arm out to the ballroom with the other dancers. “Join me.”

“No.”

“Please?”

The narrator chased after her, but she disappeared in a whirl of white and pearl beads and dresses. Once he broke through the swirl of a whirling dance, he blinked, shoving his hands in his pockets. He sighed, and then he cried. He took up a sheet of paper, wrote a musical and then showed it to her. She ripped it up. He asked whether she was going by feelings—

“No!”

“Whatever.”

The narrator sat on the roof of a housetop apartment that night. He wrote his part of the musical, a song of love and loss. But he stopped halfway through. The musical slowly drifted to the floor. He went to bed, and insisted on sleeping on the couch. After yelling at his picture of his girlfriend and then grabbing it. A minute passed, and then he put it down.

He let it clatter on the nightstand table, and he went to bed, sighing. Morning came much too quickly. The narrator yawned loudly like a lion, went through his day silently like a mouse and huffed and slammed the front door and the kitchen door as loudly as it would allow.

“My girlfriend’s not here…”

He found himself singing. He slowly stopped. Ended the song with gritted teeth.

Girlfriend met him outside with a bright smile. “Honey!” She threw open her arms. “Join me!” She closed her eyes, the wind kissing her cheeks as she giggled and it tossing her blond curls.

He nodded.

The musical happened—and was better that that thing that had just happened. The narrator married his wife-to-be, singing and dancing away. Being with her was amazing. The narrator wrote and wrote, his heart lighter as he did so. He let her dance and sing in the musicals he had written. She deserved it.

He deserved his musicals.

The feelings came back. He stopped loving her. She stopped loving—

No feelings anymore, the narrator sequestered all feelings. When he failed at producing some, he threw them all away, burning them. He entered the fire, letting the fire consume him. At least he did this in his mind. Let all of me burn.

She ran to him and grabbed his arm, spinning him around. He made a complete circle, facing her. She begged him not to let the flames take him away. He said his musicals, after fifteen months of rejections, could melt in the fire for all he cared. She looked down, blinked.

“No.”

That night, they were together on the balcony. He went inside, she joining him and they went to bed on the couch. She said she was going in the other room. He nodded—stiffly. And smirked—

“I wrote this musical.”

The narrator threw an arm around his wife, her eyes glued to the screen, her hand absentmindedly giving her mouth popcorn. He shook her. “I wrote this!”

She nodded.

They divorced—

No.

Feelings have deceived me.

The narrator sat down, starting to write the musical of his life. No feelings required. No feelings allowed.

It became a hit, everyone turning to him as fame and wealth built. But the narrator was not satisfied until he—

Until he…

“Feelings are okay.”

His wife nodded, and put a hand on his shoulder. “We all feel. It’s who we are.”

He looked at her, and smiled, tapping his piece of paper. “Everyone loved it.”

“Good. Write another one.”

They wrote one together. The narrator and his wife.

Feelings were free-flowing. They didn’t consume, but they weren’t absent. All the narrator did was—

“Feelings are okay.” He kept reminding himself. Feelings are what go out. He stood before the fire, staring at the flames and then really looked at them. Feelings feed the fire. He wrote down all the bad feelings his wife and he had toward each other, burning them. Then they sat in front of it, her head on his shoulder, and his head on hers. Softly.

“Thanks.” She said.

The narrator didn’t respond. He got up, prepared S’mores ‘N More and they feasted on pancakes with chocolate chips and S’mores. Money and fame had grown, but so had feelings. Feelings were okay, but the narrator had sidestepped the irrational belief that feelings justified everything. Money and fame came first before the sweeping away of feelings. He embraced the ballroom’s desire to go by feelings. He didn’t chase them away anymore.

Money and fame clenched his heart. His wife came first, though. Any feeling of irrationality—

“Honey, I love you.”

“I love you, too!”

They were there by the fire, it late and then they got up and went outside, the night sky itself engulfing them in its realness. The narrator blinked, and it was real. No feelings dictated his actions. The wife lay her head on him, and they danced slowly. Together.

“Baby—this is my next musical. It’s out in a few days.”

The wife stopped dancing, and told him he wrote because he felt like it. He roared, the laughter permeating the railing walls and sliding glass door around him. “Goodnight, honey. Going to bed.”

She joined him, they feeling tired.

At least he did.

She didn’t, teasing him. He smirked.

She laughed this time, a hearty belly laugh.

“Goodnight!” He chastised.

“Goodnight.” She said, yawning, her eyelids falling closed over her eyes.

Goodnight! He wrote down after getting up, going around her and writing this piece of info down.

Goodnight feelings.

I’ve never felt so tired in my life.