A Christmas Tradition

December 26, 1985

We celebrated a traditional Christmas – traditional for us, if not the world, just like in the old days, a fellow might say, me, Hank, Pauly and Garrick, all in the same place at the same time, singing old dogs, drinking until we were drunk, smoking dope the way we did each Christmas Eve as long as we could remember, feeling the age old pain lonely men feel this time of year.

Only Hank seemed reasonably content, having met a new romantic interest last fall. The other three of the Four Musketeers ached with the same old pangs that drew us together in the past, bringing us to Frank and Dawn again for our reunion.

Although the location changed over the last decade, the mood never did, nor the atmosphere – and even when one or more could not stay the whole night, we all made our appearance if only as a gesture of the past, to maintain a tradition we are reluctant to surrender for fear we might not have it when we need it again in the future – when suddenly four years ago, it stopped.

One year, I recall, coming through a thick fog. One year I even deserted my girlfriend to be with this motley crew, deserting them a week later on New Years to be with her.

One year I met Frank’s mother, an elderly woman who startled the crap out of me when passing the joint, she asked for a hit.

This year felt as if nothing had changed, time preserving this night in eternity for us to linger in and recall, except that we all looked older if not acting it, and Frank’s daughter springing from childhood into young womanhood.

Thinking back over the last four years since our last gathering I realize how lost I felt, and hearing the old songs and feeling the old high dragged me back in time to a point where no matter how miserable I was on any other day of any other year, I found peace on Christmas Eve with these people.

Early on Christmas Eve Day I’d felt lost, without tradition after hearing other people talk about theirs, and then attending the event with the others and hearing Hank belt out songs we’d sung since 1971 or so, and having Pauly dominate the room with his satiric humor, I felt as if I’d come home again – We all go home for Christmas don’t we?

Hank had a more self-deprecating humor, mocking his past life and failed accomplishments, while Garrick still pined over that one lost romance from that one time when he lived inside a DH Laurence novel with a woman as acute as any of its characters.

Garrick makes up for his loneliness by going from place to place, seeing a host of people who populate the landscape of his life, but never really manages to escape the fundamental pain he feels – we all feel – this time of year, waiting as we all wait for some woman to jump into his life with both boots on.

I think I hurt him a little when I mumbled something about my interest Hank’s cousin, Mary Kay, a woman Garrick is apparently interested in as well. But waiting for Garrick to act is like waiting for the advance of a glazier. He flirts with commitment, but never commits.

I remember a string of Christmases past in which he occupied himself with a woman from Clifton, coming ever-so-close to getting her to bed, only to wait just long enough for her to eventually introduce him to her future husband. I remember when I was just like Garrick and so we can take comfort in each other’s misery, and the perverse contest of how long each of us could last without a woman’s attention.

Now as always, Garrick operates alone, and sometimes I feel sorry for him, when I am really feeling sorry for myself since – in breaking up with Anne – I’m right back to where he is, one more sad tradition that has nothing to do with Christmas.