So this weekend was a new first. You probably won't believe me, but I bought my first Christmas tree. Of course, we had a tree every year growing up, I wasn't raised by wolves. But my entire adult life has found me tree-less until now. I was trying to explain how that happened to someone who couldn't understand why. The truth is, I'm really not sure. I remember many years, as I considered getting one, I was usually working in a bar or club. Restaurant/bar people don't usually get holidays off. Christmas night in most bars can be a pretty busy night. Christmas Eve is a pretty big night in a lot of gay bars. There are all kinds of reasons why this is so. So many times I didn't want to get a tree, as I preferred to treat the day as much like any other as possible. I felt it lessened the sadness at not being with my family and having to work. I missed so many holidays.
Some years, I would take charge of decorating the club or bar I was working at for the holidays. So I wasn't always interested in doing it at home.
Some years, I was being all militant and gay and anti-commercialism and some such granola nonsense. Like Wal-Mart gives a fuck if I boycott Christmas.
Recently, sometime in the last five years, The Ex brought up getting a tree. I mumbled something that must have sounded like "if you feel like it". The result? I came home one night to find a little foot-and-a-half fiber optic piece of shrub in a cheap plastic pot. It must have cost all of $7.99 at Tacky R' Us. I think it slowly changed colors as it sat in it's crappy plastic pot by the TV. Humming almost imperceptibly and tormenting me. I despised it. And he never failed to put it out every Christmas. But I shouldn't have been surprised. This is a man who thought boiled meat was cooking. If The Ex hadn't taken it with him when he left, it would have been the first thing I ran out to the trash.
Some years I wouldn't decorate at all, other years I would put out Christmas candles and display all the cards that came in. But something changed this year. Certainly jettisoning the dead weight in my life is part of it. But it also has to do with me getting out of the bar business. And (side story) getting out of going out to the bars much at all. And getting my dog.
I'm getting older. I'm domesticating. Different things are starting to become more important to me. And I've been thinking a lot about home and family.
Which is how I ended up buying my first Christmas tree. It's artificial. And it's only 4 1/2 feet tall. And I bought three packages of ornaments. Nothing original. Red, blue, silver and purple. It's a work in progress. I can't decide whether to get garland or ribbon. My favorite part is that I put it in a place where if I open the apartment door, you look directly at it from the hallway and you can also see it from the sidewalk across the street. And I bought an electric three-candle light for the window in my bedroom. Just in case there are three well-hung wise men following a star.
Anyway, it's mine and I love it.
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