Jenny when you sing, your voice, it just breaks my heart
When she was a toddler my little sister would cry any time christmas music came on, she felt it was terribly sad. I remember running around the apartment laughing and making a big deal out of it but at the same time, deep down I knew what she meant.
I was pretending I wasn’t just as, if not more of a crybaby than she was.
Now I’m old, it’s thirty minutes past midnight and I’m sitting by the only source of light in the cafe, a sweet little orange lamp.
The music stays on 24/7, and since it’s the season, christmas music is on loop.
The read loveseat placed in front of the floor-ceiling windows right next to that lamp has long been my favorite haunt, but since the season started I can’t bear to spend my breaks there any more. It makes me feel far too wistful.
I’m acutely aware of the image I present and it’s very funny to me. Long, thin, and always adorned only in flowy black attire. Perpetually a static visage, stern, sometimes scorned. If I find it within me to spend any extended time outside my home, without fail I catch people staring. My latest companion and I counted about ten instances when we went out for steak last friday. Sometimes, when I feel like a bit of fun, I’ll very quickly catch and hold their glance, theres always a bit of a panicked reaction. It’s nothing short of hilarious that people perceive me to be so intimidating or intense when secretly, inside I’ve been counting down the days till christmas, positively filled with glee.
I love the holiday dearly, the atmosphere and anticipation are everything to me. The day itself however, is always always always a disappointing and maudlin affair.
My parents would go to work, my sister would be at a friend’s, and I’d be home alone. It’s terrible every time, and yet, once the 26th rolls around, I start counting down again, 364 more days to go!
It’s always been christmas without my family, but at least they were present in my life somewhat, this time that won’t be the case. I’ll be with someone who didn’t want to go home for christmas, families are difficult for all but a small handful of my peers it seems.
Christmas streams would often make me feel better over the last four years since I got online. They’re always now a more than bittersweet event since Desmond’s passing. It was his christmas stream that got me through the worst one, and every one I do, I remember him and inevitably cry about it on stream.
I really wish that one day I could have a christmas surrounded by family and friends and it wouldn’t have even a hint of sadness to it. I don’t know though.
Yknow there’s this thing that happens yeah? I really love cooking for people. Family, friends, strangers, whoever.
When we’re all sitting at the table and I’m watching them eat, complimenting my choice of spices and asking me where I got this recipe from, I’m elated sure, but there’s also this…. othering. It’s not the same, there is definitely a unique reward to watching people enjoy the fruits of your labor, yes absolutely. That does mean however, you don’t get to enjoy it the same way with them, to be relaxing and having fun and have food presented to you.
Their eyes didn’t sting when cutting onions, they didn’t learn about tiny imperceptible injuries found only through lemon juice seeping into them, their feet and waists weren’t aching,so on, so forth.
It’s fine it’s really fine it’s just that, the enjoyment isn’t the same, it doesn’t come with that cost yknow?
Anyway, I probably won’t be doing much cooking this year unless she wants something. We’ll probably be in bed all day, watching cartoons, eating, fucking, sleeping, wistfully recounting stories about all the ways our families scarred us. So on, so forth.
Come the 26th, I’ll start counting again. I already can’t wait till next year.
When I said that to Jenny all those years ago, she went “oh my gggod!”
hahahah
Man, I miss this nigga like you wouldn’t believe.
