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Digital Re-Release of Say Uncle

December 24, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

We are pleased to announce the digital re-release of the novel Say Uncle by Eric Shaw Quinn.

To purchase the novel for your Kindle, click HERE or for your Nook, click HERE.

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and would like to download the Kindle application please click HERE

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad and would like to download the Nook application please click HERE

Posted in Events, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Perfect Party – Part 4

December 23, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

People are especially considerate in traffic when you have a tree tied to your car, Rose observed.

She’d never had a tree, so she’d never had the experience.  It was a challenge.  The windows were open to accommodate the rope.  She was freezing.  She was afraid it was going to start raining.  She was afraid to drive too fast for fear the bloody thing would fly off the roof.  She imagined the updraft in the branches lifting the car off the road.  She saw herself flying.

She smiled as she sat at the stoplight.  She turned idly and found herself looking into the smiling face of the passenger in the car beside her.  It startled her.  The woman gave Rose a wink and a thumbs up.  Rose looked a bit confused, until the woman pointed at the tree on top of her car.

“Oh,” Rose said aloud.  She grinned and gave the woman the thumbs up as the light changed and the two went their separate ways.  After the chance encounter at the light, Rose began to notice that people went out of their way to let her over when she needed and that no one blew the horn despite the fact that she was driving below the speed limit.  Instead, she got nothing but smiles and waves.

“I should drive around with a tree tied to my car all the time,” Rose said out loud alone in her car, though she didn’t realized she’d spoken.

Getting the tree home was a bit more of a challenge.  She tore off a couple of branches pulling into her parking garage.  Then there was the matter of the ropes.  Ray had tied them with slip knots, but Rose didn’t know it and, having never encountered a slip knot before, would not have benefited from the information.  She tugged on the rope and the knots released.  The rope slipped free.  The tree slid across her roof and fell at her feet.

“Well, that happened,” Rose said.  Her voice echoed off the hard surfaces of the garage, all wrought iron, concrete and cinderblock.  It made Rose aware that she’d spoken her thoughts again.

She made an effort to keep her curses confined to the running dialog in her head as she struggled to get the tree into the elevator and up to her apartment.

One of her neighbors, a twenty-something young man who’d never spoken to Rose or looked directly at her, actually took time to hold the elevator door for her and help shove the tree inside.

“Thanks,” Rose said, beaming at the young man.

“No worries,” the young man said with a salute.  “It’s Christmas, right?”

“Right?” Rose agreed.  “Gotta keep on Santa’s good side.”

“Sure.”

The young man turned toward the garage where he had been headed when he’d arrived in the elevator.

“Here,” Rose said, remembering the invitations in her purse.  “I’m having a drop-in tomorrow, if you don’t have plans, come by.”

The young man turned and looked uncomfortable.  He took the envelope tentatively.

“No, worries,” Rose said to put him at his ease.  “It’s Christmas, right?”

“Right,” the young man said with a smile.

He turned to walk away.  As she watched him go, Rose realized that there was a substantial path of tree needles leading from the elevator to her car.

The elevator doors closed.

The young man pitched the invite into the recycling bin as he passed.

Rose hadn’t been as lucky when she got to her floor.  There was no sign of anyone.  She managed to get the tree down the hall and into her apartment.  Several of her neighbors watched through their peepholes, attracted by the disturbance.

Once she got the tree in her door a thought struck her.  How silly that she didn’t know any of her neighbors well enough to ask them for help.

She went down the hall and tucked an invitation under each door.

“Why not?” she said aloud as she returned to her own door.

Tree placement was a bit of a challenge.  She’d never had a tree, so she’d never considered it.  Eventually she chose a spot in a corner of the living room because she could move the small table that was there by herself.  Getting the tree there was the ordeal.  She broke a lamp and completely covered the room in pine needles by the time she got the balding little tree into place.

“You just needle little love, don’t you,” Rose said.  She laughed as she filled the carafe from the coffee maker with water for the tree.

 

It surprised Rose how much was actually open in the middle of the night.

Decorating time was at a premium and she’d decided to get started right away.

The gas station had Christmas CD’s and she bought several – a collection of Elvis, the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack and a special Exxon/Mobil holiday edition.

“That should do it,” she thought, tossing them onto the counter.

“Okay, then,” the clerk answered, startling her.

She’d done it again.  Maybe she was losing her mind.  She smiled at the clerk, an Indian man wearing a cheap Santa hat on his shaved head.  He gave her a quick grin in reply as he rang up her purchases cheerfully.  She looked around at the Christmas decorations in the little gas station store.  She liked the use of lights in the garlands, she thought.  Her favorite, though, was the tiny Santa hat on the diminutive Vishnu behind the bullet proof glass with the clerk.

“Vishnu a Merry Christmas,” she thought, laughing in spite of herself.

“That’s what I thought,” the clerk said, beaming.  He patted the handsy little god affectionately.

Rose was horrified that she’d said it out loud, but figured she’d have looked crazier if she had just burst out laughing for no reason.

The clerk, far from bothered, was delighted that Rose was in such a talkative mood.  She came in often and he’d tried to engage her in conversation many times before.  Try though he might, she’d never spoken more than a cursory “Pump 9” or “Credit please” on previous visits.  The clerk thought Rose was a fine looking woman.  Her smile and laughter over the shared joke filled his heart with joy.

“Sixty-two, fifty,” he said seductively.

“Here you go,” she said slipping her card and an invitation under the glass.

“What’s this?”

“I’m having a Christmas drop-in, tomorrow evening at my house,” she said, smiling at him in a way that made him screw up the charge and have to redo it, twice.  She worried that she might have offended his religious beliefs.  “Holiday really, in case you don’t . . . anyway, if you don’t have plans, you’re welcome to come.”

“Thank you very much,” he said fingering the invitation.  “That is most kind.”

“Tis the season,” she said signing her charge slip.

“Vishnu a Merry Christmas,” they both said at the same time.

She left laughing.

He loved her laugh.  He slipped the invitation into his breast pocket and patted it.  He would have to get his brother to work for him the next night.  He thought himself the luckiest man in the world.  His wife didn’t observe Christmas so she’d think nothing of it if he “worked” through the night on Christmas eve.

 

 

The CVS was open when Rose drove by.

She made real headway there.  Lights, decorations and sweets.  All the Christmas stuff was marked down so she was able to decorate for half-price.  She’d accidentally said it out loud but again got a laugh from one of the other people on the aisle with her.

Two things occurred to her.  It hit her that maybe most people just said what they were thinking and she was just out of the habit and not crazy after all.  And maybe, just maybe, she really was funny.

So far, so good anyway.

She was able to find plastic pine garlands with lights already woven into them.  The tree lights were a little picked over so she’d had to settle for mostly novelty strands of stars, angels and chili peppers.  Pepper are red, she though as she tossed them into her cart with the random collection of shiny plastic beads and balls she’d collected.

“In a way,” she said, no longer even trying to keep her thoughts to herself.  “Decorating is easier like this.  I don’t have to think about it.  If they match, it’s a bonus but I’m really only looking for ornaments that aren’t broken.”

“I know that’s right,” a nearby store clerk said, looking up from the wrapping paper she was listlessly marking down.  She smiled at Rose for speaking to her.  Most people only regarded her as a store fixture.

Rose smiled back.  “Did you get that Santa hat here?”

She left with a Santa hat on her head and no more invitations in her purse.

It was after one in the morning when Rose got to Pavilions.  She stood just inside the doors a moment, looking at the store expectantly.  She hesitated, uncertain of what to do.  She usually came with a list, but she hadn’t really thought about what to serve a minute before she’d gotten there.

Flattened Christmas music squeezed out of the speakers concealed somewhere in the ceiling.  It was just enough to suggest the holidays.  It was only a pale suggestion of music, for that matter.  There were a few shoppers, but mostly just employees, all in Santa hats, stocking the shelves in anticipation of a rush the following day.

“My favorites,” Rose decided aloud, in accordance with her new policy.  She would get all of her favorite things and serve that.  It was her party after all.  She’d be there longer than anyone else.

She bought cream cheese and pepper jelly.  She got caviar and smoked salmon.  She bought eggs to boil and red onions to chop up and sprinkler on water crackers with the caviar and the smoked fish.  She got chocolate covered cherries and two Whitman samplers.   She splurged on good champagne and got a lot – just in case – as well as good brands of scotch, bourbon, vodka and gin.  She got rum and eggnog to put it in.  To round out the spread she got a lot of little frozen, bakable treats – whatever taquitos were, pizza rolls, bagel bites, and those weird tiny quiches that are mostly crust.  She liked crust better than quiche so it seemed the perfect choice.

When she woke up on her living room sofa the following afternoon, two things were true.

First, she had a champagne hangover and second, her house was totally decorated for Christmas.  What the decorations lacked in quality or coherence they made up for in exuberance and quantity.

She made a Bloody Mary with the Grey Goose and some V-8 she’d had in the pantry since her last diet.  She sat, and marveled at the decorations flashing all around her.

“To half-price Christmas,” Rose said, toasting the room.

She spent the afternoon watching old Christmas movies on cable and sneaking hors d’oeuvre.  She switched back to Champagne when the V-8 ran out during It’s a Wonderful Life.  She avoided temptation and did not even so much as check her email, knowing that she’d get sucked back into work.  Rose was determined to enjoy her day.

By seven she was showered and dressed in all the red clothes she owned.  The Exxon/Mobil Christmas Singers were belting out the carols, the hors d’oeuvre were hot or cold, as was their want, and the Santa hat was perched jauntily on Rose’s head.

By eight the hors d’oeuvre were all pretty much the same temperature and Rose switched to spiked eggnog.  By nine, the Santa hat was off and Rose was eating caviar out of the jar and watching a Die Hard marathon that was scheduled to go on through the long winter’s night.

“Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” she shouted at the screen leaping to her feet and then falling back on the sofa.

At first she’d been hurt when everyone dropped out of her drop-in.  She knew it was last minute and she hadn’t counted on a big crowd.  She had enough food and drink but not nearly enough space.  But no one?

She started to get a little weepy around eleven so she switched to Diet Coke.

“No one likes a crying drunk,” she said laughing at her own joke.  “I really am funny.”

Just after midnight, Bruce Willis’ wife punched out the reporter.  Rose cheered.  The credits rolled.  She started to clean up a bit, putting things in the fridge that should probably already have been there.  She would definitely eat well while she worked on the end of the year accounts the next day in the quiet of the empty office.

The text of the invitation was still on the screen of her computer when she got to the office the next day.  Her first reaction was to erase it and drag the document into her trash can.  For some reason she read the words of the invitation to her ill-fated party out loud.

Rose’s First Annual Christmas Drop-In

Festive Food and Christmas Cocktails

Come by for a little holiday cheer and cheering up

At Rose’s Ho-Ho-Happening

7ish on Christmas Eve

She stared at the screen.  She re-read it again.  She laughed.  Every time she read it she laughed harder.  The clip art poinsettias and holiday flourishes were beautiful.  The font was tasteful and the burgundy gave the letters a richness and sophistication.  Her address and phone number, however, appeared nowhere on the invitation.

A quick check of her email revealed dozens of emails from co-workers trying to find out where the party was.  Her office voicemail was the same.

As the years past, and Rose’s Ho-Ho-Happening became an annual tradition, the joke about the first one grew and grew.

Sami was convinced Rose had never intended to have the party, that the invitations were just another of Rose’s weird jokes, and was disabused of the notion only by attending the drop-in the following year with the other guests excluded from the first observance.  She was more than a little disappointed for the loss.

“It was soo exclusive, no one was invited at all,” Rose always said when she told the story.  It always got a laugh.

But as she sat at her desk that Christmas morning, laughing at herself, she realized something that she never mentioned when she re-told the story.

It was the best Christmas she ever had.

Not because there was a crowd at her party or because the party was a hit or for any of the other reasons that had convinced her she’d been cheated out of the perfect Christmas for so many Christmases before.  It was the best because she decorated her house and filled it with her favorite food and drink.  It was the best because she’d been willing to share her holiday, her food and her drink with friends and strangers alike.  Everything seemed different, even though nothing really was.

The only thing that changed that Christmas was Rose.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Short Stories, The Perfect Party, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

The Perfect Party 3 – It’s Beginning to Look a Lot

December 22, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

The tree lot was sparse.

There had been no new shipments of trees for days.  Ray, the lot’s proprietor, was letting inventory dwindle as the market for Christmas trees tailed out with the season.

“Everything’s half-price,” Ray called to Rose as she began to move through the trees.  He stayed near the warmth of the trashcan fire he’d started with wood scraps and lost branches.

She was the only customer he’d had that night and he didn’t want to have to mulch anymore inventory than necessary.

“Thanks,” Rose said, as she reached out to test the freshness of a brownish little fir.  “Ouch.”

She instinctively put her finger in her mouth.  A dried needle had pierced her fingertip.  She sucked as though there was venom to be removed.  Was there?

“Those under the tent are fresher,” Ray called helpfully.  The trees under the tent had been on the lot every bit as long as all the rest of the trees.  Ray was a good tree salesman, but not necessarily a good man.

“O-thay,” Rose said, finger still in her mouth.

Rose had never picked out a tree before.  She didn’t even know where she’d put it once she got it home.  What makes for a good Christmas Tree?

“Well, it depends on your decorations and the space you have for the tree,” Ray said, suddenly behind her.

She cried out and bit her finger.

“Sorry,” Ray said putting a reassuring hand on her arm.  “Didn’t mean to scare you.  I thought you knew I was here, since you spoke.”

“I just didn’t realize you were so close,” Rose said, horrified.  It was like Tourette’s.  She could not trust herself not to speak her thoughts out loud.

“Not to worry,” Ray said, taking his hand back.  “Where do you think you’ll put the tree?”

“In the living room?” Rose said, more of a question than a statement.

“Good choice,” Ray said, taking a step back.

“What kind of decorations do you have?”

“I don’t actually have any Christmas decorations,” Rose shrugged.

“Lights?”

Rose shook her head.

“What were you planning to use the tree for?”

“Christmas?”

She settled on a greenish brown fir tree.  It was shedding pretty badly, but Rose was too embarrassed not to buy one.  Ray tied the tree onto the top of her car.  Both pretended not the hear the dry branches snap as he tightened the yellow plastic rope.

“Here,” Rose said.  She pressed one of the invitations into his hand.  “I’m having a Christmas drop-in tomorrow night.”

“Really?”

“If you’ve nothing better to do . . .” She finished her sentence with a shrug.  “Tis’ the season.”

“Sure is,” he said with a smile.  “I’ll sure think about it.  Drive safe now.”

Rose’s smile warmed her up despite the cold night.   She felt a bit of the season seep in.  The invitation to a stranger to share the holiday doubled her determination to make the party the best she could afford and accomplish.

“Merry Christmas,” she called out the window as she drove off the lot.

Ray smiled and waved.  An invitation to a Christmas Eve drop-in? He’d hoped for a tip.

“And a happy new year,” he said, tossing the invitation, unopened, into the trashcan fire.

To be continued…

Posted in Short Stories, The Perfect Party | 1 Comment »

Christmas Eve Premiere!

December 22, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Ho, ho, ho,

Greetings from Greater Christmasville!

To mark the digital re-release of Say Uncle, video is coming to EricShawQuinn.com on Christmas Eve Morning! There will be a special reading by the author live-ish from Christmasville starting at 9:00 am that morning.  We’ve spared no expense.  Joe came over with his camera, we bolted a desk lamp to a coffee table and used the back of an old picture for bounce light — see photos.  All to bring you the finest in Christmasville video and a reading to celebrate Say Uncle’s first electronic publication on Amazon and Barnes and Nobel dot coms.

That’s right, first Garbo and now Eric Speaks! AND you will finally be able to buy Say Uncle for your Kindle, Nook or IPad!!  Is it Christmas or what?!

So, barring any technical catastrophes – and I think we got most of those out of the way during the filming itself – I’ll be seeing you right here, on Christmas Eve Morning!

Meanwhile, there’s a new installment of The Perfect Party today.  And, the story’s exciting finale will be posted on Christmas Eve Eve, otherwise known as Thursday.

Hope you’re having a great holiday season and that I’m making some small contribution – a smile here and there – with all these monkeyshines.

All best wishes and a Very Merry, Christmahaunakwanza to you and yours –  Eric

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The Perfect Party ~ Part 2: Secret Santa

December 21, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

“What the . . .”

Mel trailed off as he opened his Secret Santa gift from Rose.  He stared at the Chia visage of the President.

Rose looked on in horror as the only black staff member at the agency glared at the racially insensitive gift she’d brought.  It wasn’t so much the use of the first African American President’s likeness on a planter that brought offense.  It was the prospect of Mr. Obama’s burgeoning ChiAfro that gave the gift its thoughtless sting.

She hadn’t bought the gift for Mel.  She brought it for effect.  They had drawn numbers for the correspondingly labeled presents under the dusty plastic tree. Mel was at the very innermost in of the creative in-crowd at the ad agency and he had drawn her number.  Rose’s cool-guest-hopes for her Christmas Party sank as she watched the horror unfold.

Oh cruel fate, Rose thought.

The room burst into gales of laughter.

“Oh, cruel fate,” Sami shrieked.

Sami was the coolest of the cool kids at the office.  She was still so young she could actually wear the kinds of clothes pictured in fashion magazines without looking like a complete fool.  Sami was rumored to have slept with the Creative Director – a man – and the head of Account Services – a woman.  Her bisexual liaisons were proof, not of her openness or even her versatility but, of the fact that she didn’t particularly care about anyone.  This of course made Sami the object of everyone’s desire.

When Sami laughed, everyone laughed.

Rose’s laughter was of the relieved variety and perhaps more sincere for it.  She had spent the entire morning creating and addressing her party invitations amidst the interruptions of work and getting the office party together.  The end of year accounts could get resolved on Christmas day when Rose had nothing else to do.  The invitations had to be ready so she could hand them out at the end of the office party.  She had a lot riding on the ironical appreciation of her tasteless gift.

Mel smiled and then laughed.  Rose’s party was saved.

After the brief scare, Rose managed to fly under the radar for the rest of the festivities.  She went out of her way to cater to everyone, topping off champagne flutes and making personalized hors d’oeuvre plates.  As office manager, the Christmas party was her job anyway.  That year she did a lot more than just drag the tree out of the supply closet, plug it in and pour red and green M&M’s into a bowl as she usually did.

Rose passed out the bonus checks, her final duty.  Paul, the boss, made his annual toast to the staff for another great year.  Everyone was glowing with holiday cheer.

As Rose presented each person with their bonus, she gave them their personalized invitations.

“I’m having a few people over on Christmas Eve,” Rose smiled demurely at Sami.  “I hope you can drop by for a little Christmas Cheer.”

“What?” Sami asked.  Her tone seemed shocked, as though Rose had somehow offended her or said something Sami couldn’t quite believe.

“I know it’s last minute,” Rose added hastily.  She felt the eyes of everyone at the party on her.  She struggled to beat a retreat from Sami’s rejection.

“What is?” Sami asked.

“The invitation to my Christmas Party,” Rose added, pointing to the envelope with Sami’s name on it, in Sami’s hand.  “I just thought if you were in town and didn’t have plans.”

“No plans?” Sami said with a shocked laugh.  “On Christmas Eve?”

“Well, no obligation,” Rose said, with a nervous, dismissive laugh.  Her face was hot.  “I just thought . . . I’m with you guys more than anyone else.  It’s like family.   It’s the holidays.   Do the math.”

“Do the MATH!” Sami shrieked.

They were all laughing again.

Rose joined them, uncertain and unconcerned if the laugh was at her expense.

“How have I missed this dire sense of humor?” Sami said taking Rose’s face in her hands.  “I wouldn’t miss your party.  I can’t imagine what you’ll say next.”

After that the invites flew out of Rose’s hands.  People who’d been avoiding her at the party — and the rest of the year — sought her out to wish her a Merry Christmas and get their invitation to her suddenly cool-endorsed party.  The air was thick with the stale smell of cheap champagne and promised guest appearances at Rose’s Christmas Eve drop-in.

“Oh, we’d love to be there,” Mel explained.  “We’ve got to hit Syd’s parents and make a couple of other stops, but you are definitely on our naughty list.  Where did you find this divine present?”

Is he gay? Rose wondered.

“Or WHAT!?” Sami shrieked.

The party has been a triumph despite me, Rose thought, careful not to say so out loud.  The staff was gone and Rose was putting things away.  She beamed with satisfaction and even a little anticipation.  With just a little effort, she’d actually enjoyed the Secret Santa party for the first time.

“Thanks for another good year,” Paul said leaning in at the door.

“Thanks, I just . . .”

“You’ll clean up before you go?”

“Of course,” Rose nodded.  “I hope we’ll see you at the drop-in tomorrow.”

“Merry Christmas,” Paul called back to her.  She heard the door slam.  The silence of the empty office was a relief.  She hurriedly raked the remains of the party into garbage bags and tied them up for the cleaning crew who appeared magically each night, no one knew when.

Rose was in a hurry.  She had to completely decorate her house for Christmas and plan and set up a party by the following evening at 7ish.  She shoved the tree back into the closet behind the copy-paper-pyramid and ran for the door.

To be continued…

 

Posted in Short Stories, The Perfect Party | 3 Comments »

Newish

December 16, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I want to try something new.  Short stories aren’t new, but they’re new to me.

I’ve never written in this format before, so I’m a little nervous to do it in public on my first try.  I love writing the opinion essays.  I’ve tons of opinions about all manner of things, so I don’t expect that will stop.  Meanwhile, I thought that this might be a way to break it up a bit and use my fiction voice.  To give credit where it’s due, many of you have suggested short stories to me already.  Some of your views on the subject have been stronger than others – yes I’m talking to you Debi!

I thought I would start with a Christmas story since that is upon us in so many ways.  I’m going to put it up in several parts.  I’m not sure how many parts or even how the story will end.  I figure that way I can terrify myself even more.

I’ve also got an idea for something special that will begin the first of the year, more on that later.  And, with any luck at all, we’ll have a super special event here next week so keep checking back for details as they develop or for the angry recriminations in some thinly veiled opinion essay on the my disappointment at not being able to pull it off.  Either way, it should be fun for you.

So here, to get things started, my first short story, pretty much ever:  The Perfect Party.

Enjoy —

 

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The Perfect Party

December 16, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Rose loved the holidays.  Because she loved them, the holidays were her least favorite time of year.

Her own loneliness and disappointment stood in stark relief against those numbered days counting down to the end of another year.  The potential for joy and happiness surrounded her.  The promise of life fulfilled was inescapable.  Every television advertisement and Christmas special, every carol and shop window, every twinkling light and street corner Santa seemed to offer her a glimpse of life as she longed to live it.

She stood in the aisle at CVS.  The glittering ornaments and red and green foil wrapped kisses mocked her.

Where was her Christmas sweetheart? Where were the fond feelings of friendship and family that surrounded even Ebenezer Scrooge in the end?

It filled her with ire.  Ebenezer had been a miserable son of a bitch all his life.  Then in the end, for spending some of the fabulous wealth he’d amassed, all had been forgiven.  He’d been embraced with open arms by the nephew he’d rebuked and the employee he’d exploited.

“I’d settle for the fabulous wealth,” she thought.

Or at least she hoped she’d only thought it.

More and more she wasn’t sure.  She was alone so much of the time, she’d gotten in the habit of talking to herself out loud.  Not a problem until she was out in public.  The shocked expressions of fellow shoppers and elevator passengers greeted the lapses when her thoughts leaked out.

She looked around the drug store to see if she recognized the familiar startled look.

A black woman with a Christmas scarf tied into her hair eyed her furtively over a pile of President Obama Chia Pets.

Their eyes met.  The woman smiled nervously.

“Those look great,” Rose said.  She smiled to try to put the other woman at her ease.

The woman frowned.  “They look sort of racist, to me.”  The woman’s voice was surprisingly deep.  Rose wondered if her fellow shopper had always been a woman.  Then she worried that she’d said that out loud.

“I guess you’re right,” Rose sighed.  She’d come for some moisturizer and a Secret Santa gift for her office party.  Now she was discussing life in a post-racial America with a transgendered black woman in the seasonal aisle at CVS.

Where was her perfect Christmas?

“Are you all right, honey?” the black woman asked.

“Oh, God,” Rose sighed.  “Did I say that out loud?”

“Did you say what out loud?” Mr. Black Woman asked, taking a step back.

“Why did you ask me if I’m all right?” Rose asked, unsure of what else to say.  She looked longingly toward the exit.

“You keep staring at me,” the woman said.  “How would you like it if people stared at you?”

“People mostly ignore me,” Rose shrugged.  “Try it some time.  You might miss the stares.”

“So, you are staring at me,” the woman accused.

“I’m just getting one of these,” Rose said.  She took one of the awful racist terracotta Chia Pets and put it into her basket with the Nivea.  “I was afraid you’d be offended after what you said.  I’m sorry.”

Rose fled.

“What did you think you said out loud?” the woman called after her.

Rose paid for her errant purchase and beat a hasty retreat rather than risk facing her nemesis at the checkout.  The horrid presidential likeness would have to be her gift for the office party.  She hoped it would seem ironic.  Perhaps her co-workers at the small ad agency where she worked would think her choice sophisticated.  As the office manager, the creative staff members tended to dismiss her.  They regarded her more as part of the office equipment than co-worker.  At least, that’s how it felt to her.

She grinned at the thought of their amused stares as her wit was revealed through the inadvertent purchase of the racist planter.

The phone was ringing when she got home.   She sprinted to catch the call.  Rose didn’t get a lot of calls.  After the CVS incident, she was in no mood to spend another evening talking to herself and watching the Christmas episodes of her shows.  She longed for her own Christmas episode.

“Hello,” she gasped desperately.

“Rose?” her mother’s voice cut into her heart.  “Is that you?”

“Hi, Mom,” Rose sighed.  “Who did you think it might be?”

She loved her mom, but the only thing she thought more pathetic than getting no calls was getting only calls from her mom and telemarketers.  On her cop shows they always looked at the calls people had been getting prior to their murder.  She imagined the cast of The Closer snickering at her sad little phone log.  Don’t let me get killed tonight, she thought.  Not until there’s something more interesting to find out about my life.

“Let you get killed?” her mom asked.  “Is there someone there with you?”

“No Mom,” Rose laughed.  “Just kidding around.”

“Well, are you all ready for the holidays?”

Rose looked around at the barren apartment.  It was clean, almost clinical.  Rose never decorated for Christmas.  She’d just never gotten around to it.  At first she’d thought she’d wait until there was a special someone to decorate with her.  But as 30 came and went and there was still no sign of HIM, the task had seemed more and more overwhelming.

“Yeah, Mom,” she lied.  “I just got in from the store to get a few finishing touches and then, all done.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Rose,” her mother said with a bitter tone of amusement.  “You should come home for Christmas this year.”

“Mom,” Rose smiled.  She did love her mother, it just wasn’t enough.  “You know I can’t afford it.  Besides, you’ll be at Mindy’s with her husband and the grandkids.”

“You could come, too,” her mother suggested hopefully.

“Thanks, Mom,” Rose said.  She couldn’t help the smile or the tears.  “I’ve got plans here.  You guys have a great time.”

In truth, facing her sister Mindy’s happy family only made her holiday prospects seem worse.

“Look, I gotta run,” Rose said.  “I’ve got to get my present wrapped for the office party tomorrow and I haven’t even gotten dinner started yet.  I’ll call you Christmas day at Mindy’s for a holiday conference call.”

“You know, Rose,” her mother said.  “I’m not asking you to come home for Christmas for me.  I’m asking for you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Rose said softly.  “I know.”

“Do you?” her mom asked.  “Do you know that you’re life has already begun?”

“Of course I do,” Rose said, confused by her mother’s words and tone.

“Your life isn’t going to start later,” her mother went on.  “Don’t wait to have a life when conditions are perfect.  This Christmas isn’t coming again.  If you don’t celebrate it now, you never will.”

“Look, Mom,” Rose said, stung by her mother’s word.  “I’m sorry I can’t come home.”

“You are home,” her mother cut her off.  “Look around you.  Are you where you want to be?”

“Thanks, Mom,” Rose said.  “I gotta go.”

“Love you, Rose.”

Rose hung up.

Her mother’s words took her breath away.

Rose hated to admit it — and she never would — but her mother was right.  She’d been waiting to have her life all her life.  Life was a party and she’d been sitting home, waiting to be invited.

Mariah Carey serenaded her with Christmas cheer from the television as Rose wrapped the awful Secret Santa gift.  The Holiday Special wasn’t loud enough to drown out Rose’s thoughts.  She’d been putting off Christmas along with everything else in her life.  She had no plans for her holiday.  There was not a single invitation awaiting her besides the one from her mother.

She resisted the urge to toss the wrapped present against the wall.  Only the prospect of having to go back out to CVS saved the terracotta president.  Then the plan hit her.  It was elegant, simple and perfect.  It solved both her no-holiday-invitations problem and her spending-the-holiday-alone problem.

A Grinchy smile split her face.  She’d show her mother and join Christmas already in progress.

“I’m going to have a Christmas party,” she said out loud.

To be continued . . .

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Tradition

December 8, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

One of the rare family Christmas memories I have from childhood is of something we called “Honking For Hamburgers.”

In the before times, when I was young and dinosaurs ruled the earth, there was no such thing as a drive-thru.  For one thing we still spelled it “through” back then and, moreover, we called them drive-ins.   Cars and burgers were linked from the beginning, I guess.  You’d drive in and up to one of the menu stands next to each parking space in the lot that radiated out from the hamburger stand itself.  Once your mind was made up, you’d blow the horn.  A car hop then came out to your car.  I never saw one on roller skates like in the movies.  Seems a potentially very messy combination to me.  What we got mostly was some sullen high school girl with an attitude and an order pad.

A car hop took our order.  Then we got to wait around forever in the car.  Eventually, she brought out our burgers and fries on a tray that hooked onto the side of the car with the window rolled down.  I thought it was wonderful and there weren’t even little choking-risk, plastic-crap, marketing based toys.  Just burgers eaten in the unfiltered fumes of the parking lot.  No pesky smog control devices for us.

The best named drive-in was in Britton’s Neck – an alleged town in South Carolina.  The stand was called the Park and Blow.  This meant that their sign said “Britton’s Neck Park and Blow.”  I get an adolescent giggle thinking about it even now.

The point of this digression is to explain that at the time of this particular Christmas memory from my very questionably spent youth, you honked to place your order at the drive-in.

Drive-ins were garish places, garnished liberally with enough neon to be seen from space.

Despite my humble origins and though we lacked for a lot, we were never short on judgment.  It was our feeling that the houses festooned with lights lining the roof, covering the shrubbery and illuminating the fiberglass nativity scenes looked like drive-ins.  So, as a family, we would pile into the car, drive around town and spot particularly egregious examples of overzealous Christmas yard decor.  When we are all decided on an over lit candidate, we’d pull into their drive-way and “Honk for hamburgers.”  We’d flee when someone emerged.  Sort of a holiday ding-dong-ditch.

Such were the simple joys of my youth.

I suppose this might seem a bit thin on Christmas spirit and familial warmth.  It might even seem a bit ironic, given my own proclivity for extreme holiday decorating.  But I am a man who has never so much as had a meal in a restaurant on my own with my father.  I may have dined alone with Mom when we drove together to that funeral one Thanksgiving, but that’s pretty much it.  So, the fact that we got together to do anything even joyous-adjacent makes for a fond holiday memory.

Traditions are like that, I think.  Nothing we do in life has any real meaning.  I don’t mean life is meaningless, I’m saying that we decide what’s important.  Like picking the 25th of December and saying that it means something.  Since we made up the idea of December and established the convention of numbering the days, making one of them more significant than the other 30 or 31 or 28 or occasionally 29, well, that takes tradition.

In the end it’s the lights and the wrapping paper that make Christmas, Christmas.  Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of junk under a dead tree.

Whether it’s a month of fasting, eight candles or fireworks at sunset, our traditions give meaning to the events in our lives.  Weddings and birthdays and holidays mean something to us more because of the celebrations and ceremonies than the date.  I have friends who get tattoos or piercings to mark special occasions.  It’s a bit literal for me, but I get it.

I hear a lot about commercialization and whatnot, but what would a holiday be if we didn’t celebrate it? Without the crystal sphere and Times’ Square, New Years would just be midnight.

A lot of what makes the occasions in life occasions is that they only happen, well, occasionally.  If the Christmas lights were up all year, it would be no big deal at the holiday.  If you have caviar and cream cheese every day, peanut butter and jelly becomes the delicacy.  But if there are no dress occasions then there are no occasions.  Too much of the special of life slips through our fingers.  I’ve got a closet full of tuxedos I never wear.  I think that’s too bad.

I know I can’t live every week like it’s Shark Week, but does every day have to be casual Friday?

 

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Decorations

December 1, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I’ve been MIA for a few days.

I went to visit friends for Thanksgiving.  It was an excellent break and a joy to be in the company of some of my favorite people for no better reason than going off my diet and making each other laugh so hard pumpkin pie came out of our noses.

But that’s only half the story.  I have a problem and if you can’t talk about your personal problems on the internet, then what is blogging for?

Saturday, I got back from my Thanksgiving holiday back east – Palm Springs is east of here.

Since returning though, I’ve been secreted away in my house, lost in a nightmare of glitter, fir and glass beads.  I can’t seem to stop decorating for Christmas.

There is a walk-in closet in my office the size of many of the bedrooms I’ve had over the years.  The little room is literally filled to the ceiling with Christmas decorations (and unsigned copies of my second book with what’s-her-name that didn’t get handed out after she sabotaged our book tour so she could go live in a trailer and not pay her taxes.)  But mostly, it’s full of Christmas decorations.  There are also a fair amount of Christmas baubles in the office and cleaning supply closets, in the pantry, under my bed, in the linen chest, the kitchen cabinets, the sideboard drawers and this year they’ve even begun filling up the leg well under my desk.

At the current rate, I’m going to need a second apartment soon just to accommodate my Christmas ornaments.

I always get my tree on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  My friend Dan locates the nearest Delancey Street Mission tree lot – I like that the money I’m blowing on a dead tree at least helps out people whose concerns are a little more urgent than snarled garlands.  Dan and I meet for a strategy brunch, establish tree objectives for choosing a more perfect conifer than last year’s and then we launch our assault on the lot.  We used to stuff the evergreen giants, stand and all, into the back of my two-seater convertible and muscle the prickly pine up four stories from the parking garage to my modest manse.  Okay, there’s an elevator, but still, it’s a tree.

These days we go with the delivery option – Dan is getting older and for some reason the trees we pick keep getting larger.

This year, it rained the night before our tree lot invasion so they didn’t have as many out to choose from.  With selection limited, we convinced them to open some fresh trees, still bound after their journey from the Christmas Tree Mountains, north of here somewhere.  In the confusion, I identified the perfect candidate before I realized it was a Blue rather than my traditional Noble fir.  It was the perfect shape and seemed a reasonable height – last year’s was literally bent against the ceiling of my apartment.  In a moment of uncertainty, I agreed to the unfamiliar holiday flora.

By the time we were in the car on the way back to my apartment, I was a basket case.

It was blue, for god’s sake.  And would it be dried out in a week? The branches seemed soft.  Would they support my decorations? Can you return a dead tree? Could I afford a replacement? Christmas was ruined and we weren’t back from the tree lot.  It wasn’t even December.

The tree was delivered in due course.  I bravely soldiered on.  The tree lighting and decoration took a day.  The Christmas Village took one day to unpack and layout and another day to wire, light and blanket with the essential glimmer snow.  In truth, what was once a village has grown.  Incorporating Bedford Falls, Mistletoe Mountain, Victorian Village and Christmas in New York, I now call it Greater Christmasville.  My friends call it completely out of control.  Mine is catchier.

Then there’s a day of final touches as I cover the rest of the house and balcony with lights and various and sundry Christmas ornamentations.  Later, I have to go out for more because somehow there’s never quite enough.  And of course I need fresh poinsettias.  At some point I stop decorating.  Usually around the time I leave to spend Christmas at points east – that’s right I don’t actually do Christmas here.  I take the tree and all but the New York part of the Greater Christmasville down before Christmas.  That way the house is predecorated for New Years.

I can’t seem to stop.

The worse the year I’ve had, the more tenacious and fanatical my decorating.  This year, I became so obsessed with what I perceived as a possible shortage in the glimmer snow market that I actually became short of breath and had to lie down.  This was weeks before Thanksgiving.  Of course the day the holiday Kleenex Christmas ovals came out, I returned from the grocery store with bags full of flocked foil tissue boxes and no actual food.

It’s as though somewhere deep down, left over from childhood, I believe that Christmas will fix it.  I’m not even clear on what “it” is.  Still, I pursue my decorating with a superstitious fervor driven by a belief that if I get everything just right, the tumblers will drop and all my dreams will at last come true.  I’ve spent my life waiting for my Susan Boyle moment and each year I pin my hopes on Christmas.

My favorite Christmas carol is the tearjerker Just in Time for Christmas.  Bathed in the manmade holiday glow of Greater Christmasville, I belt out the holiday ballad alone but hopeful.

Now, I’m not a primitive.  I’m writing this essay with a certain amount of intellectual detachment observing my behavior with an anthropological cool.  Yet, even knowing what I’m doing doesn’t diminish my need to do it.  I guess to some degree it’s Santa Claus based.  Early on, I imprinted on the persistent Christmas notion that if I wish hard enough that this year I really will get what I asked Santa for at the mall, in letters and each night on my knees.  And what if I do get it all this year? Would I stop decorating or just hope for more?

I’m not sure if there’s a cure for my Christmas mania or if I’d even be interested.

On the plus side, I love doing it.  Decorating keeps the holiday blues at bay.  The house looks amazing.  Whether or not my Christmas spirit is sincere or self-induced, all the fuss lifts my spirits and stops me worrying about the many, many thing I could be wasting my time worrying about.  Two things I know for sure.  One, worry has never solved a single one of my problems.  And two, sometimes if I pretend that everything’s great, I forget that I’m pretending.

Now, excuse me, I’ve got to go make the perfect Christmas cookies.

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Thankful

November 23, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Thanksgiving challenges my better self.

It’s been a tough year.  My life has not been what I’d hoped for a lot longer than just since the banks robbed us to pay off their gambling debts.

When times are hard it’s hard to find things that I’m thankful for in my life.  I’ve kind of given up on dating.  I haven’t sold a book in a long time.   I’m faced with the prospect of looking for work in ten percent plus unemployment as a partially blind, fifty one year old man whose skills include clever, some philosophy and acting.  I’ve written a series of books that I can’t get agents excited about and the publishers for whom I’ve written successes and best sellers in the past are MIA and likely looking for work themselves.  My prayers have not been answered this year or in any in recent memory.

My mood would not best be characterized as thankful.  I get the sense that I’m not alone these days.  I manage to stay in good spirits for the most part.  If you came by the house and searched, you’d be hard pressed to find the tough year I had.

And then Thanksgiving comes along and calls the question.

My first reaction is to place the back of my hand dramatically on my forehead and demand of the ceiling – cause that’s where god is, don’t you know – “What do I have to be thankful for?”

God doesn’t answer those kinds of prayer from me either.  Let me know if you get different results.  I’ve got a few questions I’m dying to get answers for.

Meanwhile, I’m faced with this holiday that puts my screwed up life right in my face.  Inevitably, as I lamented my pitiful state, I started to think of the pilgrims and those hats with the buckles on them and their dinner with the native people they probably ended up screwing over until the casino opened to even the score.

Those first at the table a couple hundred years ago were celebrating because they hadn’t starved to death or died from exposure.  Woo-hoo! That’s really what they were celebrating.  They were still alive.

When was the last time I celebrated that?

I think that maybe I start my thank you list too far along to get any real traction.  I tend to be thankful when I get what I want, but “Woo-hoo, I’m still alive and anything’s possible” is not where my mind goes when I think about gratitude.

I’m not only alive, I’m in great health and great shape.  I’m still a little too well fed, in fact, but I’ve managed to move down two sizes since this past Memorial Day weekend, thank you very much.  I’m kind of looking forward to eating what I want.  I’m taking the big day off the diet – something else to be thankful for.   And I’m crazy about the friends I’m having Turkey with, so there’s that.

Times are tough but I’ve managed, even just barely, to keep body and soul together, so far.  Not everyone can say that.  I didn’t do it the way I’d have picked, but it still happened.  Maybe my prayers were kinda sorta answered.

But most of all I’m alive.  That’s the big gift from which all others flow.  There was less around to distract those at the first Thanksgiving from that big blessing and maybe with less around, I can see it better, too.

It’s been a bad year in paradise.  We’re a little bruised following our greed orgy but we still have the two ingredients that make everything else possible:  Hope and Life.

That’s something even an ingrate like me can be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving!  Thank you for reading my blog.  It means a lot to me.  I’m truly thankful for you.

 

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