christmas_shopping raze we haven't said a word to each other in more than twenty years, but there's a twisted part of me that wants to call my mom and ask her if she's finished all her christmas shopping. because i bet she has. my dad started putting money in a bank account for me when i was a baby. it was supposed to be for when i grew up. to help pay for school, or whatever i needed. my mom got access to the account when they divorced. she spent the next ten years bleeding it dry. she used the money to buy christmas and birthday presents that were supposed to be from me when i was too young to buy anything for anyone. i found out about it when i was thirteen. "don't look at me like that," she said. "those presents had your name on them. i wasn't going to pay for them with my own money." by the time i was old enough to do my own shopping, there was nothing left. every year, she had everything bought and wrapped and labelled before halloween. i would watch her do her wrapping. every crease and tucked corner and strip of scotch tape just so. then all the presents would go in the huge crawlspace inside the linen closet in the living room downstairs. that closet was a treasure chest with a sliding door. there was a shelf lined with shoeboxes. they were full of pictures. thousands of them. i looked through every one of those boxes when i knew it was probably the last time i was ever going to be in that house. there was a six-year-old version of me with a temporary tattoo of a devil on my bicep. i was sticking out my bottom teeth, making a funny face. there was my stepfather's sister at his wedding, the wedding that made him mine, that made him a word i would never say, looking young and pretty and nervous. i couldn't remember her ever being any of those things. but she was. there was my dad wearing bell bottoms and looking like someone who got kicked out of three dog night for smiling through the sad songs. there was my mom with feathered hair, looking like kate_bush. there was my stepfather without his moustache, looking like he had no upper lip. i stole every picture i could find of my dad. she wasn't going to miss them. she sure as hell didn't miss him. he looked like twenty different people. long hair. short hair. facial_hair. no facial_hair. glasses. no glasses. three-piece suit. sweater and jeans. there were almost no pictures of the two of them together. that made sense. we were supposed to go on a cruise in the new year. it was going to be me, my mom, my sisters, my stepfather, his sister, and her husband. everyone kept telling me if i didn't cut my hair they were going to bring someone else with them instead of me. they didn't want a long-haired faggot like me tagging along. i knew if i went on that cruise i was going to jump overboard and swim home, or i was going to drown trying. i almost threw up when i thought about spending two weeks on a cruise ship with those people. the same way i almost threw up when i saw that house from the outside five years later. just sitting in the driveway brought everything back. it took me two hours to call my mom and tell her i wasn't going on the cruise. i kept dialling half the number and hanging up. i was shaking. but when i made the call, my voice didn't shake. i told her i wasn't cutting my hair. i told her she could go ahead and take someone else with her. she told me i didn't have to chop it all off. i could wear a bandana during the day and tie my hair back at dinner. make myself presentable. that way no one would see how ugly i really was and she wouldn't be embarrassed. i told her it didn't matter. i still wasn't going. she hung up on me. five minutes later she called back and left an angry message. ten minutes after that she called again. she left another message. this time she tried playing the good cop. i didn't call her back. when she couldn't intimidate me, she got one of my sisters to call me on christmas_eve. she left a message wishing me a merry_christmas in the same tone of voice you'd use to tell someone you hate to kill themselves. i wrote my mom a christmas card. it was fifteen pages long. halfway through there was a one-act, one-scene play that had my stepfather's sister sitting on his lap while the whole family rehearsed that christmas_eve phone call together. i told my mom she could start treating me like a human being, or she could never see me again. it was her choice. i told her to write her answer in a letter, because i wasn't going to talk to her if she called me on the phone. i never heard from her again. there was my answer. i sent the family christmas presents anyway. there was a nice painting for the grownups and a gift certificate for a restaurant in kingsville. there were beautiful teddy bears for the kids. there were godiva chocolates for everyone. the box of gifts came back with "refused to accept" written on the packing slip. i ate the chocolates with my dad. we had a great dinner. we paid for it with our own gift certificate. we hung the painting in our living room. the teddy bears stuck around for a few years, until he gave them to the daughter of a woman who was sort of his girlfriend for a while, until oxycodone blew her life apart. merry_christmas to us. i talked to peter on the phone when there was still snow on the ground. he knew about my mom getting her shopping done before they even started playing christmas songs on the radio. he knew my presents were sitting in the crawlspace. he knew aunts and uncles and grandparents would be coming over to the house with their own gifts for me, and they would all ask where i was, and my mom would lie and say i was sick or dead or something. "can you picture all those unclaimed presents?" he said. "think of it. years pass, and people keep coming over for christmas. every year they ask her where you are. every year she comes up with some new lie. and the presents keep piling up in the closet until there are hundreds of them sitting there, still in their wrapping paper. and one day there's no room left in the crawlspace, and they all spill out onto the living room floor." i laughed until i couldn't breathe. 211112 what's it to you? who go blather from