“You’re a fucking idiot if you believe that,” Jeremy spat from across the lunch table, flecks of banana pulp flying through the air and tickling my cheeks in a sloppy mist.
I felt my face get hot while the other kids stared at me in delight as they realized my growing embarrassment.
“Do you believe in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy also?” Jeremy pressed in glowing delight, stuffing his face with another mouthful of banana without finishing the first.
“No! I mean – well…”
That broke the dam, and everyone else started laughing.
The state of being an adolescent boy is, for all intents and purposes, an act of mental torment. Humorous playground fascination with all things gross and disgusting never really abates; it simply grows more potent as we realize that the disgust we have with our own bodies is inexorably tied to the delight that we extract from them, and no one on earth is mature enough to handle that paradox.
“Maybe Santa will give you some tampons!” Jeremy guffawed, blissfully unaware of the clump of banana mush that he’d laughed into his sinus and was now peeking out of his nostril.
“Shut up!” I fired back, grasping for any words that felt defensive as the lunch table group laughed harder.
Jeremy wasn’t particularly funny, of course. The simple reality was that someone other than themselves was being abused, and survival meant encouraging the pain.
“I’m getting a Switch! I checked the closet where my parents keep the presents! And I’m getting a 60-inch TV for my room, too!”
Jeremy narrowed his eyes at me. “If Santa’s real,” he breathed, “then why are your Christmas presents hiding in your parents’ closet?”
I thought of a million things to say: I’m lucky enough to get presents from my parents in addition to St. Nick; Santa works in mysterious ways; if Jeremy’s parents loved him enough, maybe he’d get nice presents instead of punching anyone who asked what he got for Christmas; maybe he could get a couple more years of gifts from Santa, since he was short enough to pass four a fourth-grader.
I tried to say one of those things. Any of them.
But the heat in my head pushed into my eyes and nose. Speech gave way to gasps, and my face started leaking from every orifice.
“Oh my fuck,” Jeremy whispered. “Are you going to cry?”
I wanted to deny it, but all of my effort was focused on holding the tears back.
Jeremy’s lips curled like the Grinch. “Man, I really wish my Uncle Fred was here. He once punched my little sister so hard that she’s been afraid to cry ever since. He hates little bitches like you.”
My dad had once told me that the bigger man walks away from an argument, so I turned and headed calmly apart from the group.
“Wait!” Jeremy called after me.
I paused.
He threw the rest of the banana at the back of my neck with a smack, the cold clumps coagulating in my hair. I pulled it away, but it had the consistency of fresh snot, so it just worked its way deep into my scalp.
I imagined a valiant parting shot, some brilliant quip that put everyone in their place and shut them up indefinitely.
But there was nothing my embarrassed mind could conjure. I walked away as they laughed at me, my teary eyes heavy as rocks.
*
I still put out a glass of milk and nineteen cookies. My parents gave each other a knowing look, but I told myself to ignore it. Sure, I was thirteen, but I was their only kid. They weren’t in a rush for me to grow up, either.
I snuck out to watch the fireplace after my parents had gone to bed. A subconscious voice told me to enjoy the Santa story as much as I possibly could in this moment, and I didn’t question why I knew to obey it.
I didn’t want to ask if Santa was about to die in my imagination forever.
So I curled up at the corner of the couch, near enough to the freshly outed fire to roll into the massage of its dying warmth. The tree behind me was filled with presents. I knew that I could count them right now, just after my parents had gone to bed, and compare it with the number I woke up to in the morning. I realized that would answer the Santa question forever.
That’s why I didn’t check.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping at the window. I bolted upright, heart thudding, and looked into the darkness.
A face stared back.
I wanted to shit my mouth and puke my pants, but I couldn’t move.
It smiled.
Below the crooked teeth dangled a scraggly white beard.
My head spun.
Slowly, quietly, he lifted the window.
I couldn’t move.
The man reached his skinny arms into the house, pulled himself up, and tumbled inside with a soft thud. Then he stood, dusted his pants, and lifted a loose, red bag.
He was dressed in red cloth with white trim.
“Merry Christmas, little boy!” he wheezed. “You know who I am?”
“The creepy man in my living room?” I whispered back.
“I’m Santa, and I’m real!” he announced quietly enough not to disturb any potential sleeping residents. “Since you believed in me all these years, I have an extra special treat for you!”
He smelled like the reason that showers were invented.
“What-” I gasped softly, “what are you going to do?”
His smile captured the essence of the exact moment when eggnog curdles. “I’m switching your presents out for even BIGGER presents, kid! Congrats!”
I backed up to the corner of the couch.
“Now. I know that your parents were giving you some electronics, and probably some cash, right?”
I eeped.
“If you just tell Santa where they are, I’ll be able to bring them back to the North Pole and return with even better versions! You’ll need to help me get them outside very quietly so that I don’t disturb my reindeer!”
“Um. Don’t you need the reindeer to be awake and ready to go if you’re going to move my presents?” I asked tentatively.
“Those are the kinds of questions that end up with naughty children crying on Christmas morning!” he pressed, now with a definite edge in his tone. “So, are you going to help Santa find the best presents?” His voice dropped an octave. “Or are you about to go on the bad list?”
I pulled my knees up to my chin. “Um. I think the biggest presents are in the biggest boxes, Santa.”
He slowly stalked toward me, my stomach growing colder with each footfall of his boot. He stopped right next to the couch, blocking all escape as he towered over me in the darkness. “Are you giving me lip?” he asked icily.
I shook my head, trembling.
“Are you going to help Santa, or are things about to go bad for you?” he whispered.
I remembered my dad’s advice.
I sprang from the couch, pulling myself over its back.
But I was too late. His grip caught my arm like a vice, and pain shot from my shoulder to my fingertips. His other hand clamped down on my mouth with such strength that I knew he was going to get what he wanted.
“Okay,” he grumbled, “looks like we’re going to have Christmas the hard way.”
A light bright enough to hurt my eyes flooded the room. The man’s grip slackened. “What the fuck?” he called out.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
Someone was walking closer.
“Who the-”
Then my tormentor was lifted into the air, legs kicking, completely helpless as a second man held him aloft with just one hand. I could barely make out their silhouettes as my eyes burned in the new-fallen brightness.
“This is not in the Christmas spirit!” the second man bellowed in a voice that was somehow both light and deep at the same time. Hearing him filled me with an inexplicable warmth as the fear drained from my body.
The burglar gurgled.
“You’re confused? The rule really is simple,” the second man called out. “On Christmas, of all days, don’t be an asshole.”
Then he dropped the skinny man to the floor with a thud. That was followed by a blast of golden light that sent sparks into the air.
I looked down in shock.
He had suddenly become bound, head and foot, with tightly wrapped red and green ribbons. His mouth was gagged with a beautiful red satin bow.
My savior stood over me, still obscured in the bright light. “Stand up,” he ordered kindly.
I did as he commanded, vaguely noticing that the two men were dressed alike.
“What did you want for Christmas more than anything?” he asked jovially.
“Um,” I responded, dazed, “well, I guess I really wanted a, um, a Switch, but I mean, I think I got that, so…”
“No, I mean what do you really want, even if it won’t fit wrapped under the tree?”
I froze.
“I can see it in your eyes,” he continued softly. “There’s something you want more than anything else, a wish that you’re afraid to tell anyone. Why don’t you whisper it to me?”
He leaned down, and I told him what I’d never said aloud before, feeling both embarrassed and excited to finally put it into words. When I was finished, he leaned back, looked down at me, and smiled.
“Merry Christmas,” he offered warmly. Then, after laying his finger aside of his nose, he was gone. I wasn’t sure if he’d moved like a shadow when I was blinking, or it was a trick of the bright light, or if he had simply vanished in front of me. But very suddenly, I was alone in a darkened room with a groaning fake Santa gift-wrapped at my feet.
*
All I know for sure is that some aspects of Christmas are fake. The phony Kringle turned out to be Jeremy’s dirtbag Uncle Fred, who had been paroled a week earlier and was living in Jeremy’s garage. Uncle Fred had pressed Jeremy for which kids had the best presents to steal, and my name came up because I still believed that Santa was responsible for a lot of expensive presents.
Uncle Fred cried when the cops took him away, saying that he couldn’t go back to being someone’s Christmas Bitch. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t have time to ponder it. The police wanted to know what had caused Uncle Fred to get bound so tightly.
“Well,” I shrugged, “I guess we don’t know what we have inside until a really amazing moment forces us to find out.”
*
Some gifts can’t be wrapped under the tree, and the best presents aren’t physical things. Sometimes, the line between gift and circumstance gets blurred, and we’re left not knowing why life works out the way it does. In those moments, all we can really do is be thankful that the things beyond our control end up better than we could have planned.
How else to explain what happened to Jeremy?
He was an accomplice to his uncle’s felony, but they didn’t want to lock him up. Instead, he got 120 hours of community service without a choice how to spend it.
Jeremy, the shortest kid in our class, was forced to dress up like an elf and help the local Santa actor as he went to hospitals and malls to meet with the little kids who still believed. He tried to avoid the rest of the lunch table crew when they came by to take pictures of him in his ridiculous outfit, but they were relentless. Jeremy had to delete all of his social media as countless pictures of him dressed up in candy cane tights and a matching pointy hat/shoe combination went viral. He was so humiliated that he never talked to any of us again.
I no longer claim to believe that Santa is real.
But I know that somehow, I ended up getting the secret wish that I only ever uttered to one person.