by Dave Hill
But there’s another side to this sparkly little coin. As electrifying as it was when Santa first hit the scene, I quickly learned that the unparalleled rapture and pandemonium begins to slowly fade after about five minutes. Next thing you know you’re just some creepy guy shuffling around the house in a skanky old velvet suit, like you just stepped off a bus from Atlantic City. No one wants to make eye contact with you, everyone starts keeping tabs on exactly how much you’ve had to drink and how much time you’ve spent in the bathroom, and you can pretty much forget about holding anyone’s baby. Even the dog lost interest once he realized the urine scent on Santa’s pants wasn’t fresh.
Of course, my only choice after that was to move on to the next party. And so I did. And when that euphoria died down, well, I just kept moving on, party after party, as many as it took, to get my fix once more. Sometimes I’d barely make it past the front door before jumping back into my car and disappearing into the night.
By the night of the big fund-raiser, both the Santa suit and I had put on a few extra miles, but I still pulled on the velvet and headed down to the theater with my new girlfriend.
“You must be pretty psyched to be rolling into the party with Santa Claus,” I said to her.
She was speechless. And who could blame her? I’m sure some of you ladies reading this right now can guess how pumped she must have been. Walking in with Santa is pretty much the best way to go to a Christmas party, like going to a planetarium with Stephen Hawking. She was one lucky gal.
Since I needed to focus on being Saint Nick, and also because I didn’t own a car, my girlfriend drove us to the theater. We parked on the street out front and headed inside, which was just plain explosive. The rush I had been experiencing in the week prior was nothing compared to the rush I felt walking into that theater. There were at least two hundred people in the place and—even though there was already another Santa Claus on the scene—people still seemed really psyched to see this Santa, the roving Santa, the one that could not and would not be confined to an armchair, the people’s Santa. It was like I was Elvis casually dropping by the Flamingo for a quick round of blackjack.
“It’s Santa!” everyone predictably screamed.
“You’re damn right it’s Santa,” I replied.
Adding to the excitement was the fact that with a few nights of being Kris Kringle already under my belt, I was pretty much a pro. I told all the kids I’d get them whatever they wanted and sometimes even stuff they had never even thought of before, I bought shots for the men, and I flirted with all the ladies in that mostly harmless, Saint Nick kind of way that no one can make a big deal about in court. I even brought a paper bag with the word “naughty” written on the side and filled with charcoal briquettes.
“Merry Christmas!” I’d say as I pressed a lump of coal into people’s hands. “Santa knows you’ve been baaaaad this year!”
Then I’d give them a sexy wink that suggested I knew exactly what sort of mischief they had been up to lately. Other than the annoyance of having to find some place to dispose of the charcoal, they seemed to love it. It was an awesome night and Kris Kringle—yup, that’s me—was on top of the world. It was like I was starring in my very own Christmas movie, one in which a lot of chicks totally wanted to make out with Father Christmas.
Unlike my previous outings, there didn’t seem to be an end to that Santa Claus high to which I’d so quickly become addicted. If one cluster of people tired of my antics, I’d just move through the crowd until I found a new group eager to receive the biggest thrill of their holiday season. But it all ground to a halt when my girlfriend informed me that some guy had made lewd comments to her. I can’t remember his exact words but it was something along the lines of how he enjoyed her appearance so much that it was having some sort of impact on the situation in his trousers. He also seemed to be under the impression that if my girlfriend were to have sex with him, his prowess would impress her so much that she would struggle to maintain any sort of physical relationship with me in the aftermath. There might have been some profanity in there as well. In short, he was being a major a-hole.
As you can probably imagine, my girlfriend was an attractive woman,3 smoking hot even. And, sure, the drinks were flowing, but I couldn’t help but think that this guy was just jealous that I was Santa Claus and he wasn’t. It was quite simply unacceptable. My girlfriend was upset, and I couldn’t help but get really angry about the whole situation because, well, you don’t just go making lewd remarks to Santa Claus’s girlfriend. It’s like trying to grope Minnie Mouse at Disneyland right in front of Mickey. Why would anyone do that? Especially during the Christmas season!
“Looks like Santa’s got some ass to kick,” I told her. “No one talks to Santa’s woman like that but Santa!”
Not wanting me to cause a scene, my girlfriend begged me to drop the whole thing and just focus on being awesome at being Santa Claus. In fact, she warned me that if I said anything to this jerk, she was going to leave the party without me (something I really couldn’t risk because, as mentioned previously, I didn’t have a car and my parents probably wouldn’t be willing to pick me up).
“Fine,” I said before getting back to being the greatest Santa of all time.
But here’s the thing about being the greatest Santa of all-time—when you’re the greatest Santa of all-time, people love to buy you drinks. So, after another hour or so of doing the polite thing and knocking back free drink after free drink, my mind drifted to that guy who had said all those awful things to my girlfriend, and I somehow forgot about how good ol’ Saint Nick wasn’t going to say anything to him.
“You know what?” I thought as I struggled for balance. “I’m definitely, definitely gonna have to say something to that prick. Nobody talks to Santa’s girl like that! Nobody!”
The next thing I knew, I was pushing my way through the crowd in search of the bastard, totally forgetting about the spirit of Christmas, good will toward men, or any of that crap. People noted the fire in Kris Kringle’s eyes and jumped the hell out of the way.
“Santa will you—” an oblivious little girl with pigtails said.
“Not now!” I barked. “Not! Now!”
I continued on my mission and, after a couple of minutes, finally found the dude in question. He was standing by himself, drinking a beer, clueless to the fact that he was about to have his ass handed to him by the king of the North Pole.
“Hey, man,” I grunted.
“Santa Claus!” He smiled.
I thought my tone very clearly implied, “You are so close to death right now it’s not even fucking funny!” But that’s the thing about being Saint Nick, people usually misinterpret your blind rage as jolliness.
“I know what you said to my girlfriend,” I snarled through clenched teeth and beer-soaked beard.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about!”
“Huh?”
“Why’d you go talking like that to my woman, you prick!”
It was at this point that it would have been hard not to notice that Santa Claus was seriously pissed off. But as is often the case when one really drunk guy accuses another really drunk guy of something, the defendant denied having said anything to my girlfriend and even went on to say something about how I was “really drunk” and also “crazy.” Regardless, I persisted with my accusations and he persisted with his denials until we were right up in each other’s faces, the stray hairs of my Santa beard tickling his nose in an entirely unpleasant way.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” I informed him.
“You’re the fucking asshole, dude,” he replied.
We continued in our volley of insults and accusations until I was pretty sure one of us was going to throw a punch. I was even more sure that one of us was going to be me. And I liked it. A lot. So I slowly clenched my fist, studying the guy’s face to decide exactly where I was going to land the deathblow, the first punch I had ever thrown in my entir
e life, which was going to be a really great one, the kind people end up talking about for a long, long time. Then I cocked my arm back, hoping the guy somehow wouldn’t notice. And, finally, there I was—about to swing, about to demolish the guy—when I happened to catch my reflection in a nearby window. And that’s when it hit me all over again: I’m Santa Claus.
“Santa can’t go beating up someone at a Christmas party!” I thought as I stood there squinting at my reflection. “And Santa definitely can’t get his ass kicked at a Christmas party! Sure, the outfit is already red so it won’t really show the blood that much. But still, that’s just pathetic.”
Recognizing there was no alternative, I lowered my arm back to my side and slowly backed away from the guy as he did the same. Apparently, he didn’t want to fight, either, though as we studied each other’s retreats we gave each other our best “You might be the luckiest motherfucker on the planet right now because I’ve just decided not to kill you” kind of look.
As my would-be opponent disappeared back into the crowd, I stumbled to the bar area in search of my girlfriend. Sadly, she was nowhere in sight. Because of my near brawl, I was already crashing from that huge Santa rush pretty hard. But once I realized that my girlfriend had made good on her threat, I hit zero altogether. The harsh reality of my situation settling in, I barrelled through the crowd of onlookers, sending their festive drinks flying in the process.
“What’s up with Santa?” the looks on their faces seemed to say.
Meanwhile, the other Santa, that bastard sitting in a chair with a brand-new red velvet suit on, just looked at me with disgust.
“You’re all naughty!” I screamed as I made my way toward the exit.
I flung open the doors and stumbled into the night, where the familiar cold Cleveland rain began to soak my beard further and bring many of my Santa suit’s long-dormant scents back to life. I scanned the block and found the only signs of life coming from a small bar directly across the street.
“Maybe she went in that bar,” I thought, my detective skills momentarily kicking in.
Then I ran across the street, oblivious to any upcoming traffic, my pain too great and my blood alcohol level too high to notice. I flung open the door to the bar to find it was packed, a whole other Christmas party raging without mercy. And guess who just walked in—Santa Claus! Predictably, everyone started to freak out and, since I was pretty much a full-on junkie by that point, I was instantly back on top again.
“Santa!” they all screamed.
“You’re damn right it’s Santa!” I screamed back.
Even when the chips were down, that high came rushing back and I drank it in like a man tasting cool water for the first time after forty days in the desert. I posed for more pictures, high-fived everyone in sight, and even let a couple of fully grown men sit on my lap. I was quite simply on top of the world until I finally worked my way to the other end of the bar and there, sitting silently on the very last stool, was my girlfriend, chewing on a straw and looking positively furious.
“Don’t worry—I didn’t kill that guy,” I said. “You know, because I’m Santa Claus.”
“You asshole!” she replied.
Somehow my explanation seemed to just enrage her further, so I began apologizing and trying to calm her down every way I knew how. Still, my Santa powers were useless on her and she started saying all sorts of crazy things a woman might say to a guy from Cleveland who still lives with his parents and doesn’t have a car or a job or any of that stuff: how she wanted to “break up with me,” how she “wasn’t going to give me a ride home,” and even how I was, in fact, a “horrible Santa.” It was bad, really bad, the last kind of stuff a guy dressed as Santa ever wants to hear. Right then and there I realized I really didn’t like the kind of person Santa Claus had turned me into—this power-mad, belligerent, and completely hammered narcissist. I also realized that this was one situation Santa couldn’t make all better. The only person who could make this situation better was me, Dave, the guy with a fake beard on. So I pulled down that beard and took off my damp and dusty velvet hat and told my girlfriend how I really felt, how she was the greatest girl I’d ever met and how I really didn’t want to lose her. And, perhaps most of all, how I was so sorry about almost trying to beat up some guy who, all these years later, I still think absolutely deserved it.
It took some doing; I begged, I pleaded, I even offered to chip in some money for gas—but eventually I won her back. And, for the record, yes, she did end up giving me a ride home and I got to control the radio and she even refused to accept any of the cash I half-heartedly offered for gas.
And on that ride home I realized one more thing. I realized that the real reason Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist is not because there’s no way just one guy could deliver all those toys in a single evening. And it’s not because he probably would have been shot a long time ago for even trying. It’s because there’s no way anyone could handle that kind of power. It’s just way too much for one person. I had experienced it for not even a week and it turned me into an utter monster.
I decided from that Christmas forward, I was just going to be Dave, the guy I was before I became Santa Claus, the guy that didn’t get invited to nearly as many Christmas parties, the guy that could barely get anyone to sit on his lap without someone threatening to call the cops, the guy that didn’t get even half the Christmas gifts he asked for no matter how many times he threatened to never come out of his room again. And even though that Santa suit is still somewhere out there in my parents’ garage, I can say with, like, 75–85 percent certainty that I will never, ever put it on again.
Pedicab Shmedicab
If I ever needed money as a kid, I’d just “borrow” it from my parents. My mother always left her purse on the kitchen counter so, as soon as she left the room, I’d help myself to loose change. It was a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” scenario; I didn’t ask for the money and I didn’t tell her I took it. As long as her purse weighed about the same when she picked it up next time, it never seemed to be an issue.
By the time I hit my thirties, however, “loans” both big and small were harder to come by. And simply asking family members for their bank account information was usually met with either silence or profanity, which I eventually took to mean that, if I needed money, I had to “earn” it by “working.” Before I became the show business phenomenon I am today, I had to do that the hard way—by getting an actual job. The problem was, there weren’t many out there that really spoke to me. That all changed, however, in 2003, when I returned to New York after a prolonged detour back to Cleveland and laid eyes on a pedicab for the first time. Enchanted, I vowed right then and there that I, Dave Hill, would one day become a pedicab driver and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do to stop me.
To the uninitiated, a pedicab is like an adult-size tricycle with a cart on the back for passengers. If you’re looking for a way to get around town that offers neither the convenience of a cab nor the glamour of a horse-drawn carriage, you could do a lot worse. As for me, I never wanted to ride in the back of one. I just wanted to be the guy doing the pedaling. Big time.
As awesome as being a pedicab driver seemed, it took awhile before I had both the spare time and the confidence to put my other life pursuits on hold to really give it my all. The stars finally aligned one day when I was wandering around midtown Manhattan thinking about how I didn’t have a job or money or any of that other stuff that tends to be helpful when you are a grown man living all by yourself in one of the most expensive cities in the world. It was in that moment that a pedicab driver stopped right in my path, as if on cue from the gods. Right then and there I knew it was time to stop making excuses and start living the dream.
There was a number on the side of the pedicab, practically begging me to call. Still, I hesitated to grab my phone and start dialing.
“Certainly there are plenty of guys out there with the exact same dream as me,” I thought. “Who am I to think I mig
ht actually be one of the chosen?”
But then I decided to just take a deep breath and embrace my destiny. After a couple of rings, a guy with a thick Brooklyn accent answered. “This is Terry,” he said.
“This is Dave, Terry,” I told him. “Are you the pedicab guy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I’m the guy you’re looking for, then.”
Since this was fate, I assumed he would know exactly what I was talking about. He didn’t, but after some clarification, Terry said I could come in the next day to discuss becoming the pedicab champion I was born to be. I was so pumped I almost wrestled the driver off the very next pedicab I saw.
“I’ll take over from here!” I’d say.
On the rare occasions when I’d had job interviews before, I usually took it easy the previous night so I could make a good impression. But this time, in the spirit of the very freedom that being a pedicab driver represented to me, I decided to get really drunk with my cousin Kieran. I got so drunk, in fact, that I threw up not only on the sidewalk as we left the bar, but also the following morning and again in a midtown Starbucks across from Terry’s office immediately before my interview
“Can I get a venti decaf skim latte with four shots of espresso, extra foam, and hazelnut syrup please?” I asked the barista, patting my brow. “Oh, and the key to the restroom, too?”1
“Ninety percent of success is just showing up,” I reminded myself as I walked out of America’s caffeine station-cum-public restroom, wiping drool from my mouth.
Terry’s “office” ended up being just a bunch of pedicabs pushed together in the corner of a parking garage. I actually got to sit in a pedicab during the interview, which made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world.