by David Connor
Scrooged Over
By David Connor
For dueling radio hosts Deke and Dudley, the battle over Christmas starts the day after Thanksgiving. Deke hates the whole season. Dudley is a yuletide overachiever. They put their debate to a vote, inviting audience members to weigh in. The loser must go on a blind date of the winner’s choosing. Dudley decides he wouldn’t mind taking the loss, if his blind date, picked by Deke, turns out to be Deke himself. As Christmas gets closer, not only does that fantasy seem unlikely, but everything that can go wrong for Dudley does, including malfunctioning decorations, rancid cookies, and a lost pile of hundreds of handwritten Christmas cards. Just days before Santa’s arrival, Dudley’s about to throw in the red and green towel and join all the haters. It’ll take a miracle to change his mind….
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About the Author
By David Connor
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1
“LET ME tell you something about Christmas.” Deke leaned into the radio mic like he always did when he had something important to say to the WXMS Deke and Dudley Morning Show audience. “Christmas sucks!”
Dudley gasped. “Deke! How can you say that? Christmas is…. It’s… It’s… the most won—”
“Don’t say it,” Deke warned. “And definitely don’t sing it.”
Like Goofus and Gallant from Highlights Magazine, Elisabeth and Rosie from their days on The View, or more recently, Kanye and Taylor, the morning shock jock and his mellower partner agreed on virtually nothing. After the long Thanksgiving weekend, they’d gotten back into their groove right away.
The show had started off like normal. “Goooood morning. It’s the Deke and Dudley Show, the top of the a.m., the best of morning radio. I’m Deke McNierney. He’s Dudley Moss. It’s back to work Monday, November 28, 2016. What’s the weather doing out there, Mindy?”
Mindy was the third cog in The Deke and Dudley Morning Show machine—Mama Bear who sometimes had to keep her boys in line. “We’re starting Cyber Monday at a chilly forty-one degrees,” she reported. “With temperatures expected to top off not much higher, protect your holly berries.”
“Ooh. I loved her in Monster’s Ball,” Dudley said.
“Flurries off and on throughout the afternoon will continue this evening, but nothing major is expected. Should be perfect for a holiday display lighting shindig.”
“I’m having a block party,” Dudley said excitedly.
“Whoopee!” Deke twirled a sarcastic finger in the air.
“Four days after Black Friday, twenty-seven until the big guy in the red suit drops down your chimney. Are you feeling excited?” Mindy asked their listeners. “Call in and tell the guys what’s on your mind.”
It was then Deke shared what was on his.
“Christmas sucks.” He said it again, this time with an added reverb effect, as if shouting it from a canyon dug deep in a mountain range. “Every minute. The whole season from the moment Santa arrives in front of Macy’s until Ryan Seacrest’s ball drops.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He goes off like this every year, Dudley.” Mindy shook her head, making the chain attached to her sparkling, rainbow cat-eye spectacles glisten. “I forget. You’re new.”
Until Dudley joined WMXS ten months earlier, The Deke and Dudley Morning Show had been Deke and Scott in the Morning for nearly a decade.
“Deke’s a big Scrooge.”
“But why?” Dudley asked.
“I’ll tell you why.” Deke took his glasses off, a dramatic move for emphasis, seen only by those watching the simultaneous livestream online. He stared Dudley down with those piercing amber eyes of his. He raised both bushy brows all the way to the wavy, unkempt bangs that covered the lines across his forehead, and then he said, “It’s not even December. The turkey is barely growing bacteria and already trees are up and stockings are hung. Me and stockings have a lot in common, but it’s still annoying. What’s the rush?”
“I start decorating the day after trick-or-treat,” Mindy said. “Always have.”
“Why not the day after Columbus Day? Maybe the first day of autumn?”
“Because I do a Halloween tree, duh.”
“Me too!” Dudley said.
“You know what my mother had on all day Thursday?” Deke asked, undeterred.
“The dog show? Football?” Dudley guessed.
“QVHS. Quality Value Home Shopping.”
“I think you’re mixing up two separate channels there.”
“Whatever. They’re all the same. They should call them BMOC.”
“Big man on campus?”
“Buy more of our crap.”
“That would be two Os,” Dudley said. “B, M, one O for ‘of,’ and then another O for ‘our’ before… before the ‘crap.’”
Deke’s glare was a little intimidating. “Whatever. Man, those hosts are the worst.” He put on a high-pitched Southern drawl. “If you’re not a terrible parent, you’ll buy your daughter this singing Elsa on our three-month, Easy-Charge credit plan of nineteen ninety-nine a month. That’s less than a penny a minute or sixteen cups of coffee. And if you don’t get Elsa’s extra outfits as a separate purchase for sixty-three sixty-five, plus shipping and handling, you’re going straight to Hades. The set comes in this sparkly suitcase that plays ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman’ and features a dress, a nightie, slippers, and a robe.” Deke dropped the faux voice. “Why the hell does the woman need slippers and a robe when the cold never bothered her anyway?”
Dudley nearly spit his coffee all over the console.
Deke went in and out of character as he continued. “‘Of course, Elsa will be awfully lonely without Anna, Sven, Christoff, Olaf, and the trolls.’ Our lovely host is likely trained by her bosses via waterboarding to remind us of that. ‘The good news is, that additional purchase will qualify your order for half off postage.’ And also future bankruptcy.”
“I like Christmas.” Dudley fixed the collar on his green polo, worn beneath a torso-hugging blue sweater-vest with Santa hats scattered about it like polka dots. It was his favorite Monday-after-Thanksgiving attire. He fluffed his light blond hair, where it swooped up into a stiff wave in front, and was tipped in red to mimic peppermint-candy stripes, replacing the autumn colors from last week. In the coming days, he’d get even more festive-looking, right down to his feet.
“You like Christmas? I never would have guessed,” Deke said sourly. “You’re dressed like a Chippendales’ elf.”
“And for a macho dude in his thirties, you sure know a lot about Frozen.”
Deke ignored the dig. “Hour after hour, nothing but a hard sell.” Donning a flamboyant gay persona for his next imitation, he mocked the home-shopping hosts some more. “Do you love your mama like I do? If so, buy her this KitchenAid mixer, not some cheapass knockoff from Walmart. Jolly dance! Jolly dance!” Deke dropped the affectation. His real voice was deep and raspy, perfect for radio and dirty talk. “Every time I go over there, Mom’s watching those dead-eyed, soul-sucking tchotchke pushers. Is dialing one eight hundred ‘I can’t afford this’ really how we show Christmas spirit in this country?”
“For some of us, Deke, giving feels good.” Dudley figured his partner was too riled up to volley back some sexual double entendre like he usually would.
“We’re talking Christmas here, not your sex life, Dud.”
So much for that thought.
“And the closer the day gets, the harder they pounce, telling us we can still get our buckets o’ chocolate, laptops, or diamond tennis bracelets—diam
onds now because the fake Diamondellica stones they peddle the rest of the year as being equally beautiful ain’t good enough with just one shopping day left—all delivered by Christmas Eve with ‘super shipping for only fifty bucks more!’ Make Aunt Gladys wait until December twenty-sixth for her chewy nugget in a festive skating village tin? God forbid.”
“You could have left the room, or maybe turned the channel.”
“And speaking of God.” Deke barely heard a word or took a breath. “You don’t think he notices most of us only drag ourselves to church once a year to wish him happy birthday?”
“Christmas is Jesus’s birthday,” Dudley said before swallowing a huge bite of one of a dozen doughnuts he’d brought in. “Not God’s.”
The show was casual and conversational, like people sitting around having breakfast. They often browsed the web and used whatever was trending as a jumping-off point. Dudley, who was big on lists—monthly bills, household chores, shopping, et cetera—frequently sat there discussing them. He had a stack in front of him then, several sheets he’d written on, crossed things off of, and then added more to, all pertaining to the season Deke was ripping apart.
“No one knows when God’s birthday is. Ain’t that right, Min?” Dudley asked.
“Well, I’m a lot of years out of Catholic school,” Mindy answered, “but I don’t think God has a birthday, per se.”
Deke ignored them both. “Christmas mass…. It’s a smell from my youth I can bring back without trying. Hot candle wax, wine, balsam-fir wreaths, and body odor as a couple hundred part-time parishioners crowd into a building that usually only holds forty. This putrid haze of perfume and cologne tries to overtake it but can’t, even as those who care about how they smell overspray hoping to mask the funk and stench of the ones who can’t be bothered to bathe on the holiest night of the year. Then there’s the bad-breath stank as dozens of half-assed worshippers open wide all at once to hit those impossible ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ notes. Suddenly we have an assault on the nose and the ears. My mother still tries to drag me to that mess every year. No thanks.”
“Come on.” The imagery had Dudley close to gagging. “Even for you, you’re being a little—”
“But that’s not the worst of it. Home-shopping hosts are paid to make you feel like crap, and the holiday heathens are covering their asses, just in case. Friends and family turning into frigging cutthroat competitors—the one-upmanship of it all—I think that’s what bugs me the most. Who’s got the biggest tree? Who bought the most expensive gift? Who made the most sugar cookies shaped like—” Deke held up one of the cookies Dudley had brought in with the doughnuts. “—reindeer wieners?”
“It’s a candy cane made just for you. I had to freeform the dough since I haven’t unpacked the Christmas cookie cutters yet. I do all my baking later. See?” Dudley pointed on his list. “December tenth. Every single day there’s some Christmas chore. If I get off schedule, something goes undone.”
Deke grabbed Dudley’s papers and shook them at the mic. “Thanks for making my point. This one already has a dozen sheets of paper going.” Deke read off the headers. “Groceries, Gifts, Socks, Food Prep, Indoor Decorating, Activities…. I’m tired of you caroling, shopping, baking, decorating, wrapping, peace on earth, goodwill toward men, fa-la-la-la-la-ing dipwads pretending it’s all fun and visions of frigging sugarplums as your blood pressure, your credit card and electric bills, and to-do lists climb into numbers that make you want to slit your wrists.”
“I like to be organized.” Dudley snatched his papers back. “And there’s more to Christmas than that. It’s a feeling—a feast for the senses and the heart. Those big old-fashioned colored lights, Santa on every corner, a UPS man with an extra spring in his step as he delivers packages he knows some excited child is going to tear into Christmas morning, doormen whistling ‘Jingle Bells,’ the scent of gingerbread, dogs playing in the snow…. Even your cold dead heart has to warm up for… some of that.”
“Those big lights burn. I still have scars from my grandmother’s house. Santa’s got beer breath, my UPS man is a bombastic jerk, the doorman just wants a tip, gingerbread makes me puke, and that playing dog probably left a buried calling card I’ll step in later, ruining my brand-new four-hundred-dollar loafers.”
Dudley barked out a laugh. “When have you ever worn four-hundred-dollar shoes?”
“Or loafers?” Mindy joined the teasing.
“Most of the time you come in here in flip-flops. You were wearing them when we met… in late February.”
“I wish it was February now,” Deke said. “Then all this Christmas bs would be over, and we could get on with the real holiday—Super Bowl Sunday.”
“Well, for everyone but you, it’s….” Dudley cued a sample, letting Andy Williams sing what he’d wanted to say before. “And those of you who aren’t seasonal sourpusses can really get in on the WXMS X-mas merriment starting this Thursday. Check out my sock-drawer advent calendar on our social media pages. I’ve planned out twenty-five changes of Christmas-themed socks.”
“Talk about donning your gay apparel,” Deke muttered.
“Vote on your favorite of the week and guess what the last, most special pair will have on them. I got some with everything from bells to Yule logs—”
“I got your Yule log right here.”
“Because one lucky fan, drawn at random from all the ones who guess correctly, will receive one thousand dollars in cold, hard cash.” The words echoed as firework noises exploded from the soundboard. “Celebrate the New Year in style or put a dent in your holiday debt.”
“Going into debt for Christmas is irresponsible and stupid.”
“We get it, Grinch. You hate joy. Everyone not a green grump can see the complete list of rules on our website,” Dudley said for legal reasons. “Restrictions may apply.”
“I know I can’t be the only one who detests this season. So how about this? While the foot fetishists in our audience are logging on to DekeandDudley.com, or DekeandDudley on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram to look at your stupid socks, maybe the rest of our listeners can give me some backup. Calling all holiday haters,” Deke said, using a megaphone effect. “Upload your own rant. Show Bob Crotchit here—”
“Cratchit.”
Deke winked. “—why Christmas sucks.”
“Or doesn’t suck,” Dudley interjected. “We have to make it a fair fight.”
“Fine. To suck or not to suck….”
Mindy once claimed it was unreleased sexual tension that made their bickering so fiery.
“What about his first partner?” Dudley had asked her at the time.
“They just hated each other. It was nine years of hell.”
Deke was definitely a tease. The day before World Naked Gardening Day back in May, he’d done the entire broadcast nude. When Dudley brought up the fact there was supposed to be a gardening element, Deke responded, “How about I trim your bush?”
“From what I’m looking at, we could stall out a John Deere riding mower on yours,” Dudley told him.
“Real men have hair,” Deke countered. “I remember you from the dunk tank.” They’d done a mall promotion weeks earlier. “Dude’s like a jacked, porcelain garden cherub, lily-white and smooth as silk,” Deke told their listeners.
It was all just playful banter, though. Dudley was pretty sure Deke didn’t hate him. He sure hoped he didn’t.
“So grab your phones and get to filming, noel naysayers.” Deke scratched at his beard. The guy was even hairier for the winter, it seemed. “Show us your burnt cookies, your frustration when the Scotch-tape end breaks off—”
“Even I hate that tape thing,” Dudley said.
“Show me everything that makes the world stink even more at Christmastime than all the other months combined. Post an old lady getting run over in the mall so someone on a scooter can get to the last pair of smiley-face boxer shorts on the rack, or a tiny tot screaming his bloody head off on Satan’s lap.”
Dudley shook his head at the purposeful misnomer.
“Give us your best bloody family squabble over clear lights or colored. Show us drunk Uncle Walt puking eggnog all over Grandma’s fine china at the Christmas feast, or your cat barfing or crapping out strands of shiny tinsel.”
“That’s right, Deke. Keep it classy.”
“If it’s a contest we’re having, bring on your worst. Twelve days of ho, ho, ho holiday horsecrap has turned into fifty, and we’re not taking it anymore! I know we got more nutcrackers out there than jolly ol’ Saint Dicks, and when I prove it, ol’ Dudley here has to….”
“Oh no.”
A siren wailed. A strobing red light lit up the cubicle. Deke’s finger hovered over the button on the panel—the one Dudley hated more than all the others, even the fart sound.
“Side bet! Side bet! Side bet!” The shrill, nasally voice suggesting a not-so-friendly wager had been sampled and saved to the soundboard during March Madness. Dudley knew nothing about basketball. Once Deke figured that out, he’d played it for all it was worth.
“Let’s come up with something good here,” Deke said.
Deke almost always won, and he was brutal. In the past he’d suggested everything from having to show up at a church picnic in drag to walking the WXMS hallways in a thong. Dudley had to do it once. Deke did it just for kicks a few times after that. Dudley had also been forced to swallow whole hot peppers, have acupuncture, receive a scrotal waxing, and get a haircut in studio by a blindfolded barber. At least the hair-removal tech was allowed to use her eyes. Looking back, Dudley was grateful for that. Recently Deke had been forced into a six-week knitting course. Dudley finally came out victorious concerning a bet about the first new fall show to be canceled. Deke was kicked out of the Close Knit Lady Needle Clackers after one class, but as far as Dudley knew, he’d stuck with the Knit Pickers, a group who knitted and also played banjos. Dudley would have put the instruction to good use and wondered if Deke had. His hints about wanting a handmade scarf for Christmas were not at all subtle.