The stage lights illuminated his snow body and the crowd went wild. They cheered, clanked beers, and head butted each other in excitement.
Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul.
Blue sequin bikini briefs glittered in the spotlight on his pelvis. The light was hot and Frosty could feel his snow beginning to melt. Fortunately, his dances were only four minutes long.
He began to dance around.
That was his cue. He turned slowly, facing the audience, reached down sliding his finger under the special Velcro strap and quickly tore off the briefs revealing his smooth snowman physique. Frosty ground his hips against the pole and the audience roared.
* * *
Karen, Jackie, Billy and June were building a magnificent snowman. He was almost as tall as the stop sign he was next to. They had given him two pieces of coal for eyes, a red button for a nose, and even a corncob pipe.
The last touch was the black silk hat that Karen had found. It was hard to reach, but with help from Jackie and Billy, Karen got the hat on top of the snowman’s head.
All four children stepped back to admire their creation, straight into the path of an oncoming snowplow. The driver wasn’t paying that close of attention, he was shitfaced. All four bodies were very small so there wasn’t even a thump as they got over taken by snow and pushed by the plow. They were crushed into a large mound of ice and their bodies weren’t discovered for two weeks.
It turned out there was a little magic in that old silk hat they found. The snowman they had built leapt to life and began to dance around.
A bum walking by yelled “Yay! It’s Frosty!”
Frosty waved back. “Good Day, Sir.”
He went walking down the street, as happy as could be. Everyone waved at him and shouted greetings as he strolled by.
He came to an alleyway and there was a very skinny man wearing a very dirty trench coat leaning against the wall.
“Good day, Sir,” said Frosty.
The man, whose name was Alan, beamed the biggest smile he had in years. Instantly, he was transported back to those childhood Christmases and remembered how in- between his dad beating him and putting out cigarettes on his arms, he would escape into the magic of those television specials: Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, A Garfield Christmas and his favorite, Frosty the Snowman.
So Alan offered Frosty the one thing he had.
“Hey Frosty, wanna do some ice?”
Frosty assumed, since he was a snowman, that “ice” must be something good for him. He did not know what was being offered was methamphetamine.
Frosty hit the pipe and the drug went straight to his head and heart. Euphoria overtook him, he loved it! As it turns out, snowmen are quite addiction-prone. Frosty was instantly addicted.
* * *
Bing Crosby stopped singing and the PA began to blast The Beach Boys’ rendition of “Frosty the Snowman.” The sweet sixties pop had been specially remixed by the Club’s DJ to include a booty-shaking, boot-stomping bass line.
The bikers cheered louder, this was their favorite song for Frosty to dance to and every set he did ended this way.
A skinny and sickly looking biker climbed onto the stage and rushed at Frosty. His lust making him forget proper club decorum.
From the shadows, two obese bouncers moved with surprising agility grabbing the biker. They lifted him up, one putting him in a headlock and the other grabbing his legs. They carried him off the stage and through a door. The stage invader would be found in the hospital the next morning. This was not the first time the club had to aggressively enforce the no-touching rule. It was that kind of club. The rest of the gang paid no mind, their beer-and- boner-goggles keeping them enraptured with Frosty and his stage show.
* * *
So Frosty spent his days smoking and hanging in alleys with other bums and wastes of life, and it was a happy time. Each day blended into the next in his drug haze and Alan and Frosty became the best of friends.
But one day the money ran out and Frosty and Alan found themselves with handguns holding up a liquor store. The store clerk had a shotgun. The first shot took Alan’s head clean off, splattering the snowman with blood and brains. But when the clerk turned the gun on Frosty, the buckshot passed through Frosty’s torso of snow with no ill effect.
Frosty fired back and ran, leaving the clerk to bleed out. In a short time he was caught. The red-stained snow made it an open and shut case.
On his first day in federal prison, he was cornered by a group of Crips. They mistook the blood stains in his snow for Frosty reppin’ the wrong colors. They formed a circle around him and pushed him back and forth hurling insults. In the jostle his hat got knocked off and Frosty immediately turned back into a plain old snowman.
When a guard finally put his hat back on, Frosty found himself covered in sticky, white goo. After a trip to the med ward and a few meetings with the prison counselor, Frosty understood what happened to him.
That was how he learned to perform “snowjobs.”
He used this peculiar talent to get through his time in prison. He was able to trade snowjobs for protection, smokes, and when the prison served ice cream, extra dessert. This gift to leave his body proved vital for the survival a snowman who, for some unknown reason, aroused the lust of the biggest and meanest inmates.
* * *
Frosty sat in his private freezer/dressing room. The club owner had been nice enough to build a special room for Frosty to refreeze his snow after every dance.
Frosty took a drag from a cigarette and placed it into the ashtray on his dresser. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. The years had been hard on him; his once pure white snow was now an ugly grey.
In front of the mirror was his only personal possession, the corncob pipe he came to life with. He thought of all he had been through and all he had smoked with that pipe: meth, crack, marijuana, and on the rare occasion, tobacco.
There was a knock at the door and Cinnamon poked her head in.
“You got a private customer in booth three,” she said and shut the door.
Frosty sighed and took a hit of ice from his corncob pipe.
He stood up and left the room. The private booths were just down the hall, each one labeled one through six. Frosty walked into number three.
* * *
Eventually his sentence was up and Frosty’s debt to society was paid. But what was a living snowman with no job skills and a criminal record to do?
He found that his snowjob skill from prison had use on the outside as well. In no time at all, Frosty was trading snowjobs for his precious ice.
One day he was lying in an alley, the same alley where so many years ago he met Alan, stoned out of his head when a fat greasy man walked by. The man stopped when he saw the snowman. This man owned Jezebel’s, the city’s most notorious strip club.
He had been looking for something new for the club, something to revive customer interest and looking at the down on his luck snowman, he had an idea.
The man helped Frosty to his feet.
“Hey kid, I gotta business proposition for you.”
* * *
The booth was small, barely enough room for the burly biker and the portly snowman. The walls were lined with mirrors and a single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling.
Over the room’s private speakers, Alvin and the Chipmunks were singing.
And the children say he could laugh and play just the same as you and me.
That damn song. It didn’t matter what time of year or what month it was. His customers always requested the same song. Sometimes different artists—The Jackson 5, The Ronettes, Ella Fitzgerald, Cocteau Twins, Fiona Apple
—but always the same damn song.
Frosty wondered all the time about the song. Was there another snowman that came to life before him? Was that one lucky to lead a happy life? Or was it really about him? Everyone did call him “Frosty.”
The biker stood up and approached Frosty. No matter how h
ard he tried, Frosty never got used to this. He felt the heat of the lightbulb above his head. A tear ran from his button eye but was indistinguishable from the just beginning to form slush.
The biker kissed Frosty softly on his lips of coal. Flecks of snow dotted his bushy beard. He gently removed Frosty’s hat and unbuckled his pants, preparing for his snowjob.U
UNWANTED GIFTS
Kevin L. Donihe is one of the originators of the bizarro fiction genre. He was there in the beginning. He’s one of the most intelligent human beings I’ve ever met, as well one of the most eccentric. Whenever you’re around him you feel as if you’re hanging out with a younger version of Hunter S. Thompson as portrayed by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Although his books have yet to be among Eraserhead Press’s bestsellers, those who have read his work always rate him as one of the best. From House of Houses, about a man who is so in love with his house that he goes to house heaven to be with her after the great house apocalypse tears them apart, to Washer Mouth, about a washing machine who becomes human in order to meet his favorite soap opera star. There is no writer on the planet quite like him.
In this Christmas on Crack story, Donihe shows us the more tender side of Santa Claus. It’s a very special down and out Miracle on
34th Street
type of tale that will surely warm your heart through the snowy Christmas eve . . .
TWO-WAY SANTA
It was a few minutes past final call when I first met Santa Claus. I’m a nice guy, you see. I often take homeless men back with me to my apartment and let them sleep there for a day or two, sometimes longer. It’s according to how I feel about them, and how they make me feel.
On the street, there was hardly any traffic. On the sidewalk: no pedestrians other than me. My fellow drinkers, freshly expelled from the taproom, had all gotten into their cars. They weren’t comfortable walking alone this late at night, but I felt at home amongst broken buildings, broken people.
Once the roar of engines faded, I turned my attention to the little things: the sound of refuse blowing in alleyways, the pattern of lights in apartment windows and concrete as it exuded steam from a recent rain. Beneath my feet, pavement felt strangely soft and giving. Traffic lights up ahead jiggled or looked like dancing smears.
Turning a corner, I noticed something slumped against an alley wall. It looked like a sack of garbage, ignored by the sanitation crew. I thought I knew what was hiding under all that voluminous, dirty fabric, though. And I was right. I regarded Santa. His overcoat encased him like an unzipped body bag, only woolen. His beard was long, white and flowing. A streetlight made his face seem the color of piss. He was old, too—one of the oldest homeless guys I’d seen wandering these parts. I wondered how long he’d been living in alleys in cardboard boxes, or defecating in weeds behind the old strip mall up the road. Santa had a tart, almost gamy smell. Closer, I noted an all but empty bottle, clutched in his bony right hand.
“Is that whiskey?” I asked.
The man nodded, but made no attempt at eye contact. He appeared to contemplate the pavement. Maybe not even that.
“Looks like you don’t have much left,” I said, “but I could get you more.”
He looked up then, his eyes deep-set, lost in shadow. “You’d do that for me?”
“Of course. But you’ll have to leave this alley.”
“Where would I go?”
“To my place,” was my reply.
He studied me, seemed to think. “Did you say whiskey? Free whiskey?”
“Totally free.” I paused a beat. “Will you come?” “Sure, buddy. I’m game.” He stood then, knees shaking. Quickly, he grasped the wall to avoid a swift return to the pavement.
I offered him my hand. “Need help?”
“No, I’ll make it.”
I marveled. The man had a trace of dignity left in him after all.
* * *
It took ten minutes to traverse the two blocks from the alley in which I’d found my new friend. He was slow, and the way he hobbled behind me made me wonder if one of his legs was gimpy.
I couldn’t let him stagger all the way back to my apartment. At his rate, it would take us an hour to reach. I was ready to get back and show this man both my place and my hospitality, so I steadied him, invited him to lean on my shoulder. He didn’t resist me. In fact, he seemed grateful for this small act of kindness.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He just mumbled.
* * *
An hour later, I was watching TV; the man was laid out on my bed. He’d fallen asleep almost immediately upon lying down. He snored loudly. I would have checked on him, intermittently, if not for the snoring. The noise let me know he was okay, that he hadn’t swallowed his tongue or choked on his own vomit.
The snores stopped at some point. A minute or so later, I heard the creak of bedsprings.
I turned off the TV in the middle of a show. I walked to the bedroom and saw Santa sitting on the bed, legs dangling, his eyes tilted down, looking at the bedspread much like he’d looked at the pavement earlier.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“I’d feel better if I had another drink,” he said, and met my gaze then. In the light, I could better see his eyes—gray and rheumy. One had an obvious cataract. “You promised me a drink, didn’t you?”
“I did.” I walked to a wooden chest at the foot of the bed and opened it. Fifteen bottles of booze were inside, all for this man and others like him yet to make my acquaintance. I selected one of the whiskey bottles—expensive stuff, seal unbroken—and lifted it so the man might see.
For the first time, I noticed some life in him. His long, thin arms reached out to me as his hands clutched the air. “Can I have it now?”
I handed him the bottle, smiled. “Of course.”
He ripped off the plastic wrapper and cracked the seal. Before drinking, he smelled the whiskey, like a taster. But he didn’t merely taste it; he downed a fifth of the bottle before drawing a breath.
I pulled up a chair across from him, took a seat. Crossing my legs, I asked, “So, what’s your story?”
“What?”
“Everyone has a story. I want to know yours.”
He belched, wiped his lips. “Why do you care?”
That was a good question. I wasn’t sure why I cared. Maybe I didn’t and just wanted a little conversation to elevate my mood. “Humor me,” I said after a few moments. “I gave you that whole bottle, after all.” Then I gestured to the walls. “And this place for the night... ”
“If that’s what you want,” he said. “But you might not believe it.”
Anticipatory tingles started in my fingertips. “Try me.”
“Okay.” He paused for another drink, then, “I’m Father Christmas.”
“Father Christmas?” I uncrossed my legs, leaned in closer. “Like Santa Claus, you mean?”
“Yeah, like Santa Claus, but I preferred Father Christmas.” He paused. “Back then, at least. You can call me whatever you want now.”
It seemed he was one of the crazy homeless men. Interesting, sure—but I’d hosted a number of them recently, and not enough of the quiet, shy or sweet types. Still, he didn’t strike me as the kind of fellow I’d have to toss out prematurely, so I played along: “I thought Santa—excuse me, Father Christmas—lived at the North Pole.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Lived..”
“So, what happened? Mrs. Claus kick you out?”
“No, nothing like that. I’d been growing sick of things for years, and it just came to a head. I mean, doing all that shit for people who’ll stop believing in you—it’s fucking depressing!”
“What did Mrs. Claus think when you left?”
He threw up his hands, sloshing the whiskey. “Nothing! She’d been senile for the last two hundred years! Spent all of her time alone in a rocking chair in the attic. She’d put the chair over a loose floorboard, just above my bedroom. I wore earplugs, but I always heard it.
Always and forever.”
“Couldn’t you have gotten a divorce?”
His eyes widened. He seemed aghast. “Santa? Divorced?. Hell no!” Eyes narrowed. “But Mrs. Claus can dry up and turn to dust for all I care.”
“So you’ve never returned, not even for a visit?”
His tone was matter-of-fact. “When I left, I left for good.”
I paused, thought for a bit. “If that’s the case, why are people still receiving your gifts?”
“It’s contracted out. Some firm in Asia is doing it now.”
“What happened to the elves?”
“Most were transferred to circuses.”
“And the reindeer?”
“They were.. .dispatched.” He gulped some whiskey. “Hope I’m not boring you.”
“Oh no! Not at all!” Indeed, I was intrigued by his ram- blings, and rather taken by the man himself. He was by far the most articulate homeless person I’d encountered, and I felt a little guilty for having lumped him in with others more prosaically crazy. “So, you quit being Santa to live on the streets. That’s what you’re saying, right?”
“No,” he said. “You’re leaving out the middle.”
“I am? Fill me in, then.”
After yet another drink: “I was sick of the cold, so I moved to LA. Got a job as a waiter, thinking I might get lucky with an acting career. I mean, plenty of actors have played me—but all I got were doors slammed in my face.” He sighed, looked wistful. “Eventually, I landed a gig directing a string of porn films under the name Roger Wood. Ever see them?”
“I don’t watch porn,” I said. “Too indirect.”
“Me, neither. It was just a way to make a living.”
I leaned forward. “But you’re not directing porn now. What happened?”
Christmas on Crack Page 5