The Christmas Bordello by Mike Marino (book club books txt) 📕

times..stack the deck and cheat!

 

 

Chapter 5 - The Ghost of Christmas Past

 

The  Ghost of Christmas Past

 

Christmas has the power to jump start nostalgia as effectively as a can of WD-40 can loosen a rusted bolt on an engine block that’s been sitting in a junkyard exposed to the elements for 20 junkyard years. We leave the past behind in our dust and eventually we revisit that old familiar junkyard looking for pieces of our past.

 

So as I sit here this blustery morn in the present, I am being transported back in time listening to the Jimmy Buffett Christmas album. Who better to sail the ocean of memory with, eh?

 

As a child, I was raised by my grandparents in Detroit along with my mom who had to work hard. My “dad” if you want to call him that wanted a divorce week after I was born…(not my fault, he already had wife number two in tow!) Christmas was always special..cousins, aunts and uncles always showed up for Christmas at grandma’s house..there was no choice in the matter...she was the familial Queen Victoria, and I being an only child was the enfant terrible and recipient of gifts from me moms six other siblings. My bedroom was a veritable Toys R Me store…

 

Later at 15 I left home and ended up on a 8 year journey on the beach in Honolulu, living on the streets of LA and San Fran and it also included two years in Okinawa thanks to Uncle Sam’s little military elves.

 

In Okinawa I had an apartment outside of the town of Naha and high up on hill overlooking the South China Sea. Three of us who rented the place also spent our time selling marijuana from Thailand and LSD from Berkeley my old Haight Ashbury crowd would send over. The tree that first year was a true Charlie Brown bonsai affair straight out of central floral casting from Mr. Miyagi’s greenhouse. Decorated with joints, roach clips and other paraphernalia of an altered states nature. The USO had a Christmas party in full swing but a dozen or so us decided to skip the Bob Hope cookies and milk and instead toke a few bowls to old St. Nick who to us was Timothy Leary with a beard and a red suit. After a few hits of acid and speed mixed with weed...you become a flying reindeer...I swore Rudolph was a lava lamp!

 

My girlfriend at the time was a stripper at a local club who moved into the apartment with me and was into the Christmas spirit deeper than I was. She decorated the apartment and added to the tree so it had some real personality and Cristmas decorations and bought an angel for the top. I knew back in Michigan the family was getting together minus me and one other cousin also in the military but with my new “family” of deranged weed heads and Kimoko removing her kimono...I was feeling like I had struck Acapulco Gold at the North Pole.

 

Flashback! 10 years old...my grandparents owned a cottage in Northern Michigan on Grand Lake near Lake Huron. I not only spent my juvenile summers basking in northern Michigan pines and beach and invisible pirates I had for imaginary friends...but one year we spent Christmas nestled in the cottage in the forest...it was the most memorable Christmas ever. Stone fireplace, roaring fire, full moon on a frozen lake and fresh fallen snow sparkling like diamonds that had fallen from the heavens.

 

I spent part of Christmas day that year bundled up thicker than a Jack London character living in the frozen north in his novel, “White Fang” The snow crunching reassuringly under your hiking boots, following deer tracks that were joined at junctures by the tracks of deer, a family of raccoons and a porcupine or two, not to mention the tinier minute tracks of a chipmunk and the tell tale hop hop pattern of a northern rabbit.

 

It was Christmas and I was enjoying being engrossed and engulfed in the magic and wonder of the natural world of nature.

 

You’re never really alone at Christmas. It is what you make it..family, friends, woodland critters...doesn’t matter..just let it cascade around you. Christmas is many things to many people, different things as well depending on a person’s heart and perspective..to me having lived homeless for years and relying on the kindness of missions and strangers..it’s giving a helping hand to that invisible homeless person many choose to ignore...and not just at Christmas.

 

I may manifest itself as a time for family...religion...and yes, Santa. He was our first idol as children..before Batman and Superman. Santa brought presents. As for religion..well, I am not the most religious person on the planet but I do miss the Nativity scenes at city hall ...the Politically Correct Grinches have seen to that.

 

Christmas is now politics and juvenile challenges…”I’ll say Merry Christmas..not Happy Holidays” as though it’s a challenge. Kind of defeats the purpose...I say Merry Christmas but don’t make a big deal out of it..I have no time nor interest in bickering over semantics or rhetoric...I’m too busy enjoying the season. If others want to argue about “greetings” go for it...anger and self righteous rage is not the Christmas spirit...all this bickering of Christmas present makes me happy I have a good friend, a best friend I can count on..the Ghost of Christmas Past...and the family that is not around any more but will always live in me in spirit...the Christmas spirit...so Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings...it’s ll the same if you interpret it with your heart and ….the Christmas Spirit.

 

Chapter 6 - Ru Paul Rudolph

 

 

Ru Paul Rudolph 

 

Santa Claus...a man we visualize as machismo on ice from the North Pole with manly beard who handles a sleigh with the fearless skill and acumen of an adrenline rushing bulletproof NASCAR redneck driver on the track at Talladega. He dons a fierce red suit and carries a whip in one hand...able to leap tall buildings in a single bound with the help of eight V-8 powered reindeer more powerful than Clydesdale horses and able to break land speed records on the Bonneville Salt Flats! He commands the power of godfather Vito Corleone ruling over his family of hit men elves.

 

I have discovered in my research that all is not as it may seem at first glance. The Ho Ho Ho He was once a Ho Ho Ho She! Santa Claus was once known as Sandra Claus!!!!

 

It all began when Sandra and Rudolph watched the transvestite Ed Wood film Glen or Glenda. Rudolph at the time was moonlighting as a female reindeer impersonator at a dive club at the North Pole under the name of Ru Paul Rudolph and decided then and there to go all the way with a sex change. He was originally from Lapland where he was a transvestite lap dancer and prancer vixen with one hell of donder flaming blitzen in his reindeer thong so had been to Denmark many times and new the score.

 

Many misconceptions about Rudolph are as mythic as the Loch Ness Monster. Remember the old Rudolph cartoon where he meets another reindeer, a female named Clarice? Lies...all lies...in reality Rudolph went to Denmark and after the sex change operation became CLARICE!!!

 

The other 7 reindeer were nervous in the locker room when Rudolph/Clarice wanted to play some strange reindeer games in the shower with the others. Why do you think the let him up in front of the sleigh on Christmas Eve? Don’t buy into the bullshit “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?” The truth is...no reindeer wanted Rudolph rooting around behind their haunches with a red bulb ready ready to play suppository!

 

Christmas Eves is a night of fear and loathing, not just in Las Vegas, but in the fanciful flights of reindeer fanny’s as Santa yells out “On Hashbowl, Tiny Dancer, Mincing Prancer, Va Va Voom Vixen (former topless reindeer dancer at the St. Nick Strip Club), Vomit, Stupid, Donner Party and Blitzkrieg (the former nasty Nazi German reindeer who still goosesteps to disco records by the Village People) This Christmas Eve...look to the skies….and duck and cover!!! It’s Rudolph in rut looking for someone to fuck!

 

 

Chapter 7 - Santa's sexual Harassment Bag

 

Santa's Got a Brand New Sexual Harassment Bag

 

Seems like everyday someone in a position of power is getting nailed for sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. Well, I hate to burst your Christmas bubble, but even Jolly Old Saint Nick, yep you know him as Santa Claus has now gotten his ass and his jingle bells in a sling as the “Me Too” juggernaut rolls on placing his chestnuts in the open fire of transparency.

 

Word has leaked out to the Mike Marino News Network that accusers are coming out of the Christmas toy box claiming Santa has been caught with his red pants down playing with his north pole in an obscene manner around young, impressionable elfen colleagues and others.

 

He has been accused by numerous individuals of leaving Barbie Doll sex toys under the Christmas tree instead of Easy Bake Ovens at the homes of young people who should be playing with Barbies Pink Playhouse instead of looking for batteries. His attorney spoke at a press conference claiming they were meant for the moms on his route, but somehow got mixed up. You must realize he continued what going up and down a chimney can do to a man. The soot and smoke alone are enough to set off a sexual frenzy, not to mention the amount of marijuana brownies and milk he inhales around the world!”

 

On numerous occasions Santa was found fondling ladies underwear in dresser drawers while the family slept until one night in