Bad Habits - The nightie before Christmas - January 06 2005
In search of a stranger's underwear
This year's holiday decorating was easy: one 3-foot artificial, pre-lighted tree from Target. It looks nice in the hotel room foyer. Stacked beneath it are blackened presents. Flakes of burnt wrapping paper drift through the air whenever we open the door real fast. I pretend they're snowflakes and that I've just come in off the slopes. And wait, what's that smoky smell? Let's just say it's piñon wood, not bags of my belongings.
I try not to think of my first attempt at holiday decorating, the two days I spent clipping the front hedges at my former home. Arranging the lights just so to give a jaunty air of holiday cheer. Futilely so, what with the firemen shutting off the electricity and all.
And I'm not in a sour mood or anything, but I won't be giving Christmas gifts if only because I can't bear to put another item into a box. The past two weeks have been nothing but putting belongings into boxes and putting those boxes into other boxes — be it the Dumpster or the storage space.
Good things have been coming in bags. Since we're practically homeless and all, and since our post-fire wardrobe consisted of the clothes on our backs, the CL family outfitted us with bags and bags of donated clothes — so many items that I almost feel guilty, like it should go to someone worse off, someone with typhus, someone missing a leg.
At CL's totally nondenominational holiday party, I played a fun game called "Match the Clothes with the Colleague Contest." I was hoping someone could identify my outfit. But first on my garment-matching list was the blue mesh camouflage nightie, completely see-through, very sexy and somehow not the first item I would have put in a care package of clothing for a disaster victim.
Of course, on the one hand, I didn't wanna know, you know? 'Cause no matter who it was, you can't avoid picturing them naked, popping out of a birthday cake with a toy machine gun in one hand and a dildo in the other. On the other hand, I had to find out because they were totally right: I needed such an item, only I didn't know it. Probably because I didn't know the combination existed, but I should have guessed. Considering we have a Republican president, militaristic underwear was the obvious next step.
Previous CL Christmas parties were for drinking the equivalent of the raise I felt I deserved. And parties back before those were for clandestine hook-ups and the attempt at gossip-inducing behavior. I say attempt because you had to do a lot back then to even land on the radar. Sex in the bathroom? Trashing the bar while high? Sleeping with a couple or four co-workers? Those things were practically expected. To get on the post-shindig map you'd have to shoot up on Santa's lap and then set yourself on fire. I'm convinced that in CL's less corporate years, even though it would never show up on a W-2, part of our compensation was alcohol.
To my surprise, in less than an hour, I discovered the former owner of the GI Jane nightie. She was quite cute, so there was no lasting psychological trauma. She also assured me that it'd never been worn. (Whew!) And that's been the way with this disaster. Despite all the problems, things have been working out better than expected. I'm just glad we got that SUV a few months ago. Because if it comes down to it, we can live in that sucker. The seats flip down and everything, very roomy.
It'll be just like camping. And I've got the perfect sleepwear.
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