Darkside Rainbow

When I woke this morning to the sounds of very loud carolers wandering through my apartment complex, my first thought wasn’t “Yay, it’s Christmas.” My first thought was “If they don’t shut up, I’m going to take my cat” - who has not, by the way, been declawed - “out there and stuff him down the front of someone’s pants. It’ll certainly improve the quality of that bloody yowling.”

Yeah, I’ve got the Christmas spirit, don’t I?

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Christmas. I hate the materialism of it, I hate that people use it as an excuse to shove religion down my throat, and oh dear gods, do I hate the crowds of Christmas shoppers.

But I love the smiles on my friends’ faces when they open their gifts, even though just a week ago they were scowling because I absolutely forbade them from buying anything for me. I love the way the city looks at night, when you can walk down the street and see Christmas lights in almost every window. I love the sense of exhilarated peace that seems to come with the season, once the sun sets and those artificial stars twinkle from every rooftop and every lawn. I love the general spirit of the holiday, even if I don’t believe in the current Christian principle behind it.

And I love that this is the first time in recent memory that I haven’t had to deal with a boyfriend’s parents on Christmas.

I can not stand the “meet the family” ritual around Christmas. They always seem to think that since I don’t particularly want to spend Christmas with my drama-llama family (where it’s not unlikely that someone will have to separate my mother and aunt Mary before they draw blood in a front-lawn fistfight over something or other, usually something related to pie), I have to spend Christmas with someone’s family. Just once, I’d love to drill it through someone’s head that I am not a family person.

Especially since my boyfriends’ mothers inevitably hate me.

Fathers, brothers, sisters, etc…we all get along great. The maternal units, on the other hand, view me with unbridled loathing no matter how polite, gentlemanly, and respectful I am. I dress nicely, tie the hair back, make myself look presentable enough to meet Mother Theresa at the pearly gates, but it’s never good enough. Arturo’s mother pitched a fit at the dinner table when he brought me into the room; I suppose I’d have been more upset if I’d understood enough Spanish to catch anything she said beyond a sudden English burst of “harlot”. Patrick’s mother took one look at me and said “Oh, dear, I didn’t raise you to date wetbacks.” That offended the hell out of me, and I’m not even Hispanic. I’ll spare you my response, as it involved more ethnic slurs than you can likely imagine.

There has not been a single “meet the family” Christmas gig where I didn’t show up with a smile on my face and determination to make a good impression only to quietly excuse myself within minutes, ostensibly on the polite premise that I didn’t want to disrupt the family’s happy gathering - but really so they wouldn’t see me struggling to hold back tears at being so viciously attacked by these women for doing nothing, when I was trying my damnedest to do the whole family-holiday thing for the boyfriend’s sake. The only matriarch who ever liked me was the mother of the British-Chinese boy that I dated in the years between Try #1 and Try #2 with The Ex, and with her overseas in England the closest I came to meeting her was voice conference via Skype. Maybe if I’d met her face to face, she wouldn’t have been nearly as welcoming.

I don’t know what it is about me. Since other people don’t generally have that sort of vicious reaction to me on sight, I can only conclude - for the sake of my self esteem, among other things - that it’s not me at all. It’s what I represent: a visual confirmation that yes, her son is gay, and no, baby boy likely won’t be bringing home any fat, happy grandchildren any time soon.

Either that, or I just date men with really rude mothers. It’s gotten to the point where if anyone says “I’d like to bring you home to meet my family”, I start wondering if I should carry a concealed weapon or just show up with blades out, ready to tussle, because it’s going to get ugly.

In the case of Arturo’s mother, at least, I know it was the grandchildren thing. Nevermind that he had an older brother and sister, both happily married and pumping out babies at exponentially growing rates. Arturo was her youngest, her baby boy, and she wanted grandchildren out of him. I was just some man-harlot keeping him from finding the right woman.

And then they wonder why I won’t bring anyone home to meet my family. As if the varying degrees of insanity among my relatives aren’t enough, who knows when someone will start with the snide comments about not having children, never getting married, and of course embarrassing the family. I already got that when I would show up on my own, back when I was still willing to cross the Louisiana state line and risk my own sanity by dealing with those people (and it’s been at least five years since the last time, thank gods).

At least my mother is giving up on the grandchildren thing. My older sisters are hopeless, chasing off men with teeth and claws every chance they get. The only one of them who actually wanted children is now past healthy childbearing age and doesn’t even want to risk artificial implantation, with the next in line nearing that age rapidly. I’m a lost cause as far as impregnating anything with ovaries is concerned. And my mother…well, let’s just say that right now she’s had enough of children to last her a lifetime. My cousin is on an active tour of duty in Iraq (and you wonder why, despite my stated apathy towards my family, I’d like to just bring the soldiers home?), and my mother’s taken on the responsibility of looking after her kids while she’s overseas. The boy and girl, ages 10 and 12, are driving her out of her mind. She’s actually told me, “God, I thought I had it bad with you and the girls? I didn’t know what bad was. They’re going to drive me into an early grave, but on the positive side they’ve made me realize that I had good kids.”

Frankly, I’d rather have that admission than any high-priced Christmas gift.

But in truth? I’m happy to forget that it’s even Christmas. I…honestly don’t have any good memories of Christmas, not even from my childhood. It was always family drama, people sniping at each other, people using each others’ unwitting children to be nasty to each other. The one time I spent Christmas with my father’s family was horribly uncomfortable, because my stepmother and I made a vague pretense of ignoring our loathing for one another and I got to meet the predominantly-white members of my family tree for the first time. It’s lovely to be introduced to an aunt-something-or-other only to have her look me over and then turn to speak to my father as if I wasn’t even there:

“Why, honey, why didn’t you tell us your other baby was colored?”

…

What’s so great about Christmas, again?

Today, I intend to try to find out. This is my first Christmas alone, my first Christmas where I have the freedom to do what I want, to enjoy the season, to just relax and enjoy the day off. I have a few friends coming over tonight; I’ll be cooking, and we’ll be having dinner and then sprawling out to hang out like we always do. Maybe for once I’ll get those warm Christmas fuzzies everyone else talks about. Or maybe I’ll just enjoy a great night with some of my closest friends.

Some people think it’s sad that I won’t have family with me on Christmas - neither mine, nor a loved one’s.

I’ll have a family. A family that I chose.

And I’m happy that for the first time in my life, I won’t be spending Christmas miserable, humiliated, and in tears.

Christmas with the family, happy effin’ holidays