Christmas in a Cloud

I’ve been having a most notable tough time with life lately. In April of 2011 I was arrested on a number of drug charges, the most serious, (and unshakable), being MDMA trafficking. For this offense I will being doing time in the North Carolina penal system, starting in late January and ending as much as three years later. This turn of events has left me completely broke, filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and living the absolute definition of paycheck to paycheck. The prospect of doing prison time in the very near future is daunting, but oddly enough, this somehow isn’t even the inspiration for the title of this blog entry.

Nor is the fact that I was unable to afford to take off work and drive ten hours to see relatives who would be happy to have me for the Holidays. I honestly couldn’t afford the gas for my car, not to mention not push it further towards impending repairs. I also have a strained relationship with my Father, whom I might also have visited just over two hours away. No, even these things don’t contribute to this blog title, even though it would obviously fit. The “cloud” to which I refer in this case is of cigarette smoke, of all things, and how I ended up spending my Christmas.

Despite my current woes and station in life, I somehow managed to recently land a girlfriend. Her name is Laine. While she is certifiably nuts and a relapsing alcoholic, she was also extremely intelligent, pretty, and has a lot going for her, but I digress. The death of a dear friend of hers merely days after our first date served as an instant bonding mechanism for the two of us, as I gladly provided a shoulder on which Laine could cry. This certainly fast-tracked our relationship, and when it became clear that I planned to pretend Christmas was just another day, she reciprocated my caring ways and offered me to join her family on Jesus’ birthday.

We cleared up the whole: “wow, you must be some desperate freak to latch onto me like this three weeks into dating” thing quickly. We agreed that it was merely odd timing and convenience that would lead us to share this “sacred” day, not that we were careening towards a wedding engagement or anything anyway. (When you are recovering substance abusers, things like this stop seeming odd anyway.) In other words, I wasn’t interested to meet her parents to learn where my soul mate came from or anything, I was more down with spending time with her and eating prime rib instead of sitting around in the halfway house. Not to mention I’m pretty social and enjoy trying to charm people in somewhat bizarre situations. She was just happy to have me as a buffer between her alcoholic mother, in addition to an excuse to leave when she wished. And she enjoyed being with me as well.

So off we went on a rainy Christmas day to a nearby Atlanta suburb. I had a cheesy seasonal floral arrangement I’d picked up because it’s just bad form for an interloper to arrive for an occasion as this empty-handed. Now Laine is a sophisticated girl---just has that air about her. She has a masters degree from a top-notch university and a great job in the computer world. In addition, she attended high school in one of the wealthier areas of Atlanta. This place I once considered to be an example of the “refining of the gene pool”, but that’s another story. Laine also mentioned her father was extremely intelligent and flew helicopters, and these are not normally poor-man’s attributes. Suffice it to say, I expected to encounter an upper-middle class environment for this dinner, but it didn’t quite end up that way.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying these people were living in a trailer park. They were actually on par with my Dad’s side of the family as far as social status, but that’s not even the point. I guess I’m just spoiled with where I’ve been Christmas-ing for most of my life, and as I’ve explained, all signed pointed to something other than a 1,700 sq. ft. house in serious need of interior renovations. I was exceedingly grateful to be there and will always be thankful to Laine for taking me, but it just threw me for a loop---almost as much as Laine’s Mother’s rose-colored glasses. Literally. I still can’t figure out that fashion choice, and neither could her daughter, for that matter. But that wasn’t even the weird part---I had entered a time warp, Mad Men style.

So there were five of us on hand: the nuclear family including Laine’s older brother, and me. I was greeted warmly, but it was just awkward because, a) I couldn’t drink, and b) this gathering was in desperate need of social lubrication. I can usually light up any social engagement, as I’m basically a talk-show host when I put my mind to it. This time, however, I was a bit gun-shy, as my current story is not exactly a springboard from which I’d like to launch. “Me? Oh, I’m recovering from substance abuse issues, working a dead-end service job, living in a halfway house, waiting for my prison sentence to be handed down. Thanks for asking!” So I’m hanging back, keeping answers brief, and looking for a better place to steer things. Laine’s parents were friendly enough, and I got good vibes from them, but they deferred mostly to the bane of my existence: the poor conversationalist. In this case, their son Brad...

At least Brad offered a firm handshake and managed at least a tinge of eye contact when we met before almost entirely disregarding me. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t need to be venter of attention, but I do need to be in a conversation that might tend to general interests instead of inane stories about the behavior of a dog, etc. Brad was a classic case of a guy with nothing notable to say, but who dominates the conversation anyway. I would try to indulge him when he got near something interesting, but inevitably we would get back to tedium. Did I mention that I couldn’t drink? It was brutal---especially because I could tell Laine’s parents would be a fun chat, but that was impossible with this guy in the room. Thankfully other things were interesting though, in a physical way.

Smoking. Indoors! Unbeknownst to me, Mom had a butt going elsewhere in the kitchen around the time we got there, which is, well...whatever. The crazy thing was soon enough not one of them, but everyone had a butt going, right there at the kitchen table. I hadn’t seen this sort of behavior since---hell, since 1975 at my Grandma’s house. I too wanted a cigarette, but I honestly didn’t want to add to the cloud in the room, so I went outside. It all reminded me of taking a train trip in Europe, when oddly I needed my own cig lit to make the second-hand smoke more bearable. I had no idea people still smoked indoors to this extent, hence the impetus for this blog title.

The real kicker was after our delicious meal, (at which the homemade rolls were downright delectable, I might add), out came an ashtray, and butts were lit by everyone, right there at the table. It was then that I noticed a small faux dogwood try nearby, complete with white blooms---except they were yellow from who knows how many years of nicotine floating through the air. Nothing short of a trip through a time warp, I tell ya.

After the meal was gift exchange time, and the family repaired to the living room for gift exchange while I grabbed a nap on the recliner in the family room. Everyone re-convened in the kitchen for more cigarettes and conversation in the kitchen. I felt guilty about not rejoining the gathering, but a poor conversationalist produces a force-field that I am unable to penetrate, even if it makes things awkward. Eventually, thankfully, Brad took his leave, and I was back in the mix, if only briefly. I have a feeling the damage was done, however, and Laine’s parents saw me as some sort of anti-social weirdo, or worse, the judgmental fuck that I am.

I guess things ended on a cordial enough note, though, and apparently I was a damn sight better than the last guy Laine brought through there, who failed to make eye contact with anyone and literally nodded off at the table. Dad wouldn’t even address him, so I may have been off the hook for being a snob. I would enjoy going back there sometime because frankly, if those folks produced someone as cool as Laine, I am intrigued at the thought of getting to know them a lot better. Alas, if that day ever comes, it’s probably going to be at least two Christmases from now, because my ass is going up the river for a while. In the meantime Im just glad to have spent a Christmas in a Cloud.