All I Want for Christmas… Is No Christmas
By Colton Aalto
Alec Ryder’s arrest in Aspen, early on the morning of December 25, is the latest disaster in his series of unhappy Christmases. He’s dreaded the holiday since being subjected to endless church services as a child. Being kicked out on Christmas Day after he came out to his parents, followed by an improbable series of yearly yuletide trips to the emergency room, haven’t made his Christmases any merrier. But getting busted for prostitution is the worst catastrophe; it means Alec’s dream of a college degree is gone, replaced by the specter of jail time.
Just when Alec thinks things can’t get worse, Hayden Adler shows up to interrogate him. Hayden is a glamorous attorney who also happens to be Alec’s college roommate’s cousin. Alec’s had a crush on Hayden for years, but whatever miniscule chance Alec might’ve had is now history—just like the life he’s been trying to build for himself.
But things aren’t quite what they seem. In a long line of miserable Christmases, Alec will never forget this one, although not for the reasons he suspects.
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MY ARREST on Christmas Day was quite a spectacle. I was crossing the hotel lobby of the St. Regis Aspen on an early morning walk of shame—wearing the same clothes I’d worn the night before—when seven men simultaneously converged on me. In their dark suits, the men stood out like sore thumbs in the colorful, ski-parka world of Aspen. For some reason I noticed the small wires that ran from my accosters’ ears into their coats.
As the men surrounded and restrained me, the hotel guests who were hunting early morning coffee and newspapers gave us astonished looks. With no uniformed policemen in evidence, the guests had a hard time deciphering what was happening and could only speculate what seven men in suits and ties would want with a college kid in jeans whose hair was still damp from showering.
I was only mildly surprised, having halfway expected—and dreaded—a moment like this. My first thought was sadness because I would never get my college degree. I had been on pace to graduate in five months, after the spring semester. Instead I would be rotting in a jail cell.
“Alec Ryder?” one of the suits asked. He was a tall black man who looked like a Hollywood version of an undercover police officer. Like Morgan Freeman in a film noir murder mystery. I nodded. “I’m Agent Richardson,” he said, flashing a badge that could have been a toy or a Halloween costume accessory. “Please come with us.” I was hustled out of the lobby and into a car with dark tinted windows. Two similar cars waited nearby.
Did they need this army to arrest me? The show of force might have made sense if I was a high-profile international spy trapped after a round-the-world chase. But I was a run-of-the-mill criminal, guilty of only victimless crimes, and neither armed nor dangerous.
While they nabbed me, I overheard the cops describing how they had staked out the house where my college roommate Landon and I were staying two days earlier, on December 23. It was Landon’s great-uncle’s house, one of the more lavish mansions on Red Mountain. Red Mountain sits on the opposite side of Aspen from the ski slopes, which means each of the spectacular mega-mansions stretching up the mountain has awesome views of the town and the slopes. It was sometimes called Billionaire’s Row, and I grimaced at the thought of cops swarming up Red Mountain and casing Landon’s great-uncle’s house, all because of me.
The police also staked out the restaurant where Landon and I were waiting tables. It was owned by a friend of Landon’s great-uncle, and we had agreed to help with the holiday rush. The cops got worried when I didn’t show up at the house on the twenty-third or the twenty-fourth, and they missed me as I left the restaurant on both days because I slipped out through a side door. After eventually tracking me down at the St. Regis, they acted quickly despite the scene they created.
My mysterious schedule on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth was the simple consequence of being a rent boy. Cut off by my parents before I had even finished high school, I worked my way through all but one semester of college in the world’s oldest profession. On Christmas morning, I was bidding good-bye to an interracial couple from South Africa I had entertained on Christmas Eve; the two guys had given each other the same Christmas present, which was me. For much of the week before Christmas, I had been busy turning tricks. Because I’d worked the Christmas holiday in Aspen for four years, I had plenty of repeat business, and Aspen’s hotel concierges, always eager to please the customer, were happy to give me new leads.
Merry Christmas, I thought glumly as I settled into the backseat of one of the big black cars, stuffed between two beefy guys in suits. How fitting that I was arrested in public and hauled off to jail on the one day of the year that had never been merry for me. The only thing likely to bring me joy on Christmas would be a permanent cancellation of the holiday.
As the car imprisoning me nosed its way through the snow-packed streets of Aspen, the town looked like it popped out of a Christmas card. Bright strings of lights, colorful holiday decorations, magical window displays, fresh white snow: they added up to a picture-perfect scene. For most people, anyway. Not for me. God, I hated Christmas.
Exhausted from the previous couple of nights and strangely relaxed now that I knew my fate, I dozed off as the cops’ car crept out of Aspen and the snowfall intensified into a blinding snowstorm. A white Christmas, I thought. How nice. At least I wouldn’t have to endure another Christmas for a full 365 days. The day was for people with families. That wasn’t me.
I have no idea how long I napped, but it was still snowing heavily when the car stopped and I was hustled inside a nondescript building with no windows. In the white-out blizzard, I couldn’t tell where the building was located. I was led down a long hallway and into what appeared to be a padded cell. Were they so worried about me that they had to lock me in a room designed to keep people from hurting themselves?
Agent Richardson told me to strip and without thinking I complied, belatedly realizing I was still wearing the green jockstrap that was part of my elf costume for the South Africans. I fully expected Richardson to bust out laughing, but his handsome face was expressionless until I pulled fifteen hundred-dollar bills from the pouch of the jockstrap where the South Africans had insisted on stuffing them. Even Richardson probably had never seen anything as ridiculous. He gave me a suspicious look as his eyes shifted back and forth between my naked body and the stack of bills. I suppose he was thinking about how to protect the money as evidence in my trial.
Two of the suits took pictures, which was odd because I never thought of mug shots being taken when you were naked and already in a cell. But I had never been arrested before so I didn’t know how it worked. Weirder was some type of scanning device they used on me.
After they finished, I asked Richardson, “Don’t I get to talk to a lawyer or something?” If Richardson had read me my rights, I had been asleep in the backseat of the car.
“You’re not charged with anything, Alec,” Richardson answered calmly, although I noticed him glance at the pile of bills next to my clothes.
I frowned. Not charged with anything? Why was I in a windowless room, stark naked, with cops swarming all over? “Then why am I in a padded cell?” I asked. I wasn’t in Russia or China or some police state. In the US, cops didn’t hold people who weren’t charged with crimes. Or did they?
“It’s not a padded cell, Alec,” Richardson said, unable to hide a chuckle and a slight grin that made him look friendly rather tha
n sinister. “It’s an acoustic room. And you’re here because you’re a person of interest. Technically, we can hold you as long as we need to.” That didn’t sound right, but I didn’t have the energy to complain. What was a “person of interest”? Maybe cops kept “persons of interest” locked up for as long as they wanted and then brought charges.
One of the suits opened the door and nodded to Richardson. Richardson relaxed and gestured to my clothes. “You can get dressed,” he said. I glared at him. Why did the cops make me strip in the first place? Now Richardson was giving me “permission” to get dressed. Nothing made sense. Out of pique, I stayed naked, flopping into a chair. If being naked was making Richardson uncomfortable, great.
In the dark, quiet room, I was ready to nod off after a few minutes. Richardson stood near the door, guarding me. I didn’t see the need for constant surveillance, but I had no idea what police did when they busted a person of interest who also happened to be a gay hustler carrying a thick wad of unmarked bills. I was never sure, but I might have dozed off as my mind wandered back through the unbroken string of unhappy Christmas disasters that had finally culminated in the catastrophe of my arrest.
Christmas hadn’t always been a disaster for me, although at its best Christmas had never been more than a yuletide disappointment to me. In my childhood, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day had been fully occupied by church services with my fanatically religious parents. My mother hadn’t always been a religious nut, but after my father died when I was five, she remarried and adopted my stepfather’s abject devotion to religion. Not just any religion. The extreme, right-wing, evangelical version that pushed out anything but church. As a child, I spent the vast majority of both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in church services.
The drudgery of attending church for endless hours on Christmas Eve and then rising at the crack of dawn on the next day—so we could show up at church again, bright and early, for a double service—may have been my first reason to dislike the holiday, but it wasn’t the main reason I hated it. No, my bitterness went beyond compulsory church attendance. I could have lived with my parents’ obsession with church had Christmas been accompanied by the usual elements of childhood excitement, joy, and happiness. In other words, presents. But during my childhood, my sole Christmas present was inevitably a new Bible. Not that I had worn out the previous year’s Bible. I watched other kids get cool toys and games while I got something that was supposed to make me happy but instead depressed me. I felt guilty because I was not enamored with my new Bible the way I was supposed to be.
For my parents, not succumbing to the commercialism of Christmas was a badge of honor, demonstrating their commitment to God. And, left unsaid, their superiority over the run-of-the-mill parents who spoiled their children at Christmas with toys. I sort of bought into it as a child, but as I got older, I saw my parents’ game for what it was—a vain effort to show how much holier they were than everyone else. I was simply collateral damage in their never-ending ego trip.
Against the background of perpetually dreary Christmases, when I was seventeen I made the colossally stupid mistake of coming out to my parents, and doubled down on stupid and raised myself to idiot when I did it on Christmas Day. I should have kept my mouth shut. I could have skated through another six months until the end of high school without telling them, but I was convinced my parents knew already and it would make life easier if I didn’t have to hide.
I had known I was gay since I entered seventh grade and was introduced to something called gym class—with locker rooms and boys in gym shorts, their legs exposed for anyone to see. I didn’t immediately recognize that my fascination with other boys—two identical twins in particular—indicated I was different. But by the time ninth grade rolled around and I discovered there were men called homosexuals, I knew what I was.
My parents were happy I showed no interest in girls in my early teenage years. The biggest fear for crazed religious nuts was their kids having sex. God forbid that a girl got pregnant. But as I turned sixteen and then seventeen, my parents began to pressure me about girls. At first it was subtle, but then not so subtle. They wanted me to date the “right kind” of girl—and take her on the “right kind” of dates and have the “right kind” of relationship, meaning no booze, no drugs, and no sex. And no kissing, no holding hands, and no dancing. Like I said, they were religious fanatics and wedded to a church that condemned virtually everything modern teenagers enjoyed. I suspected they thought my skateboard was vaguely satanic because I had so much fun on it and it wasn’t a religious icon.
Choosing Christmas to reveal my sexual orientation was far from inspired, but the news sort of bubbled out, and before I knew it, I was telling my parents I was gay and would never change. It wasn’t a phase, I wasn’t being influenced by my friends, and I wasn’t confused.
My revelation turned Christmas Day into a battlefield. The battle was one-sided from the beginning, and by the time Christmas Day turned to Christmas night, I was homeless, having been ordered to be out of the house in two hours by my aghast parents. They were headed to a church service, of course, and made it clear that when they returned I was to be gone and never seen or heard from again.
I stayed with a friend until high school was over. His parents lived on a ranch, and I pitched in on the never-ending chores, starting at dawn and ending after dusk. I was more or less an unpaid ranch hand for six months, but I grew up fast and was grateful to have a place to live and food to eat. The experience made me more determined than ever to get the hell out of town.
I planned on going to college after I finished high school. I had the grades and the college board scores, but without a penny to my name, college looked like a hopeless dream. Or so I thought until I met Axel on a trip to Boulder.
The trip was my last-ditch effort to explore every possible means of financial aid for college. Axel was a grad student working in the financial aid office. He spent a ton of time with me and helped me plenty, although at the end it was clear that I couldn’t afford college, even if I worked full-time at one of the available jobs. My only option was to work and save money in the hope of enrolling for a semester or two here and there. The ten-year college plan.
Out of the blue, Axel suggested that, if I was willing to try something a little unusual, there was a good chance I could make enough money to pay for college. We could test his idea that evening if I was up for it. I told Axel I was game for anything.
I thought I was game for anything, but I was shocked when I heard his proposal. He whispered that all I had to do was let him fuck my ass while an old, rich guy he knew watched.
I was stunned, but simultaneously intrigued. I liked Axel’s long hair. His tattooed body was damn sexy, and his visible piercings were cool and hinted of more hidden under his clothes. When I met him, fooling around with him was the first thing that crossed my mind. I mean, like most eighteen-year-old boys, I thought endlessly about sex, so given Axel was hot, of course hooking up with him had crossed my mind. But I had no evidence suggesting Axel could be gay, and I assumed even if he was, he wouldn’t be interested in a dweeby kid like me. I perceived myself as a skinny, gangly teenager, although my body had filled out nicely over the last year and I was more than satisfied with the ripped abs, hard pecs, and muscular biceps that had unexpectedly appeared on my previously skinny frame. Those ranch chores helped remake my body.
I was flattered Axel wanted to put on a sex show with me. Being eighteen and perpetually horny, getting paid to do something I would happily have done anyway was alluring. The thing about being eighteen is that you’re not good at considering the long-term consequences of things that sound good at the moment. Or, for that matter, the short-term consequences.
I thought, why not? What did I have to lose? Despite some trepidation, I told Axel I was good with his proposal.
Performing for an audience was totally weird, but after the initial awkwardness, I got into it. Maybe I had an exhibitionist streak in me, or maybe I was m
erely thrilled to be having sex. Nothing I had done with other guys prepared me for Axel fucking me silly for the enjoyment of his client. My previous sexual exploits were limited to a few bumbling failures with other teenaged boys, but we were rank amateurs compared to Axel. Which, I guess, shouldn’t have been a surprise, because Axel got paid for what he did, which technically made him a professional. Experiencing real sex for the first time was amazing.
The old guy lavished praise on us and gave me more money than I had ever made for a day of work, even a week. I couldn’t decide which was better—cash in my pocket or the most amazing sex I had experienced, not that it took much to reach that level. I knew I wanted to repeat what Axel and I had done. And repeat it over and over.
Afterward, toasting our success with a pizza and a pitcher of beer—my first illegal drink—Axel was talkative, regaling me with stories of his past sexual shenanigans and rehashing what had happened between us. He kept me in a constant state of arousal, not that I needed much more than recalling what he had done to me. “Dude,” Axel said, “you were one incredible fuck. When I first saw you at the financial aid office, I thought you were cute and had a hot little body, but damn, once I got your clothes off, your body was awesome. You’re ripped. You may be one of the best fucks I’ve ever had.” It crossed my mind that Axel only said that because he was drunk and wanted to flatter me with an eye toward getting me into the sack again, but my head was in a cloud thinking that a cool guy like Axel believed I was hot.
“With your looks, dude, you can turn as many tricks as you want,” Axel said. “The sky’s the limit. If you’re okay with guys using your body, you can pay for college with no problems. Escorting is all mental. Get your head around it and you’ll do fine. I know. I’ve been tricking on and off during college and grad school. It’s a damn easy way to make a buck. I’m only working in the financial aid office now so I have something to put on my resume.”
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