You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas

by Augusten Burroughs

  Even out of focus, a seven-foot armoire was difficult to miss, especially when it was exactly where my beer-can pyramid should have been.

  I blinked.

  A marble-topped nightstand was on my left. Once again, Where was my upside-down white plastic laundry hamper bedside table? The only marble in my apartment was the threshold at the bathroom door.

  There was a delicate, pale green china cup and saucer on top of the nightstand. The cup was half-filled with coffee and two spent Sweet’N Low packets lay on the marble beside the saucer.

  The handle of the cup faced away from me, and though I noticed this, I did not consider what it implied.

  Beyond these few details, I could not see. Though, I did believe I could make out a form on the ... Was it another bed? Right there on the other side of the nightstand.

  One might have reasonably concluded I was not alone in that room.

  I had consulted the Magic Eight Ball so frequently as a child, that even at twenty-six, the toy’s ominous answers floated to the surface of my internal window, even when I hadn’t consciously asked a question. SIGNS POINT TO YES came to mind.

  The bedding had the depth of a snowstorm; I felt buried beneath the richest, most sumptuous mounds of fabric, layers of it: sheet, blanket, duvet, bedspread. All of this, too, was foreign.

  There could be no doubt: this was not my futon.

  It was with a mounting sense of distress that my eyes traveled once again to the window where I saw now that the drapes and the bedding shared the same design.

  That is when I knew that something in the universe itself had, indeed, malfunctioned; I was somewhere color-coordinated.

  I scanned the nightstand but did not see the familiar glint of gold—a tiny lighthouse flashing: HERE ARE YOUR GLASSES. So I leaned over the edge of the bed and began to spider my hand along the carpeted floor. I’d stepped on enough pairs of glasses to know that mine seemed to prefer the floor.

  Blind, and with my head upside down, I glanced toward the foot of the bed and saw a slash of red. Odd, I thought. What could that be?

  And in reply, five words burned through the murky blue of Magic Eight Ball juice: BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW.

  I thought, Seriously. What is that?

  Finally, my fingers located the glasses tucked into an uncanny little crevice behind the front legs of the night-stand; a spot seemingly designed to attract and retain fallen objects. No human eyes would ever have found them there. I plucked them from the crevice, hoping not to find a bent temple. What I found instead was a pair of lenses so mental-patient filthy and caked with crud, it shocked me that I had been able to see through them. Pretending that that had not been a pubic hair on the left lens but only an exceedingly svelte and limber dust bunny, I fogged the lenses with my breath and attempted to polish them with the edge of the sheet. As I did this, I glanced over at the streak of red and as I stared, more detail was revealed, not unlike a word rising slowly to the surface of my internal Magic Eight Ball.

  A band of white smoke seemed to surround the red cloud. And there was a luminous, tiny golden star—in the center.

  Glasses were amazing.

  Because the instant the mysterious floating blob was resolved in clarifying detail, there was no puzzle to what it was. Any kindergarten-aged child in America knew the answer.

  The red velveteen, the white fur trim and then the glossy flash of black. Yes, that would be the belt. The sun kicked a highlight off the buckle: a tiny golden star.

  So. If that’s Santa’s suit, I wondered dangerously, where might Santa be?

  For the answer, I needed only to slide my eyes left, to the bed on the other side of the nightstand.

  He was probably about sixty-five. A portly gentleman, apparently naked beneath the sheet, he had a full, white beard and silver, somewhat stylish reading glasses perched low on his nose. He was peering at me over the top rim of those glasses, with an amused little smile.

  If the notepad next to the telephone was correct, I was naked in the bed next to Santa Claus at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

  There was even a twinkle in his eye. “Ah, bonjour!” he said. “Bonjour.” He took a noisy sip from the cup of coffee.

  I removed my glasses and tossed them on the night-stand. Then I dropped my head into my hands and groaned; undoubtedly rather rude as far as gestures went.

  This was not happening to me.

  YOU MAY RELY ON IT.

  I still felt slightly drunk from the previous night. Of which I could remember absolutely nothing. I did know that a Long Island Iced Tea would have really hit the spot at that moment.

  “Aww,” he said. “Not feeling so clear-headed this morning?”

  When I slipped my glasses back on and looked at him, he raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh, no,” I assured him. “I feel extremely clear-headed this morning, as a matter of fact. And that’s the problem.”

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  It was apparent that something terrible had happened. I was at the Waldorf with Santa and I didn’t have even the vaguest idea how the hell this came to be. Was it possible my glasses were so filthy I could have mistaken him for a hockey coach?

  Given my history, I was most likely at a bar when I saw a dirty old Frenchman in a ratty Santa suit. That much I could believe. Something about December in New York always squeezed the crazies out from under their rocks. It was not uncommon to be having a drink and see a guy walk in with cute little reindeer antlers clipped to his head, even a red stocking cap. Rather less common, I supposed, was an old fat guy in a full Santa suit, though that was beside the point.

  My question was: How did I go from merely seeing the dirty French Santa in a bar to being in his hotel room the next morning? And this presented me with an actual equation. How did one plus one equal old French Santa?

  I was accustomed to waking up in bed with somebody I had never seen before. Not, however, with a man in costume; one old enough to be dead from natural causes. This was a new low for even me, a person who was essentially the gold medalist in the category.

  I climbed out of bed because, no matter what, it was better to be dressed. This much was perfectly clear.

  I saw my clothes, neatly folded on the low upholstered bench at the foot of my bed. As I stepped into my boxer-briefs, Santa said, “Mmm, even nicer by the light of day.”

  Horrified, I looked up to see him stripping the covers away from his own doughy body, revealing a small, World War II–era erection. A leering, oily smile had formed on his lips.

  He patted the unoccupied side of his mattress. “Come over here, Kevin,” he said, “and get your tail back into my bed.”

  I froze, one leg in my jeans, the other raised. So, I was Kevin. Which was fine. It showed I’d had the good sense not to supply him with my actual name. So why had I followed him here in my actual body?

  And what was this business about my tail? He’d said to get my tail back into his bed, which implied that I, Kevin, had been in his bed at an earlier point in time.

  Dirty French Santa’s greedy little finger-eyes were trained on my crotch; I yanked the jeans up and buttoned them, zipping the fly with a finality that I hoped suggested a door slam. I stretched my T-shirt over my head, jabbed my arms through the holes and yanked it down. I felt the tag scratch at my throat but didn’t want to take the time to turn it around.

  Fiddling with his irritating little doodad, he asked, “What makes you so shy all of a sudden? Hmm? Maybe you need another massage, yes?”

  It was interesting, I noted, how the brain seemed to actually perceive a slowing of time when one was faced with unspeakable horror.

  I tried to mask the panic in my voice by raising the volume, which only made me sound hysterical. “You need to tell me exactly what happened in this appalling room last night.”

  Santa was enjoying this. He cackled and produced a wad of phlegm, which led to a coughing fit. He covered his mouth with his plump, pale little fist and cyc
led through his repertoire of deeply repulsive sounds, gasping for air between gags, as he tried to expel what I could only assume was a dead rat. “Excuse me,” he said, finally. “I had a little something stuck in my throat.” He waited a beat before adding, “But not what I wish was stuck in my throat!” His watery eyes were now bloodshot.

  I winced. What a hideous creature; ebola in need of a back wax.

  “As for last night,” he continued in his slippery eel of a voice, “oh, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin. You were a very naughty, naughty boy.” He wagged his finger at me and then made a small French clucking sound, like he was attempting to nurse at the tit of a barn cat.

  I stared down at him, wanting to cut his dark tongue right out of his foul mouth.

  “Yeah, okay, okay, that’s cute. And you would of course know that I was ‘naughty’ because you, after all, are Santa Claus. Ha. I get it.” I bored into him with my most leveling gaze. My jaw muscles clenched and unclenched. “Now, what I’d like to know is, what happened during this little massage of yours? Do I need to be worried about catching dirty French Santa pox?”

  Haughty and defensive now, he threw his hands up and shrugged. “What could we do? You were drunk. You couldn’t even get an erection, that’s how drunk you were.”

  I narrowed my eyes, on the brink of pointing out it was possible that alcohol was not the only contributing factor to my impotence.

  But then, I couldn’t do that, because apparently I had come here willingly. As in, by choice. As in, “Yeah, the repulsive slob in the nubby Santa outfit—over there, the French one propping himself up against the piano, snapping his fingers out of time, that’s the one. Of course I’m sure, Wrap him up!”

  Santa then said, “Besides, you just wanted more, more, more of that Kahlúa,” with an exaggerated frown of disgust on his face.

  Okay, enough was enough.

  I was drinking Kahlúa?

  This was more alarming than waking up naked with Santa.

  The only time it was okay to drink Kahlúa was if you were thirteen, your parents were out of town, and you needed something to break the ice so you could have sex with your homeroom teacher. Kahlúa was medicine for teenagers; not a drink for grown-ups.

  “Well, thanks for keeping it top shelf,” I muttered.

  The French fucker looked quite pleased with himself, but at least he’d draped the sheet over the more offensive regions of his body.

  I said, “The only other thing is, are you absolutely fucking positive nothing happened,” and I nearly wept finishing the sentence, “between us?”

  The nasty old thing looked at me as if I had accused him of lifting fifty bucks from my wallet. Which, now that I thought of it, I should inspect.

  He started yammering at me in French. I’d never learned French because, even though it pisses the French off, they will speak English eventually.

  I waved my hands like a traffic cop. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on Monsieur Santa, no more of the romance language while I’m in the room, okay? Let’s try it again in the nice, universal English.”

  His face was red with indignation. “Comment osezvous, vous vingt francs pute?” he spat. “I did not take advantage of you. You said I could. You said, ‘I don’t care, do whatever.’ Those were your precise words.”

  It was better when he was speaking French and I didn’t know what he was saying.

  “Um, okay. So. What, exactly, did you do?” I tried to make this sound friendly and nonaccusatory but it came out bouncy yet maniacal. Like Mr. Rogers opening up his vest to reveal his torso strapped with explosives.

  Dirty French Santa looked kind of pissed, to be honest. He had folded his hairy sausage-arms across his chest and was pouting. I wanted to repeatedly slam his face into the toile headboard.

  Instead, I smiled at him and nodded encouragingly.

  Still pouting and with his bottom lip protruding like a five-year-old’s, he admitted, “I put hair conditioner from the bathroom on your back. And I rub. That is all.”

  I was going to throw up in my mouth.

  I took a deep breath. However.

  It could have been worse. A lot worse. So in a very sad and ugly way, this was great news. Technically? I had not been defiled by Santa. And this was a huge accomplishment for me, given the circumstances. It was, incredibly, something I could be proud of.

  Relieved, I smiled at the sad old sack of mess, which seemed to inflate something within him.

  He added, “And as I was rubbing, you kept shouting, ‘Fuck me, Fuck me Santa. I want to go blind. Make me blind!’ ”

  There had been many instances throughout my life when I felt I had actually earned an Academy Award, but there had been nobody there to witness the obvious triumph of my performance. My smile did not falter, and I continued to look at him with sincere kindness. Though how I wished for a handgun.

  Finally, I said, “Now, Santa, that isn’t true and you know it.” I no-no-no’ed my index finger at him. “Naughty, naughty old man. It’s not nice to make up stories.”

  That really pissed him off.

  “How dare you accuse me of lying?” he roared as he removed his reading glasses. “I am a member of Le Conseil de Prud’Hommes. I will not be insulted by an American alcoholic with garbage of the brain.”

  I slowly raised only my left eyebrow while lifting just the right corner of my mouth to form an asymmetrical smile; a wise-ass smirk. As a child, I had spent hours practicing this special effect of the face. At that moment, as I was about to get the hell out of that unfortunate room and its fat, pitiful circumstances, it paid off.

  “You know, American alcoholics are pretty fucking hard to insult. You are talking to somebody who drank too much Kahlúa last night, which is not exactly a 1983 Château Margaux. So, as we say over here, calm the motherfuck down.”

  When his petulance had subsided, I gently asked the question that made me wish for death. “I just want to confirm—and I will take your word for it—did you, then, fuck me blind?”

  “I slipped it in once and that’s all,” he said, his head straight forward, looking at the wall instead of me. An infuriating dignity attempted to cling to his doughy features.

  The world became a very bad place.

  “What?” I shouted.

  And now he looked at me. He pounded his fists on the mattress in frustration or perhaps humiliation. “I told you, I slip it in once. Then out. And then,” he stopped, catching himself.

  With only my eyes, I made him know that I would saw off his head if he didn’t tell me the rest.

  He held his face up, elevated his chin. That revolting pride thing again. “And then frottage on the back. Just a little slide-against. Then I come, I wipe off. That’s it. Everybody happy.”

  I was now standing directly beside him, looming over him in precisely the position one would assume if one were holding a large rock and intended to crush another person, say Santa Claus. “Oh no, no, no. Everybody not happy,” I shouted. “This is not me happy. I am not happy.”

  I pointed my finger at him. “Are you absolutely sure you have told me everything?

  Santa looked up at me, right in the eyes. “I have told you the truth.”

  Miserably, I knew he had.

  That meant, I needed medical assistance immediately: I needed a brain transplant.

  The next week, a series of blood tests ensued. When the doctor told me I was fine, I asked him, “What else can you test for? I want you to test for everything French. And everything old-person. Whatever parasites or gangrenes they get, test for those, too.” I shuddered. “What about gout? Is that communicable?”

  But even if my blood was clean, my mind was now contaminated. While I didn’t remember the Foulness, I remembered the Fouler.

  Over and over I replayed that horrible morning. From waking up in the sun-drenched room and seeing the hazy red blur, right up to the point where I stood above him wishing I had a hefty river stone.

  That awful voice of his. Those sneaky,
cloudy eyes. The liver spots. I knew I shouldn’t continue to obsess over what had happened. But it was my own internal car accident: I had to keep rubbernecking no matter how grisly because there was always a chance I’d see a head roll past.

  I nearly called the doctor back to schedule a medical memory wipe, something where a full day is removed, along with maybe the two or three surrounding days just to make sure. But I knew I simply had to force myself to stop dwelling on and thus polishing the horror of what happened to a blinding sheen. Down the I-did-it-with-Santa road there was only madness.

  Rather, I had to think of the entire experience like an incredibly high state income tax bill or Beanie Babies—an unpleasant reality, now in the past.

  I’d forgotten plenty of guys before, I could do it again.

  Or so I believed for about thirty seconds. Right up until I was passing a magazine store and glanced in the window. There he was: my lover. Three of him, actually—three paper Santa heads taped to the window.

  This was only the second week in December. I would be seeing an awful lot of Santa over the coming days. And then there was next year to look forward to. And the year after that. And every year for the rest of my life.

  Most everybody had made at least one bad, drunken decision in their lives. Called an ex at two in the morning. Or perhaps had a little too much to drink on a second date and wept inconsolably while revealing how simply damaged one was, while nonetheless retaining an uncommonly large capacity for love. That kind of thing was, while regrettable, at least comprehensible.

  But waking up with someone generationally inappropriate, like your grandfather’s best buddy?

  Obviously I needed to do my best to forget what Santa and I had shared.

  And to hope he died soon.

  The problem was, my grandfather’s best buddy was more famous than Coca-Cola. And he was eternal.

  This was really bothering me: I picked up that sad crusty thing in a bar. He didn’t fall from a sleigh in the sky. I wasn’t bound and gagged and brought to him, a gun at my temple.