Just North of Whoville

by Turiskylie, Joyce

  Therefore, due to New Yorkers’ careless and reckless umbrella use, even if one thinks they may not need an umbrella in the rain---they do. For self-defense. So when you combine these selfish bastards with a few snowflakes and an icy sidewalk---well, you can just imagine the stress and anxiety The Umbrella People cause to other New York dwellers like myself who do the right thing in the snow and put on a hat.

  So you can imagine the stress of my morning commute, which also included Shoeless Joe---who somehow managed to make it thru the morning slush without the least amount of damaging frostbite. How does he do it? He must have magic feet.

  And then Timmy showed up.

  “Dorrie!” he said as he jumped up and jingled. “I’m on my lunch break, and I just have to talk to you.”

  “Oh…what now?” I dreaded.

  “Dorrie…” he got down on his knees and grabbed my hands. “I love you! I’ve never felt anything like this in my entire life. Won’t you please just give me a chance?”

  I’d never even had a straight man pursue me with this much ardor. What was going on here?

  “Timmy, get up. You’re getting your tights dirty.”

  “Dorrie, please. Just go out with me one time. Just once and I’ll never ask again. I swear.”

  I swear to god, I looked around for a hidden camera. But even if there was a camera, the stupid joke always keeps going till you fall for it.

  “Okay,” I sighed.

  “Oh Dorrie! You’ve made me so happy!” he said as he jumped up and down tingling his jingle bells. “When? Where are we going? Oh---I guess I should plan that. Or you! Whoever. I totally don’t care. I mean, I do, but…” Then he suddenly composed himself. “We’ll go wherever you want to go, my dear.”

  15

  That evening, after accepting the delivery of two large boxes for Alex, I made my way downtown to a place called Cock---the newest gay dance club in Manhattan. There was no name on the front. Just a picture of a giant rooster above the club doors.

  “Where are we going?” Timmy asked when he saw the rooster. “Is this a fried chicken place? I shouldn’t eat fried food. I just lost my Thanksgiving weight.”

  The bouncer stamped Timmy’s hand with a big black stamp that said “NO”---indicating that he was underage and wouldn’t be served liquor.

  He didn’t even bother to card me.

  Two seconds later, we were smack dab in the middle of a bar full of gay men in various stages of undress drinking and dancing to Christmas music that was even gayer than buttless chaps. Timmy took one look around and grabbed my hand. Not only grabbed it, but clutched it tight and wouldn’t let go.

  “Oh, there are my friends!” I yelled over the music and waved to Shannon and Hajji with my free hand as I pulled Timmy over to their table.

  “Timmy, these are my friends, Shannon and Hajji. This is Timmy. My date tonight,” I said knowingly.

  “Heigh-dee ho, fellas!” Timmy introduced himself. I caught Shannon and Hajji giving each other that couple look to co-ordinate their first impression.

  “Timmy, why don’t you get us some drinks? Here,” I pulled a twenty out of my bag. “Take this.”

  “No, no, no,” he said as he shook his head and pushed my dirty money away. “It’s my treat. What can I bring you?”

  “He’s nineteen,” I whispered to Shannon.

  “He looks more like twelve,” Shannon replied.

  “I’ll take a club soda with lime,” I said and he scurried off to the big boy’s bar.

  Shannon immediately leaned in, “Definitely gay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Gay as the day is long,” Hajji asked.

  “So what’s going on? Does he not know?”

  “Oh, he knows,” Hajji stated as he took a sip of his martini. “I knew when I was eight.”

  “I knew when I passed thru my mother’s vagina and went, ‘Oh no. Not for me.’” Shannon added in for good measure.

  “How is it that you guys knew you were gay before I knew there wasn’t a Santa Claus?”

  “You didn’t figure that out till you were nine?”

  “Try ten.”

  “That’s sad, Dorrie,” Shannon said as he kept an eye on Timmy at the bar.

  “If he’s gay, why is he fixated on me?”

  “Well, he’s not looking for a beard. He’s too fem to even try that. And you’re too…” Shannon stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Old?”

  “Sophisticated,” Hajji helped him out.

  “Would it hurt his career?” Shannon asked. “What does he do?”

  “He’s an elf at Macy’s. But he wants to be a model.”

  They looked at each other and then practically screamed.

  “Gay!”

  “Oh my god! So gay!”

  “Gay, gay, and gay!”

  “Okay, peanut gallery---what do I do now?” I asked.

  “You’ve got to break up with him,” Hajji insisted.

  “Hajji’s right,” Shannon agreed. “He’ll come out eventually.”

  “Oh yeah? That’s what you said about my cat.”

  “Oh my god. That cat!” Shannon began to laugh as he leaned in to tell Hajji. “We lived together for three years and I never saw that cat once! We used to joke that Dorrie just said she had a cat so we wouldn’t know she was eating cat food.”

  Just then, Timmy showed up with my club soda.

  “Hi. I’m back,” he said as he joined us. “This is an interesting place. Interesting choice for a first date,” Timmy commented and shifted his skinny frame into the chair. “Thought I’d get myself a club soda, too---since I’m in a club,” he said as he took a sip. “Whew! I’m getting tipsy already!”

  I felt bad. I don’t know why. I couldn’t kill someone else’s dream. Like all those people who’d been trying to kill mine for years. Like my family who worried I’d never make a living in theatre. Like Mrs. Tedescu who didn’t see me as Olympic material. Like my high school guidance counselor who suggested I “not risk” going to college in New York. Like my college professors who suggested I get a teaching certificate so I had “something to fall back on”. Like Jamie who called it my “hobby” and wanted me to sell out my friends to make money.

  But maybe they were right. Maybe they were just trying to help. Giving me a warning about the future.

  But I hadn’t been listening. Maybe my life was really one long intervention. Maybe I wasn’t talented. Maybe I’d never make it in this business. Maybe it was time to straighten out my life and become one of them. After all, I hadn’t done such a great job on my dreams. After all, how much more rock bottom could I get? Sure I wasn’t eating cat food---but people were starting to get suspicious.

  Little Timmy was just a kid. Unfortunately, he’d placed his dreams smack dab in my lap. As Timmy looked around at the sweaty, dancing men, I went to the bar for a real drink. We left soon after. He walked me to the train and I gave him a hug and thanked him for a very nice evening.

  I just couldn’t set up a Reality Booth at a place called Cock.

  “I don’t want to be a Dream Killer,” I whined at Dr. Prince’s office the next day. “Like all those people who keep trying to get me to see reality. Trust me, I see it. I’ve got to move out of that apartment. I need a better job. I need to be a whole other person.”

  “Look, maybe it’s time to tell Nate the truth,” she suggested.

  “I can’t. He’d hate me. I’d get him in trouble and I’d lose the apartment. And then there’s Natasha and Bullwinkle downstairs. She threatened me! She got a washer and dryer out of her last victim! It’s never going to work out for me. Nothing ever does,” I trailed off.

  “Dorrie, let’s go back to that whole George Bailey thing you were talking about. Why don’t you think you deserve to get good things in life?”

  “It’s not that I don’t think I deserve them. I do. In fact, I think I deserve them more than most people. Especially people in this city. They’re mean. And nasty. And rude. They
spit on the sidewalk and they hit me with their backpacks. Once it’s behind them, they don’t even know it’s there! And they’re even ruder on the train. They’ll sit right next to you and elbow you in the side and turn up their music and eat smelly food and throw chicken bones on your feet. And don’t get me started on the old man who never has any shoes. They all have a scam. They all want something. They want your money or your iPod or bicycle. I’ve had two bikes stolen already! They would eat your mother and take the leftovers home in a baggie!!!”

  I just let it all out. It felt good, but I was exhausted. Like I’d just thrown-up four years worth of mal pescado. Thankfully, she was there to hold my hair and give me a piece of minty gum.

  “Dorrie,” she said slowly and purposefully, “you deserve good things. You’re a very nice person. And I think it’s time at least one New Yorker told you that.”

  “Thanks,” I said as I took a deep breath. “Well…you’re the one.”

  “I have a feeling that you were getting pushed around way before you moved to New York. It’s just in your face a lot more here. You’re not The Grinch. You’re George Bailey. This has been going on for a long time.”

  She was right. It had been going on all my life.

  “Ever since I didn’t get that horse,” was what came out of my mouth.

  “Oh not the horse again. Dorrie, how are you going to get a horse into a fifth floor walk-up?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted a horse now. I can’t afford a horse. I can’t even afford my invisible cat.”

  “Talk about therapy, that cat of yours…. Ooops,” she said as she looked at the clock. “That’s all the time we have today. Look, before you go, I just want to say that you’ve made some really wonderful progress. Do you feel it?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Great. So…I’ll see you in three weeks.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, and Merry Christmas!”

  “You’re closed? But you’re a psychiatrist. This your busy season”

  “It’s my slow season. Everyone goes out of town. Next time I see you, it will be a whole new year, and we’ll jump right into some new beginnings.”

  “But it’s the big holiday time. I’m going thru so much stuff right now.”

  “Dorrie, you’ll be fine. Okay, look…” she said as she got up and went to her desk and handed me a business card. “I didn’t think you would need this---but here’s the number of a friend of mine. Dr. Rankin. He’s offered to be on call for my…more advanced patients over the holidays. But seriously, this is for emergencies only.”

  I left her office in a daze. I felt abandoned. As I walked across town under the glow of the Christmas lights, I felt like I’d lost my one true friend.

  I was all alone. As I passed a Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell, I dropped some spare change into the bucket.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, then went right back to ringing his bell.

  He didn’t want to talk to me. He didn’t care about me. He just wanted my spare change. What kind of Salvation Army was that? Weren’t they supposed to be the Friends of the Friendless? I don’t think I’ll buy my next sofa from them.

  Out of all my visits to Santa at Kendall’s Department Store, the last one, in my tenth year, stands out the most.

  I was older, and more mature. I’d taken the past year to think things out carefully. This year, there would be a change in plans. Instead of my scroll-like list, I would make it easy on Santa. I would only ask for one thing.

  A horse.

  That morning, I begged my mother to let me wear my Girl Scout uniform. I thought the uniform might help my cause.

  “Honey, are you sure you need to see Santa this year?” my mother asked, almost concerned as we stood in the Santa line.

  “I have to! It’s really important!” I cried out with overdramatic angst.

  “Well…okay. You’re a big girl now---do you think you can see Santa by yourself?”

  “Sure,” I said with big girl independence.

  “Okay then. I have some shopping to do. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  As I waited patiently in the Santa line, I watched the little children clutch their lists for all they were worth. A few of the youngest ones cried; too young to understand that they were about to meet the man who could make their dreams come true. I looked at them with the wisdom that comes with age. I noticed that I was the tallest child there. They were too young to understand.

  As we reached the entrance to the Santa throne, a kindly elf took me by the hand and told me to follow her along the Candy Cane Path. She asked my name and a few more questions while we waited. “Do you know what you want to ask Santa?” I nodded and smiled. I knew the procedure. Sure, some kids got nervous as they were about to meet Kris Kringle himself. But not I. I had done this many times. Santa and I were practically old friends. I was sure he’d been notating all the good deeds I’d done and how hard I’d worked over the past several years.

  This was going to be my year. I could just feel it in my bones.

  “Santa, Dorrie is here to see you.”

  “Dorrie! Ho! Ho! Ho!” Santa motioned me forward with that jolly laugh of his.

  I knew he would remember me.

  After a few moments of chit-chat, we got down to business.

  “What do you want for Christmas, Dorrie?”

  “Santa,” I looked up into his sparkling blue eyes, “all I want is a horse. I want a horse so much. I’d take such good care of him and I’d feed him and brush him and ride him everyday. And I’ve been so good this year. I’ve been saving my allowance and I have ninety-two dollars and thirty-seven cents in my piggy bank. And I’m a Girl Scout now and I got three badges already. One of them is the animal badge. See,” I pointed to my Girl Scout sash. “And I sold eighty-three dollars worth of Christmas seals this year and I collected money for UNICEF and I started taking ice skating lessons. I’m really good. Here’s a picture of me ice skating. And I got straight A’s all year and I even got my first job. I work in the school cafeteria. I get free lunch everyday. My Mom lets me keep my lunch money. That’s how I saved up so much. So I’ll be able to take good care of my horse. Please, Santa. It’s all I want for Christmas.”

  Santa rubbed his beard in thought. Then he looked down at me and smiled. “Well Dorrie, I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “You’ve certainly been a good girl this year.”

  I certainly had.

  After our little talk, we posed for a picture together. It never hurt to have a picture with Santa. Gave him something to remember you by. He gave me a candy cane and I waved good-bye to him as my mother stood waiting with her shopping bags. I’d done it. I was sure I had done everything a ten year-old girl could possibly do to get a horse. Now I just had to wait.

  On Christmas morning, I woke up with the greatest feeling of joy as I ran down the hallway screaming “Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!” My parents woke up and opened their door. As soon as my father put on his slippers, I ran screaming down the stairs in my pajamas.