I put up a Christmas decoration. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, which is why it kind of is.
It’s on the outside of my apartment. That’s key. That’s putting it out there. Hey, I’m doing a Christmas thing, weird strangers I don’t know. Including the dumb idiot who lives next door.
This isn’t something I would have done before. Because most of my neighbors don’t know me, and there’s something about it…something where I didn’t want people who didn’t know me to think I was a holiday guy. That I was drunk on holiday spirit. That I quaffed so much holiday spirit that I was vomiting in an alley festooned with Christmas lights and scented with Christmas candles, and as I vomited the creamy egg nog of Noel, creating my own yule tide of sorts. I didn’t want my neighbors to think I was that guy.
Obviously it makes no sense. If I gave a fuck about what my neighbors thought, I wouldn’t have left a skeleton decal on my car window since Halloween. And still today. I probably would use only ONE washing machine at a time. I use two. I don’t use all three, because that’s just being a dick. But two? I’ll go two. Two isn’t full-on being a dick. Maybe it’s being balls. Or vas defrens. I don’t know what a lesser dick is.
It’s sort of a fantasy of mine to grow into being an old man who just doesn’t give a fuck. You know how sometimes you see that old guy around town, and the dude wears only navy blue coveralls? All the time? Like it’s his old man uniform? That’s who I want to be. I want to be the old man who doesn’t give one fuck. Not in a jerk way, not like he’s being mean and uses not caring as an excuse. I just want to feel like I could care less whether other people feel like I’m doing life right.
Maybe putting up a wreath is a first little step. I want to put up the wreath. It makes me happy to see it when I come home, and what difference does it make if someone sees it and says, “Oh great. We got a real Kris Kringle here, huh?”
So I’m going to have to call this day kind of a wash. Because I’m doing something Christmas-y, but in service of being a dick in the future. What the hell is my life?
Oh, and while I was holding it up, waiting for the 3M strips I have no faith in to set, a neighbor passed by. He’d been out jogging. He took out his headphones, his cheeks were red, and he said, “That’s great. I love it.”
And I felt pretty good about that. I have a long way to go before I can buy those coveralls.
