Santa Baby
Just a couple days late...
So, I wrote an extremely intimate piece on falling in love, breaking up, sex, drugs & rock n roll at an appropriately War & Peace length, that just didn’t fit the occasion and freaked out the subject matter who texted “Woah- this IS personal” upon reading it, so I decided it was best to save it for the book or another time when time has truly healed all wounds.
I’ve moved to Venus Beach this week and ended up spending Christmas Day with a 60 something year old Chinese/Iranian shamanic healer (among others) who I met at a spiritual group called The Circle of Light. He wears all white (to force himself to be more aware of his surroundings, more conscious, so as not to dirty the linen) and a jade pendulum necklace. He is two years celibate, has to fend off an ever growing number of middle aged women desperate to dote on him and was a disciple of Osho’s in India during the 70s. Has he seen Wild Wild Country? Yes, he loves it. Anyway, it’s just me and retirees searching for something here and he is my Father Christmas this year. I created a Tik Tok account for him. The other woman I befriended says her name is Hades (but maybe it’s Heidi and the German accent is throwing me off). She’s a retired, recently widowed sweetheart who sunbathes in fabulous bikinis most days. She says she’s lonely and misses her husband and I just adore her.
I digress. The best Christmas I can remember is also the earliest I can remember, and we all know memories are completely unreliable, more so the further we get away from them, so I can’t attest the to authenticity of the details.
My mother and her girlfriend, Monica had taken 5 year old little me for a trip around the world. They had borrowed money from friends and family to help them, and by the time we got to Mexico (what I thought was Mexico -which was actually just Olvera St in Downtown LA) we had very little left. I remember walking through a street market and spotting a candy coloured plastic dolls house I really hoped and wished Santa might get me for Christmas (because I knew we couldn’t afford it). Further along, I became mesmerised by a mariachi band who were selling their cassettes to the crowd (there was a picture of a camel on the front which reminded me of my Dad’s Camel cigarettes). I wanted this cassette so badly and I loved the music so much, that my mum spent (what I dramatically remember as being) our last $5 on it. She was rewarding my love of music and in this moment she was truly an angel.
On a small Christmas themed train-ride in Griffith Park (which I remember as an epic journey to the South Pole at night) I ended up on Santa’s knee. I wasn’t totally convinced by him, but when he asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and whispered to him about the dolls house.
Back at Monica’s aunt’s house in Highland Park (with most notably to little me -big fluffy wolf dogs and an empty pool), we ate Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups and See’s Candy; luxuries we couldn’t get in Australia at the time (and would ask my mother’s acting agent to bring back in his suitcase after trips to Hollywood). I’m in seventh heaven, bubbling with anticipation and the night before Christmas my mothers (who made me refer to them as Mommie Dearest like Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford) told me to keep an ear out for Santa’s sleigh and the sound of reindeer hoofs on the roof. I heard them in my dreams, I was sure of it. I ran downstairs to the tree before anyone else had woken up and unwrapped all my gifts alone (they had told me I could open them “first thing in the morning”). There was a package from Santa. I ripped it open… and I was beside myself in complete amazement. It was the dolls house. The exact candy coloured plastic one from the street market. At that moment I believed in Santa with all my heart.
Cut to being in the school playground at 8 years old and the school bully -Alexa (a large boisterous blonde from a troubled home) is dunking my head in the trash because I flat out refused to say “Santa isn’t real”. I refused to say it because he was real. I’d met him! He’d delivered the gift I wished for and straight up asked him for! On principle, I couldn’t say it, because it would’ve been a lie and Santa might punish me eternally with a drought of gifts for not believing. Catholic guilt style. I came home very upset and said to my mother “Santa does exist right?!”. She laughed and said “no of course not, he’s like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny!”. I was shattered. “You LIED to me” I said slowly with piercing child-eyes, feeling completely deceived; all the magic of being on this planet had evaporated in an instant.
Moral of the story, no man (Santa, Christ, Bhudda, your husband, Osho or a Shamanic healer) is the dreamweaver, miracle master, saviour in the end; though just like the well-established effectiveness of a placebo, whatever gets you through the night (love, stories, magic, lies perhaps) and makes you feel like there’s something greater than this stark reality of chaos math, logic and reason… I get it. Let someone fool you into believing something extraordinary exists, just once, then let yourself come back down to earth and appreciate it along “with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world” (Desiderata).