Augusten Burroughs

Of course you've eaten too much chocolate at Christmas, but have you ever eaten the face off a six-foot-stuffed Santa? You've seen gingerbread houses, but have you ever made your own gingerbread block of flats? You've woken up with a hangover, but have you ever woken up lying next to Kris Kringle himself? Augusten Burroughs has, and in this caustically funny, nostalgic, poignant, and moving collection of true stories, he recounts Christmases past and present - as only he can. With gimlet-eyed wit, Augusten Burroughs shows how Christmas can bring out the worst in us and sometimes - just sometimes - the very, very best.

True Stories for Christmas

You Better Not Cry

Sabrina D. 

I loved to experiment in the kitchen and if I ever used a recipe, it was only for inspiration. Recipes, I felt, were for the unimaginative. However, with this particular project I would do my best to follow the recipe to the letter. And where that wasn’t possible, I would at least stay true to its spirit. 

The two Brendas and a couple of other girls would walk over to Glen and put their hands on his shoulder petting him lightly, as one would a bony and pitiful dog. Because of all their work with dolls, young girls could be shockingly maternal; they could confuse you and make you cry and want a grilled cheese sandwich.

I looked at him with my eyes narrowed to see if I could detect a lie. He sounded suspiciously like my older brother, who lied constantly about everything. It had been my brother who told me there was no such thing as Santa Claus. "Not anymore there's not," he'd said. "Santa worked in the offseason at a shipyard in Amsterdam and he was killed in a forklift accident." 

The fact is, if you don't "get into the holiday spirit" people will not only be angry with you, they will think something is wrong with you and they will decide you are a bad person. A spoil sport. "He's a Grinch." They wil feel a visceral mistrust, a hatred, even. They will reject you, And you will find yourself on the outside of the snow globe. 

Shirley sang an aria. It was the music of my early childhood; an opera my mother used to play on summer afternoons. I knew it the way a person can know a smell they cannot name but that transports them to one specific moment of one specific, long-gone day. It felt like opening the door to your childhood room and finding that nothing at all had changed. Her voice was unspeakably magnificent.

George was vertical, not horizontal. All of him was right there from the first moment. He didn’t have “sides;” he had fathoms. If you didn’t know him after one date, you couldn’t know him. In this way, he was a treasure perfectly hidden right before my eyes. He was the wreck of the Sussex in my backyard swimming pool. I could only be truly crazy if I walked away from such a find. 

My attraction had been immediate and profound. And it had nothing to do with the way he looked. My attraction was to what resided between his lines. And attraction is our most ancient drive, it is why we are. Attraction is the very point of gravity; timespace itself bends to allow it. It is attraction in its pure form that holds the galaxy together. Attraction is our glue. 

I knew this: there was only one of him in the world. One hour with him was denser than all the years spent with everybody else I had ever known. My instincts were not mistaken. My instincts had been with me as I crawled from the Swamp; my brain only showed up later. It was my instinct I would trust. Even if it defied logic. Especially if it defied common sense. I wanted nothing to do with common. But extremely rare and precious specialty items often carry an extraordinary price. I knew this, too. 

But George would not return to me. His eyes would look everywhere except at mine. I had lost him and so I left. and I began to let him go. Hour by hour. Days into months. It was a physical sensation, like letting out the string of a kite. Except that the string was coming from my center.

I smiled, seeing his eyes so busy in their search. George had the most beautiful eyes. They were brown and therefore retained much of their information. You could not read them instantly like blue eyes. You had to keep looking, you had to study. Like searching for familiar forms in a darkened room. And there were sparks of mischief firing along the thin gold wires that streaked the iris. They were loyal eyes. Deeper, there was warmth, almost a glow. Just the crumbs from a fire, smoldering on. I loved when his eyelashes twitched and he blinked, and suddenly happiness was there inside his eyes. Unmistakable. Like a single word printed on a clean white page. I used to love seeing that word in his eyes. 

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