Transubstantiate

I open my eyes into a maw of burning light. A morning of revelations. Like going to bed on earth and waking up on the sun. Refreshed. Reformed. Reconciled. Laying in the bed next to me is a burned-off, dead, calloused layer of skin. Next to me the old me is sleeping. A new and different day indeed.

It's eight a.m. and I forgot to close the blinds last night. It's bright in here. The only thing I can think is: it's been a while. Like Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets, I forgot to lock the door.

Maybe I didn't say that with enough bravado. This deserves another avowal. This weekend I forgot to lock the door.

Not everything went right. I was a complete fifth wheel on Friday. Club Sonar and dancing with friends who seem to be finding themselves with strange attractors. Pulled in directions opposite me. I see what it must have been like for them when I wasn't around. When I was lost to the ether of a long-term relationship. I'm happy for them. I'm happy for me too. I'm happy I can handle it.

Saturday I attended Michele's birthday party. Good food, good peoples, good times. There was talk of pretzels making us thirsty, scissor fighting and Dr. Tran's hickory smoked horse butt-holes. Sometime during the night Duncan the dog got a wild hair with a squeeze-toy hotdog and decided to run laps around the living room. "That's how Dennis eats hotdogs," I exclaimed. We all got a laugh. Sorry Dennis.

Old friends I hadn't seen in years, we made small talk and smiled, bringing back times before people moved away. Before all the distance. The theme of Saturday was catching up and for the first time this year I started to get into the spirit of the season. After everyone left, Michele and I sat in the aftermath looking through the evening's pictures. I drove home shortly after.

Sunday morning came bright and early. I woke up, grabbed a shower, threw on some clothes and headed out to nab breakfast. I came home, knocked on Dennis' door and woke him up with the King. We were eating sausage egg and cheese sandwiches in the kitchen at ten in the morning, cracking jokes about something or another when I suddenly came to -- on present course -- one day, him and I, we're going to be common law married. Indeed a scary thought. Then the gay jokes will seem founded. One of us needs to get hitched and quick.

At the mall the parking wasn't as bad as we had expected. We found a place with relative ease. Inside the crowds were dense and we weaved in and out of packs of people like a school of fish through the thickness of water. Dennis and I were drinking and shopping, Sean was driving.

Before you think us alcoholics this is not something we normally do. It's just that it's the only thing that makes the mall remotely bearable this time of the year. We were the Dan Akroid santa from Trading Places. I spilled vodka down the inside of my coat pocket and it soaked through to the outside. All I needed was a salmon sticking to the white synthetic hairs of the santa beard I wasn't wearing. It was great.

It's Christmas and just like the holiday tunes they pump out over the audio system in every store you walk into, we danced the line between endearing and annoying. In the end I think we were more the latter.

I got stuff done this weekend. There's still more to do but I'm getting there. It's a whisper in my ear telling me I'll be fine, that I'll get there. And when I do, parking won't be as bad as I thought.