The Miraculous Immaculate Crack-Head Christmas Tree

ometime after we abandoned (were evicted from) our flea-bag abode, My Attorney and I found a spanking gorgeous condo and moved up in the world. It had a pool, laundry, air conditioning, two bedrooms, and two baths. It had sliding doors, a small balcony, a decent kitchen, a big open living room with cathedral ceilings--and crack-head roommates.

My Attorney has a heart the size of a 1971 Buick Riviera and has a couple of penchants which have thankfully tapered off since we’ve been together so long but which, in the beginning, were . . . frustrating.

Penchant (a) is a heartfelt and often overwhelming urge to rescue lost dogs. In the first years of our enshackenation, she rescued and cared for no less than six dogs. We had one dog as a pet and, off and on, a couple of cats. So there were times when the house, she was doggy.

When I say lost dogs, I mean, more specifically, the four footed dead. Because My Attorney’s penchant for rescuing lost dogs somehow only manifests when those dogs are on the brink of death with little or no hope for recovery and are certain, destined perhaps, to bring us heartbreak and vet bills like we’re trying to buy a private Caribbean Island.
Penchant (b) is similar but applied to humans and is a sudden and irrepressible urge to help people less fortunate than ourselves and by people I mean her secretaries and by less fortunate I mean crack addicts.

Take Christmas, 1990. My Attorney had both a doomed hound AND a crack addicted secretary living in our spanking new condo. This would be our first Christmas in a nice place where we could actually invite people over without worrying about them being hit on by the homeless and we were happy about it. But true to a form that has become life-long, at around Christmas, My Attorney got sent out of town and was going to return CHRISTMAS DAY.

I forgot about Penchant (c): My Attorney is a Christmasaholic and has a hard time if all the Holiday icons aren’t in their proper place. Growing up among Senators and Commissioners in a neighborhood that would’ve made Norman Rockwell kick a hole in a Harpers Magazine cover, she is used to a traditional Christmas. And by traditional, I mean turkey-in-the-oven-miniature-city-complete-with-a-petting-zoo-under-the-basement-tree-snow-on-the-ground-nog-in-hand-carols sung-garland-hung-candy cane-red-scarf-MARTHA STEWART BE DAMNED level traditional and being that we lived in a second floor condo in Borelando, FL., some of those things just weren’t gonna fly. In particular, we had the following:

• No tree. A sin against God.


• No presents. Too broke.


• No lights. Too broke.


• It was not cold.

Worse, before My Attorney had left for wherever she was going, we’d had a pretty bad week because the secretary she was loaning our spare room to had secreted her insane redneck tattooed criminal crack head boyfriend in her room and he went crazy EVERY NIGHT. He’d scream about being a “rock star” and then they’d Rock the Casbah. Noisily. The whole reason this girl was staying with us was because this reject had beat the crap out of her. Suddenly he’s there and it was very wrong. Finally, I kicked him out and he came back later and banged on the door and threatened to kill us all. Then, somehow, they got hold of our Texaco card and bought beer. For Daytona.

So we kick them both out and My Attorney flies out of town.

My Attorney was acutely aware of the nakedness of our Holidays. To make matters worse, I hate Christmas and always have. So here’s My Attorney, Xmas Addict like a meth-head, due in on the plane Christmas morning to arrive at our tropical condo with no fest.

Worse, I was not exactly working a sweet job. I was in my post-newspaper-post-band management-unemployed phase and working what may be my single least impressive job ever: the midnight sandwich guy at Subway. I would come home every morning, 2 am, smelling like onions and mayo. I got ripped off all the time by my crack head boss and I got hit on all the time by drunk guys coming home from Southern Nights, the tranny cabaret around the corner. And I didn’t make any money. It was horrible.

So I talk to My Attorney on the phone right after close the night before she’s leaving. I’m my usual mayo & onion smelling Bah Humbug self and she’s feeling pretty alone out wherever she’d been sent and she’s lamenting the lack of Christmas cheer and the fact that we can’t afford a tree (Christmas trees in Florida are 5 times what they are in Illinois) and I’m trying to be supportive but, again, I smell like lunch and I‘m wearing a brown nylon uniform and it’s 2 in the morning in December in Florida. I hang up, lock up, get into my pathetic tiny little car and drive home.
So, tally it up: it’s hot; we’re broke; we have no Christmas; we’ve been harbouring a fujitive; we got ripped off; I haven’t even mentioned the bats, but: bats; and I smell like onions.

I walk out to my car and somehow, in the middle of the night, the temperature has dropped to Orange killing cold. I can see my breath and there’s a freezing layer of fog everywhere. Driving along the deserted highway at 2:30 am through this fog is other worldly and I’m puttering along, muttering to myself about what a crap boyfriend I am to not have a decent Christmas for My Attorney—at LEAST a tree—when the mossy body of a beached whale looms out of the fog and I almost wreck my car.

I skid to a stop, bumper just touching it’s tail, get out of the car, right in the road, to find a 14-foot tall Blue Spruce lying in the road. A HUGE Christmas tree! Right in the road! At 2:30 in the morning! In a FOG! With NOBODY AROUND! Clearly I was experiencing divine providence. I didn’t hesitate. I slung that tree over the top of my car where it hung off the front and back by a couple of feet. I was only a block from our condo so I reached up and grabbed a branch and drove like a 90 year old Myopic gnome into the parking lot. I drug the damn thing up the stairs and wrestled it trough the door and propped it up against the living room wall where the tip of it stuck up past the railing of the second floor!

I knew My Attorney would be back in the morning so I had to work fast. I didn’t have any money so a late night Walgreen’s run was no solution. I needed ornaments and garland. (I thought about the bats, briefly.) I popped corn and strung it into a Garland. I gathered all the Christmas cards we’d gotten and covered the facing side of the tree with them. I found a lone box of tinsel. ONE of those tiny little flats, enough for one toss on a regular tree. I carefully separated EACH strand of tinsel and placed it on the branches so that—after an hour—the tree was passably tinseled.

When My Attorney arrived, she came in the front door desultory and dejected. She couldn’t see the tree yet and I took her bags and said I’d meet her in the living room.

I came back down and she was crying; she was overjoyed. She had her Christmas.