“Her eyes zeroed in on the man standing by the double glass doors.  She watched as he pounded his black-booted feet on the gray pavement, warding off the bitter cold. He rang a brass bell as passers-by dropped coins into his red bucket, and he chuckled genially at something a toddler said in passing, his belly shaking under the velvet red suit like the bowlful of jelly it was supposed to be. Cerise's pulse quickened. She had to have him.”

“Cerise was ashamed of her secret Santa fetish, of course. It wasn't as if she could make it public. Santa would never grace the walls of sorority dorm rooms except from Thanksgiving to New Year's, and then only on the front of greeting cards tacked to bulletin boards. No one ever said, ‘I want to jump Santa's bones.’”

--Santa's Little Helper, Jenesi Ash from Women's Best Book of Erotica

Now, for the record, I don’t personally own The Women’s Best Book of Erotica. That honor belongs to Read who came across the above story in a manner that has yet to be (and will most likely NEVER be, discovered.  I’ve learned in my old age never to ask questions you really don’t want to know the answer to.)  What the hell is this about?  Read on….

Friday, 12/13/02

Just Clause

Anyway, I started my Christmas vacation like anybody else—staggering around drunk dressed like Santa.  But, whereas one drunken Santa is a sad sight and two drunken Santas are just kind of creepy, THREE drunken Santas is comedy gold.  Any more than three is just icing.

We had nine.

We also had Ponygirl and Jenny dressed like an elf.  It was somehow both festive and horribly, horribly wrong. Using Christmas as an excuse to bounce from bar to bar in an ever-increasing drunken stupor? Did we forget the actual meaning of Christmas—celebrating the birth of Santa? Not to worry; the Santas spread cheer far and wide, all while drinking their body weight in liquor.

Because we have no discernable seasons, Christmas in the South is always a fucked-up, surrealistic experience anyway. If it weren’t for the Christmas lights and Gap commercials, you wouldn’t even know it was December.  As a result, people tend to overcompensate down here.  We had not one but TWO radio stations playing 24 hour Christmas music since November.  Then there’s “Delilah,” a DJ whose entire gig is consists of spreading holiday cheer with dedications like this:

“It was a year ago today when both my parents were caught in a horrible train derailment.  Though my father died instantly, my mother held on, doped up on morphine for 2 more weeks. She died Christmas Day.  Delilah, could you play Christmas Shoes?”

Then they play that song about a kid trying to buy his dying mother a pair of shoes for Christmas with nothing more than 32 cents and a ball of lint.  Good Lord.  Delilah, please dedicate this Prozac and bottle of Makers Mark to my quickly fading will to live….

Well, because of this Southern tendency of holiday overcompensation, this gaggle of Santas (Troop? Murder? Herd of Santas? Well, OF COURSE, I’ve heard of Santa. Ba-da-dump. Thank you, I’ll be here all week!) was much loved.

We started in The Local and deliberated on where to go next. From there, it was Dugan’s, a primarily African-American sports bar.  Remember that scene in Weird Science when Anthony Michael Hall walked into that blues club and the needle in the jukebox is pulled across the record making a horrible scratching sound?  Unfortunately, jukeboxes these days have CDs; otherwise that’s the exact sound we would’ve heard walking in. But within a minute, everyone was high-fiving us and buying us drinks.  OK, they bought ME drinks; I don’t know about anyone else.

We walked up Ponce De Leon to the Righteous Room. Ponyboy met us out briefly and dropped off one more Santa suit. We drank a bit, but, true to its name, everyone in the Righteous Room proved too cool to be fazed by the sight of several drunken Santas.

We stumbled to Manuel’s, known as Jimmy Carter’s hang out.  Much like Carter’s presidency, not much to say about this place.

As we continued on back to the Highlands, we dropped by Pura Vida, a tapas place. It was meringue night, so we joined them, thereby prompting a makeshift holiday conga line. I’m still not sure exactly how that happened, and I doubt very much the others in the restaurant would be able to answer that question.

By now my memory starts to dim. I believe we tried to make our way into the Hand in Hand, but the guy at the front of the line wouldn’t let us in. Scrooge.

We stumbled onto Atkin’s Park and mingled with the riff-raff. Apparently I had a conversation with Monique, who recapped it to me a month later.

Last stop (for most) was The Dark Horse. Like last year, we ended up splitting up after The Dark Horse.  Some returned to the Local (me) while others continued on to The Clermont Lounge.

Alas, no Santa’s Little Helper for me; shit, I didn’t even get any Hamburger Helper.  Chicks do seem to still dig Santa; they just may not seem to dig slobbering, incoherent Santa, but, y’know, I’m what they call a “total package.”

Anyway, below are all the documented evidence from 2 years worth of SantaCrawling. Some of the thumbnails don't match the pictures. Someone with more time, skill, or pride would probably fix that. I'm obviously not one of them.

Click here to see the Santa pics. The UP arrow means return back to the index page. The left and right arrows, well, they mean I'm going to hell.