Cirque du So'Gay

Christmas Eve is always a special time for me. I blame it on years of being deceived by parents, coupled with the warmth and low-expectations of home contrasted with the cold, shriveled teat of Swarthmore's blood and guts requirements. We used to leave a plate of cookies (not that cookies lasted too long in our household... they were usually the chips ahoy cookies with sprinkles... those were kind of nasty [on an unrelated note, I once won a contest sponsored by Chips Ahoy! in which the contestants were asked to guess the number of chocolate chips in the average (blue) bag of cookies. I apparently kicked ass, and won some legos for this.]) out in the living room on top of the VCR next to the tree. Invariably we'd come down the following morning to find crumbs and half-chewed carrots (for the reindeer, duh) resting on the plate, but most of our attention was focused on the piles of presents that we hoped contained games for our Sega. That's right, Sega. I could never figure out, though, why the reindeer horde couldn't finish the damn carrots. Incidentally, the seed of doubt that grew into my Santa-skepticism was based on my parents using the same wrapping paper for my birthday and Christmas. Mind you, I was four, and my birthday was in August. It's safe to say that my growing up has had an impact on my attention to detail. Just one year before, plagued by ear-infections, I would spend the weeks after Christmas mourning the deconstruction of our christmas tree, muttering "Christmas tree down" to anyone who would listen, or just to myself, confirming my reality and suggesting to strangers that I might, in fact, be autistic. Then again, when I was three I looked eight, which got me into trouble with truancy officers many a time. When they'd ask me how old I was, my answer was always a lazy hand backed by a twittery "This many!" But I'm rambling. It's Christmas Eve, and I'm in the living room, watching South Park with my brother Sean who was just today admitted to Bryant College ED, his first choice (!). We're not talking about it. Rather, I'm posting to my blog and sipping an Evan Williams + Diet Coke. As you can imagine, Christmas is a time of heavy tradition for my family... to the extent that you'd almost suspect kinship diagrams and the like. For as long as I can remember, we've gone out to breakfast on the morning of the Eve. For the first 19 years of my life, we would do so at the Exeter Inn, a stodgy, anachronistic, bizarrely huge inn dedicated almost exclusively to housing visiting dignitaries to Phillips Exeter and students' families (or bipolar students who couldn't handle living in the dorms, nor, apparently, taking the SAT IIs. Ask me about that, why dontcha.) It was impeccably decorated, steeped in Romanticism and French Toast. It has slid down the precipitous slope of decay in years past, however, and we've since started looking for new traditions. This has been a severe example of social trial and error. There was the year that we went to Betty's Breakfast Shack in Greenland NH (the only time I've ever left a meal to have a cigarette... out of sheer mortifiedness). Then there was the year at the Hampton Inn (less decadent than the Exeter Inn... but then, Hampton is trashier than Exeter). Then last year we were cordially invited to a private breakfast at the Inn By the Bandstand (in downtown Exeter, if you were wondering, where we do, in fact, have a bandstand) (weirdly enough, the owners dogs share the names of my mother's brother's children). We were served course after course of wonderful, traditional breakfast foodstuffs in a holiday environment. We left in wonder (and full of eggs, bacon, sausage, pineapple souffle, stuffed french toast, croissant, etc). This year was less impressive (baked apple, croissant, french toast), which sent my brother Pat on a 'roid rage that is probably only rivalled by Jose Canseco after hours of being picked at by Janice Dickerson. However, as my breakfast usually consists of instant coffee and a cigarette (and sometimes a free muffin at lab meeting), I was unduly sated. The afternoon passed without event. No, that's not true. I traded in my cell phone for a newer model today. I now have a color display, voice-activated dialing, ring-tone capacity, and many other grrrrreat things. Anyhow, I skipped church to wrap gifts and masturbate, before meeting my family at the second-to-worst Chinese restaurant for vegetarians in town (second only to whichever establishment runs the building occupied by Jade Panda/Ho Kong/Rainbow Jade/Sake Panda... it changes every few months). My family has some serious cred at this place-- we get free fried ice cream each time we go (which means my parents go at least once a month... quite a deal, no?)-- because my dad once did business with the owner or the owner's cousin in China. I'll take it. Functionally this means that my family assumes an air that it really isn't entitled to in the scheme of things... knowing the waiters, joking with the waitresses (the daughters of the owner, with whom my brother Pat and I went to high school... that's awkward: