I shit on the chest of christmas

IN RE: I shit on the chest of Christmas

Jim & Jane,
Hey! It was nice to receive your holiday card. I see you’ve been to Western Montana. That’s, uh… weird. Are there any people there? I’ve only been around Wyoming, but it was desolate as hell. And cold. It’s a terribly dangerous place to travel with a decent-looking piece of snatch.

It’s been so long since I sold my car that I’m beginning to forget there’s a world outside of downtown Denver. Every so often I catch a glimpse of the mountains on a clear morning and it seems so insane that I don’t drive anymore. They have become a scenic backdrop to the city rather than a reality. It’s a shame. On the other hand, I have none of the typical financial responsibilities that come with owning a car. While my friends who drive are at work busting ass to pay for a new carburetor or something, I’m up the street swilling expensive scotch and browsing the escort pages. Ah, just kidding.

Anyway, Christmas is here with all its lameness. Downtown gets overrun with shit-for-brains tourists from the weird outlying suburbs. They’re all determined to wear those festive Christmas sweaters. These people are like lice. They fuck up everything they come into contact with. They have made it impossible for me to enjoy living downtown for the rest of the month. They descend on the place by the hundreds. In the bakery I go to for coffee they climb all over me in droves and every woman finds a way to hit me in the face with her purse, and then her husband walks by and bumps my with his enormous ass. I think they’re shopping for gingerbread houses or something. Bastards.

I walked by the Salvation Army bell-ringer yesterday and for some unknown reason he lost his composure right in front of me and said, “This SUCKS!” I am not making this up. I guess it’s pretty frustrating to stand outside all day in the freezing cold wearing a Santa hat and ringing a bell that everyone tries to ignore. It’s not that Denver people are heartless, but we are all totally desensitized to panhandling. I have never seen so much panhandling before in my life. Everywhere you go there are old men with enormous beards begging for ten cents, not to mention the aggressive tactics now in use by Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, Denver Rescue Mission, etc. All these organizations heckle and terrorize people on the street corners, so by the time they get to the Salvation Army guy they have effectively quit giving a shit about humanity. Just one block form the bell-ringer I saw a guy actually freezing to death on a bench. He was hunched over and he had a frozen icicle hanging from the tip of his nose. Some paramedics were standing around him looking like they had no idea what to do about it. They might as well have been staring at some broken plumbing. The irony of this is that it happened right in front of the huge glass windows of a starbucks. The warm and cozy people in the café were basically forced to watch this morally distressing scene to a soundtrack of Christmas music while sipping on their hot chocolate. Or maybe they didn’t even bother looking. Do most people avert their gaze, or else curiously eyeball the suffering of the less fortunate? I’d really like to know. I too passed the Salvation Army guy and gave nothing.

Well, I did not intend to go on this depressing invective about Denver. I am planning to have yet another magical Christmas here, as usual, holed up in my apartment with wine and cigarettes and books by Cioran and Dostoevsky. Well, maybe not the cigarettes. I stopped smoking last week. It was all going well until I sat down to type this letter. Now I am suddenly experiencing this nagging desperation to smoke. I have been for the past three paragraphs. It’s because I always chain-smoke when I’m writing. The trouble is that I like smoking and I have no real desire to stop it. I’m just worried that the cigarettes have been affecting my health. It would be great if you could smoke just a little, but inevitably a little becomes a lot. It sneaks up on you. One day everything is in check, and then the next day you find yourself compulsively puffing on unfiltered cigarettes at all hours of the day and night. This is what it came to for me during the summer. I was sitting around every day reading and smoking for hours on end. In July alone, my lungs probably developed a nice thick crust of something similar to scorched bacon.

Well, this letter is becoming as irrelevant as it is long. I’ll wrap it by saying thanks for the card. Let me know how it’s going down south.

Best regards,
Joseph