ho for the holidays
13 december

Sometimes parents will surprise you. This time it was my dad. I had decided I'd spend my first Xmas in London looking for some Dickensian wonderland, converted Scrooges cavorting with pre-pube Tiny Tim's, though with the current hysteria over peodophiles any man seen with a boy other than one he helped produce would be better off playing the Artful Dodger.

So, the man partly responsible for my roaming the earth rings my mobile at about 10PM to tell me I'm coming home for Xmas. After excusing myself to the bloke I had just blown in the park- who now was giving me a ride home- I asked my dad just what he meant. He said I was to get a ticket to the states and he'd pay for it.

Huh. Well.

It meant I'd miss seeing Ralph von William's 'A London Symphony' played by the London Symphony, a fantasy of mine since I first heard the piece on CD, but I couldn't say no. Family first, and knowing my father's financial non-situation, he must have wanted this badly.

I arranged the travel stuff the next day, and made sure I was home when he called that night to get the details. This would be the first time I'd be home for Xmas since I moved to California. Not because I didn't love my family, I just hated New England winters. I could always use the distance excuse for not singing Yuletide in sub-zero temperatures, though curiously, distance was never an issue when I visited during the rest of the year.

This also meant getting caught up in the whole consumer trap, something else more easily handled from a distance. I decided to bring back something typically English so I went for Xmas crackers, which I thought were some sort of fancy biscuit- sorry, digestive, how appetizing! I also picked up some endemic foods at the local health food store, a tiny place staffed by dazed zombies with no sense of humor. The Stepford Wives gave off more sparkle in their sleep than these lost souls.

My dad picked me up at the airport and we drove a couple hours to my mom's, where I'd be staying. Dad stayed with my brother in the next town. Outside was even colder than the pub back in London, and there was not a flake of snow on the barren ground. I settled in, drifted off to sleep, and when I awoke the next day, everything was covered in fluffy snow from an overnight storm. God bless us, everyone.

So much for keeping to my budget. After helping mom decorate the tree and arrange her collection of stuffed moose, no amount of reason could keep me from the mall and doing another round of spending. However, because my first batch of presents took up all the space in my suitcase, the first stop was the local charity shop for some new (to me) clothes.

This turned out to be quite a treasure. For such a small town out in the country, I don't know where some of the posh stuff came from. I picked up a couple vintage wool shirts, some slacks, a tee-shirt from Paris, and a belt, and I could have just walked out with it all. Their policy is pay what you can and if are in real need, it's free. I gave them ten bucks.

The rest of the day was not such a bargain, but as my dad had said later on, 'it's just money'. I figured I'd be making more during my upcoming week in New York, and then I remembered I hadn't arranged for an ad yet.

My old high school put on its annual Xmas show, and I attended for the first time in many years. As a teenager, the concert was one of the highlights of the year. The one great thing in my life back then was being part of the chorus. I was totally and miserably in the closet, only my best friend, a girl, knew I was gay. Laden down with angst-ridden crushes on many of my friends and a couple teachers and one gorgeous bus driver, I was one unhappy kid.

Except for chorus. There I excelled: made the elite choir, got solos, got parts in the school musicals, formed a barbershop quartet, made the All-State choir- I had found something to help me partially counter the growing amount of self loathing and pity.

That is, to a point, since it also brought me closer to Rob, my biggest crush at the time. But maybe all the drama and pain colored my performance, just as the slowly dying leaves brighten the New England landscape. Still, there is no telling what I would have done were there no music department, no shelter from the pressure of growing up gay in a tiny town in the woods.

And here I was, back in that same town, in that same school. The dark past now only served as a relief to the bright present. The chorus was smaller, the singing not as good as I remembered, but the magic I felt when I joined the alumni for the Hallelujah Chorus was just as powerful.

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