See this as a conceptual Craigslist posting: I desperately need access to a time machine once every year on this, the third Monday of November. I’ll only require it for a few moments each time, and hackneyed plot devices like killing Hitler or making a killing in the stock market don’t enter into the bargain.
I simply need it to annually whisk me from the third Monday in every November to a mimosa-fortified brunch on January 1st of the next year. The owner is welcome to drive, because I’m strictly in it for the lift. And, of course, I’ll pay. A lot. A really huge, embarrassing amount, in fact. Because, as already noted, I am desperate.
But let’s be clear: appearances to the contrary, I am not insane. So barring the astronomically slim chance of a Time Lord wandering by who wants to make a quick annual buck, Plan B is pretty much this: I’d also seriously consider being put into a medically induced coma that would similarly end at that January 1st brunch. Just not by the former Michael Jackson’s former doctor. I have a vision of me awakening in a deeply John-Hurt-at-the-beginning-of-Alien manner. Just not with that whole exploding chest thing somewhere around the second mimosa. And yes, in this scenario there’s also a crazy-huge amount of money for your time and medical expertise . . .
Of course, it goes without saying that this generous offer comes with assurances that I’m not fleeing any kind of legal entanglement. I haven’t pinched any crown jewels nor have I ever shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. My reasons are so Occam’s Razor that you could practically shave with them: Simply put, if there’s one thing I fucking hate more than fucking Thanksgiving, it’s fucking Christmas–and vice versa. So yeah, it’s basically a Klein Bottle of holiday loathing. I genuinely dislike the foods, traditions, commercialism and Christian roots of both days. Not to mention their respective and excruciating run-ups. (Christmas decorations intermingled with Halloween costumes? Really?)
But who am I kidding? Forget about time machines and suspended animation, because this year I’ll do what I always do with a house full of invading family and friends: move an impressive supply of scotch into my office and, when my rictus smiles and overly brittle hospitality get to be too much, barricade myself–shoving a bookcase in front of the door, ordering sushi for delivery to the window near my desk and drowning out the holiday hysteria with Miles Davis. And then, after a few days, when the house remains reliably silent, I’ll emerge and begin cleaning up the flotsam and jetsam of the departed guests while wondering how much porn will be on my cable bill this time around . . .
(I wish I could write “The End” here–but, of course, that’s exactly the whole annual problem, isn’t it?)
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