Preludes and Quaaludes

It is Thursday, December 23rd at precisely 4:14pm and this is the bit I enjoy, the eve of the EVE. The warming up. Its like booze, the GETTING drunk is always better than the main event. Or if it were a guillotine session, the drum roll better than the blade dropping.
I always feel a slight sagging on my shoulders on Christmas morning, like the buzz has worn off and the come down begun. And of course it has, Christmas day can be quite a dull affair, puncuated only by a finger scrabbling in the peanut dish, stale cheese and licking the sherry dregs from fragile stemmed glasses. (Or perhaps that last one is just me.)

A typical Christmas eve

Give me the days leading up to Christmas anytime! As I sit here now, pecking out these words, there are carols on the stereo (God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen at this current minute,) bottles of whisky, gin, bourbon and rum lined up on a table and the goose is about to be pulled from its frosty nest in the freezer. (The pork and turkey can stay a while longer in the fridge.) I am in a happy place indeed. Anticipation is high.
And thats just it; the anticipation of something (especially as magical as Christmas) can always over power the actual event itself no matter what it is. Many intravenous drug users (including myself in the past) admit that the best part of taking the drug was plunging the needle into the skin. Or watching the drug bubble and cook on the spoon. Ditto sex. The orgasm is second to the sight of a stockinged leg or a tongue rolling on a gin soaked top lip.
Now is the time for indulgence, the time to lay back and soak joy into every greedy pore. Here is where I thrive, in the ghetto of all eves. May it preserve me in oils and fatten my wings to glide me over the ruins which must always follow.

Nadolig Llawen !!