By Mark Marchillo Odd Man Out
GAY AN D SI NGLE. PRACTICALLY synonymous. Gay and single on Christmas... the rhythm of being pathetic pulses the eardrums. Coming home for the holidays to Timbuktu from someplace metro like Santa Monica, when you’re one of us, is bound to find you eating away at the tin of holiday fudge unceremoniously in a dark corner of the kitchen. Witness my six-pack fading into six pounds. Six more pounds, that is. But who’s counting — other than me? My nickname around here has evolved from Dippy to The Manarexic. Funny how there never seems to be anywhere to hide when family storms the homefront.
My family is cool, better than most, I’d guess. Dysfunctional, but whose isn’t? Waiting for the next fight to erupt is like waiting for the snow to fall. And I just keep watching out that window, waiting. So drama.
But there are always problems in families, issues to be resolved, fought about, silent about. Anger runs rampant in family. I’m always involved. Sometimes — usually — I’m the cause. My big mouth gets me in deep. Some people just don’t like honesty. I know the feeling. Mine wasn’t a closet, it was a wardrobe.
Ironically, however, I’m as involved as I can be and as much an outsider in this family as ever. Because regardless of how much I stick my ore in, we’re always working to solve somebody else’s problems. My gay life is not in their repertoire. I’m not one of them. And they’ll never conceive to know what it’s like to be me. The Saturday before Christmas we had a little party, a soiree of 14. It was my job to gather the mistletoe (well, one of my jobs). So I went outside to get it (I grew up in the woods, we grow it here). But scratching around in the brush with the flashlight, cold and in a rare moment of holiday solitary, it hit me. I was hunting for mistletoe. And mistletoe is for kisses. Kisses for everyone else.
Hopeless cynic? Naw. Hopeless romantic? That’s gotten me nowhere. There are many of us like me. Alone. Single. And gay, of course. Can’t forget that particular ingredient. Afterall, there’s nothing special about simply being alone and single on Christmas. Oh no. To be gay, too, is much more pathetic. Almost as bad as wishing for a white Christmas the day after Christmas. But as I sit here writing this in my room back home, watching the first flurries of snow fall outside the window, I hope it’ll stick. Even if it is a day late. At least I can have that.
And here we are. The loneliest creatures on earth.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 28, 2007. Read the original PDF.