I’m at my folks house in Beverly Hills. It is a fresh, clean, much needed change of place from my usual East 6th Street digs. It’s a lazy Thursday afternoon, the 21st of December, I am lounging about in a Champion sweatsuit, and hanging a few ornaments on our Jewish Christmas tree, which stands 11 feet tall in our vaulted-ceiling-and-skylights living room. The doorbell rings a happy holiday tune that my parents had their electrician program in, and through the transparent stained-glass door (an old prop from the short-lived ‘Billy Crystal comedy show’), I see a man crouching in the doorway. Had seen him from the rear, I would have seen his carpenter’s smile. He stood up.

It was Christian, the Christmas Light Guy, who was here to pick up his much-deserved dough for an incredibly artful job of stringing lights on our big oak tree, as well as a colorful stringing around the Doric columns that frame the front porch.

“Hi, is your mom here?” he asks.

“Well, yes she is, but she’s inaccessible at the moment.” (Napping) “Can I help you?”

Not looking me in the eye, Christian is there to pick up his cash and flee. When he peeks under the sisal doormat and finds multiple Franklin’s, he smiles and opts to converse with me, knowing that he is taking my family’s money and should be polite. We shoot the shit, he tells me he’s from Michigan, was a dancer, an actor, a musician with a CD, and now he’s a fireman, but strings lights during the holiday season for some extra cash.

“A dollar a light,” he tells me. “In the last two months, I’ve made $75,000.”

We chat and flirt, and he asks me how much longer I’ll be in town, and do I want to get a drink, maybe tonight.

“Well, sure, that would be fine,” I tell him. So he busts out his Palm Pilot slash cell phone, scrolls down to my mother’s name (a Christmas light customer), and enters me, with a smile.

We meet a few hours later at Dublin’s on Sunset Boulevard, just east of the House of Blues, an eight-minute drive from my folk’s house. He looks cute, all showered and fresh, a mite smattering of cologne on his hirsute mug, a polyester shirt that just screams, “I am a cool guy, note my polyester shirt,” and we go in for beers.

Two beers in LA, plus tip costs seven dollars; this seems surprisingly low. We sit at a bench in this place that has about forty TV’s going simultaneously, and I quiz him flirtatiously on his educational background.

Two years at community college, and it shows, he says “ain’t” and “nobody” instead of “anybody,” but its endearing, and I like it. Belly-buttoned waitress with airbrushed skin, fake tits, big fluffy Santa hat and about twelve layers of lip gloss brings me a pint-sized margarita and he a water (he’s a lightweight, he tells me—so cute!)

I reach to pay for it, he stops me and says, “Oh come on, it’s your mom’s money anyway,” to which we laugh.

“Do you want to go to a party in Orange County?” he asks.

“O.C.? Isn’t that, like two hours from here, out by Disneyland,” (the equivalent of driving from Manhattan to Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey) I ask unknowingly.

“No, it’s only about a forty-five minute drive. It’s my friend’s birthday party.”

“Well, I guess, um, yeah, okay,” I say, “but we’re gonna have to take two cars, because, you know, I might want to bail.”

A very foggy night on the 10-East freeway, so foggy in fact that it’s more like Halloween out there than Christmas, and forty-five minutes turns into eighty minutes or so, but I’m game because it’s ocean-front fog, I’m following him in my Dad’s Mercedes with my favorite LA radio station keeping me company, and smoking a menthol with the window open and the heat blasting.

We arrive at Le Club.

I am dressed understatedly, to say the least. Chicks in fuck-me Lucite heels, skin-tight dresses, beautifully straightened hair, and more fake boobage than I’ve ever seen—every chick, with the exception of myself and another sister of the itty bitty titty committee, has fake tits. Hmmmmm, they look sort of good, I think.

We dance a little, I am being entertained by Christmas Light Guy’s friend who sells golfing accouterment, we have a cocktail, gawk at Dennis Rodman who has just entered the place (a local haunt of his, I am told), and within an hour, we exit.

The club is on Pacific Coast Highway, and it is very foggy outside. He walks me to my car, incites a snugly hug and a kiss, and asks me if I want to go someplace to make out.

“Sure,” I easily reply. “But it’s too cold to go down to the sand.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he assures me, “I have sweatshirts in the truck.” From his backseat, he pulls out two red, XXXL, hooded “Christmas Lights Express” sweatshirts replete with dot com address, LA phone number, and cute caricature of small man with white beard and ladder running to string lights.

We get hooded up, and I remember that there is a blanket in the back of my car. It’s a crochet, granny blanket, perfect for impromptu make-out sessions, I am sure. We walk down to the beach, sit on a bench, smooch to the sounds of the Pacific Ocean waves of Orange County crashing on the shore. Christmas Light Guy and I have made a warm little tent with our blankie and hoods and warm bodies, and we’re generating some serious body heat. My my my, is that an ornament in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

There is a late-night metal-detector-coin-searcher beachcomber strolling nearby, so we opt to make for the bluffs. Christian, en ex-Chippendale’s dancer, has a rocking bod, and I wanna run my hands all over it. He is leaning back, his tight little ass probably freezing with that boulder as his tushy-rest, and I am burrowing my feet into the sand, as I face him, trying to keep my footing (patent leather Betty Boop shoes on), and keep warm from the cold night’s air, although a salty breeze wisping through my bare legs feels mighty nice, and I am wet. Next I know, I am generously sucking his dick. “You are one lucky fireman, ” I say. He pulls me up and spins me around so we are now in upright spoon formation, and he slips it in. Oh yea, hot cock, cold night, mild buzz, holiday weekend, what could be better? Well, a lot, cuz Christian comes after about eighty seconds, on my back, on the red Christmas Lights Express sweatshirt. Ha! That’s okay though, as I myself am still sore from the hot sex I had with my girlfriend just prior to leaving New York, so I don’t really care that I got no satisfaction.

We walk back in our cars, laughing, holding hands and I follow him back towards Beverly Hills…more freeway fog, I am falling asleep behind the wheel, it’s 3am, we’re talking to eachother on cell phones from our cars, sharing the kick-ass late-night tunes of KXLU.

Speeding, I lose him in the fog, so I call him on the cell, and he patiently coaches me out of downtown LA, (after warning me to lock my doors and roll up my windows), and I find him at an off-ramp, and we get back on the freeway, and then we get off, and drive to what I assume is his house.

I pull up sloppily, not concerned with my parking style, as I know I won’t be coming inside. Too tired. Dad’s car: potential pumpkin scenario at hand.

Must get back to Beverly Hills, must get back home.

“Oh, come on in, just for a quickie. It’s Christmas,” he says.

“Sorry baby, I’m feeling too cute and tired and snugly, and I gotta go.”

“OK, ciao,” he says (very Euro, very advanced!) I drive off, and he smiles from his front door.

At home, 4am, I heat up a piece of mom’s meatloaf, gobble it down and go to sleep.

December, 2000