My friend Stephen’s great article in the New YorkTimes:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/fashion/20elliott.html?_r=1&ref=style&pagewanted=all

made me think about Christmas memories.

I've never had a Xmas tree before until now. My apartment smells like a pine

Forest and I love it.

 Someone I love, a friend, (its complicated by the fact that he is my ex-fiancé) brought

 a shoe box of great homemade ornaments over and we decorated the tree together. One of the ornaments has "Bobby" written on it because my great friend Rob made it when he was a little kid.

  Afterward, we tossed some pillows and blankets on the floor and watched "The Hangover." I've never enjoyed Xmas in Los Angeles. It's always been depressing to me to be in Southern California, possibly the most un-Christmas-y place on Earth. It was easily 80 degrees the first year I moved here, in 2003.That year, and most since, I’ve ditched LA to Northern California to escape th emerciless sun, rent a car, fly. Get the fuck out. Then I thought about other Xmas' and running has been a theme:

My parents hated each other after they divorced.I was a pawn between them.

There was much screaming and guilt. Meaning, when I visited one, the other would get jealous and grill me for details then badmouth the other one. I would run from one parent to the other, an endless game of emotional ping-pong.

Sometimes my Dad would spend Xmas in Hawaii with his new family. I wasn't

Invited, unless he had visitation that year.  When I did go, I was miserable and had

little in common with his newly Christian,baggage-free family who got better gifts and

way more attention than I did.

Xmas in SF in my 20's included snorting lots of meth and running around the

Mission in a corset and little else looking for more. I avoided all things

 family and Xmas during the meth years. But there was one Christmas on meth, where my friend Patrick M. and I drove in the fog and rain to Humboldt, in the middle of the night. I had been up for days. I don’t know why Patrick allowed me to drive and he was probably scared shit less. I was too numb to be scared. I weighed thirty pounds less then, shaved my eyebrows and pierced  my tongue and septum. The truth is, my family loved me but I did everything I could to stay away.

There was another Christmas in LA where I had Typhoid fever and didn’t know it. I had a 104 fever off and on for a month before I finally went to the ER. My boyfriend and I spent that Xmas with my best friend and her husband and their two cute dogs. We had a great meal,prepared by my friend, who was more like a sister. We’re not friends anymore. We had so many parallels it was like we mirrored each other in spite of ourselves, like a two-person sorority, we were both strippers who lived in SF for years and even fucked some of the same people. We had the same sarcastic sense of humor. No one has ever made me laugh like that. Literally, we went to the same schools and studied the same things. Both of us wanted to be writers. I think it was Amy Hempel who said something like,“After you tell all of your secrets and spill your blood and guts to someone,you can’t be friends after that.”

Then she pulled away and I heard hurtful things, gossip and snide remarks and I saw who she really was. Sadly, Amy Hempel was right.  Now I have other friends whose talent I believe in and who believe in mine.  We share the spotlight and support each other and our work. That's a gift.

This Xmas, my wish is to contribute more to my good friends, in order to return to them the love and support they’ve given freely.The only running I want to do is on the treadmill.

Happy Holidays Los Angeles, 2009