Another Christmas has come and gone. We bought some cards that were simply too cute to pass up, and may even get them in the mail by the end of the year. We never bothered to get a tree, but I was pleased to note we both had trouble finding gifts for the other. What better way to end the year than to realize we want for nothing — at least, nothing that fits in the budget of a simple Christmas gift, thank Maslow.
Wil, in his inimitable way, takes the cake for best gift with a custom-tailored tuxedo, which I’ll have to get done after this silly season has passed and traffic downtown returns to simply unbearable. A well-earned second place, and certainly tops in the surprise category, has to go to Australian Renaissance man Chris Clark.
I know Chris through Twitter. It was happy coincidence I received notice of his following during a time when I had no usable mental energy and thus nothing better to do than check out his archive of tweets. As a general rule, I only follow people I personally know. Rare is the twitster whose skill with 140-character nanoprose is so entrancing I will follow them purely on spec.
Chris’ blog, while defunct, makes for a good afternoon of chin-rubbing, but his tweets, despite what eBay might like you to believe, are where “it” is at. Imagine my surprise and delight when I saw this: @bmf Donating to your favorite charity on behalf of all the people who’re expecting a gift from me this year. Merry christmas, motherfucker.
I don’t think there are words for how floored I am by that. I’m not a big fan of the tradition of compulsory gifting, and I’ve flirted for years with the idea of telling people to donate to Madagascar in lieu of sending me gifts and of sending people lemur adoptions for Christmas. As a matter of dubious luck, I’ve managed to alienate everyone in my life except for friends who just buy me scotch and family who wouldn’t listen to me anyway.
As far as giving gifts, I’m too lazy-slash-busy to even get a current card recipient list together, so what to give people has heretofore not really been much of an issue. So aside from eschewing the whole affair and doing some real good in the world, Chris has also granted me that simplest of pleasures, living vicariously through the badassedness of others.
It is in Chris’ honor I present this hard boiled tale of Christmas. Call it a return gift, if you will. As for the rest of you, consider your gift the following warning: stop reading this blog and go back to enjoying time with your friends and family. This is not a happy Christmas story with which to gather the kids ‘round and regale them with the magic and mystery of the season. Rather, this is a terrible story, one that should never be told, to children or anyone else.
For Chris, for those who ignore good advice, and for the morbidly curious, the story goes like this: About ten years ago I was studying photojournalism in college and trying to make a living out of a camera, luck, and the chrome-plated balls to stick my lens in places that were liable to get me hurt. That’s no exaggeration. One of the lowest points of my nascent career was when some thug ripped the lens off my camera and I couldn’t take any more pictures until I could afford to buy a new one.
As any would-be indie app dev stuck in contract hell will tell you, sometimes keeping the lights on means plying your trade to anyone who will pay, no matter how dirty or useless it makes you feel. Around here, companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Adobe provide the contract money, but for me, back then, it was Bud.
Bud was this guy who had been in my photojournalism class. He ran his own one-man PR firm, which he described as the perfect scam. Any month his take was less than what he used to make working for the man, the state would chip in the difference. I’m not sure if it was Hawaii’s unemployment insurance that did this for him, or some kind of disability settlement, but there it was.
He asked our teacher, the legendary Fred Larson — who doesn’t have a page on Wikipedia, which puts my own non-presence in perspective — who he’d recommend as a hired gun for some work. Since Fred and I clicked (he bought me my first legal beer) and I was, in his words, the only guy in class who actually carried his camera around, I landed a steady source of boring, sell-out gigs that paid better than anything I had ever done in my life. In other words, Bud was my angel and I loved him dearly.
One type of thing Bud would put together was the typical “take your kid’s picture with Santa Claus / the Easter Bunny / some clowns / or whatever” set up at a local shopping center. This being before the digital age, the deal was you brought your kid in, I took a snap or three, and you picked up the print the next day. If the pictures were good — and they always were — the parents could order reprints from the store, the wheels of capitalism turned, and everyone went home happy.
The best of these was Santa Claus, not just because it put my work on or in hundreds of Christmas cards, but because our Santa Claus was actually better than the more legitimate set-up at the larger malls. Rather than being some sketchy dude with a camera taking ghetto-ass bunny photos, we were an attraction, and people would actually eschew their local professional to come see our song and dance.
What Bud put together was sheer genius. He hired a professional actor to play Santa Claus, then wired him with a hidden headset with a direct feed from the nearby elf, who would take the parents aside and pump them for information.
Instead of some boozy old bum calling out a half-assed “ho ho ho,” our Santa Claus would recognize the child by name. “Is that little Cynthia I see? Come over here and sit on Santa’s lap. How did you like the bike I got you last year? What do you want this year? You don’t know? How about a Wii? Yeah, I thought so. Well, I tell you what, if you keep being nice to your little brother Micah, old Santa will see what he can do.”
This absolutely killed. Parents got a great picture with their kid genuinely beaming instead of the typical shy or tearful, red-faced pictures of years past. Kids felt like they were meeting the real Santa Claus, and no other Santa before or since could ever live up to that experience. Everyone, including my cynical self, got really excited about Christmas. No matter how raisin-like your heart, you can’t see that kind of real joy and excitement in children without wanting to drop half a crown on the fattest goose in London.
My girlfriend at the time had a much younger brother of whom she was very protective. I wouldn’t describe him as the most well-adjusted kid I’d ever met, so I don’t think going to visit Santa was tops on his list of things to do. Still, I knew he would love it. Moreover, I knew I’d bet major points with her and her family for recommending, let alone being directly involved with, such good, clean family fun.
So, the Santa gig really helped me out, financially, spiritually, and romantically. We ran the show for a couple of years, then it all went to hell. Santa Claus, or at least, the actor who played him, was indicted for 14 counts of sexual assault. As the so-called “stun gun rapist,” police said he would solicit prostitutes for sex, go back to their hotel rooms, paralyze them with a stun gun, then rape and rob them.
Waikiki is a small place, and a recent victim spotted him shopping around and called police. When he was arrested, he had a stun gun and a toupe. While friends and fellow actors expressed shock and disbelief, it came out that a woman had obtained a restraining order by accused him of blackmailing her for sex. The man children across the island considered the one true Santa Claus was looking at 20 years.
It’s been a long time, so my memories of that time are pretty shady. I don’t think Bud and I worked together again after that. It’s not that I was somehow tainted by what happened, but Bud almost certainly was. If that little debacle didn’t make him persona non grata in the islands, it certainly served as a cautionary tale for businesses thinking of hiring “some guy” instead of a big company with money for bonding and background checks.
I don’t think I ever told my girlfriend what happened. Even though there’s nothing I could have done to forsee Santa being a rapist, and even though there’s a world of difference between robbing prostitutes and molesting children, neither she nor her family would have forgiven me for recommending, let alone being directly involved with, something so horrid.
So, my regular gig and a good source of income were now kaput. I’m not saying it was because of, or even related to, what happened, but the year that Santa was indicted for rape, my girlfriend and I broke up for good. I dropped out of school, stopped taking pictures, and started racing cars, drinking alone, and crying. By the end of the year, I’d pack up and move to Seattle.
That’s where the story ended and rejoined the main narrative. It’s a terrible story, but one with a clear moral and a nice little tut-tut for the listener. Still, I learned enough in journalism school to know that being indicted for a crime and being convicted of a crime are two very different things. As such, while preparing this entry, I thumbed through the newspaper archives from back in the day and damn if there isn’t a new twist to this old story.
After two long, miserable years — including seven months in prison until he could borrow enough money to post bail — the state dropped all charges. In journalism, you learn never to say someone is “not guilty,” because you don’t want that “not” to get lost somewhere. Instead, you simply say that they are “innocent.”
I can’t honestly say whether he’s innocent or not. Certainly the state could not manage to prosecute him. This is what happens when your victims are illegal sex workers. Your witnesses tend to not show up for trial or move out of the country, both of which happened in this case. Legally, that’s the same thing as being innocent.
The other matter, that of the restraining order held against him, speaks to the greater issue. Upon further research, it turns out he counter-sued and got a restraining order against her, accusing her of harassment. So is he a blackmailing rapist, or is she a crazy bitch? Ultimately, it comes down to “he said, she said” and the truth gets lost in the process.
Look at this from another angle. If a woman wants to ruin a man, all she has to do is accuse him of assault. The laws intended to protect victims are so strong that if a third party calls the police and tells them they think they saw a man strike a woman, that man will be prosecuted. It doesn’t matter if both the man and the woman swear up and down that it never happened, that there is no physical evidence of an assault, or that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
What if some woman got pissed off at you and reported some crazy story to the police, obtaining a restraining order against you? That could happen to anyone. What if you’re an old, white, bald actor walking alone at night in Waikiki? It’s not unbelievable you’d wear a toupee and carry some non-lethal protection, just to be safe. The most innocent things look awfully suspicious when you’re being arrested.
You know that whole thing about white people thinking Asians look all alike? Well, we Asians feel the same way about white people, which Waikiki is crawling with. If you tell me that some hooker in Hawaii mistook one white guy for another one, I’d believe you.
So who the hell knows. Maybe Santa Claus turned out to be a rapist and, son of a bitch, got away with it and walks the streets again. Maybe Santa Claus was unjustly accused of a heinous crime he did not commit, and spent seven months in hell, then a year-and-change under the threat of being sent back.
I can tell you one thing: the man’s life is ruined. Even now, people he thought were his friends view him askance. Did he, or didn’t he? Do I trust someone who might be a rapist? There’s no right answer and no ending to this story. That’s what makes it so terrible. We can’t know what this story means, nor can we derive a clear moral.
Imagine the best, most amazing person you know. Imagine the person who revitalizes your spirit, who makes you love your neighbor, and who restores your hope and faith that all is right with the world. It could be that, behind their eyes, they keep a terrible secret. It could also be that, suddenly, they’ll be taken from you and put through hell for no good reason.
But hey, merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
A Christmas Story
