rinue | Almost Pajamas

All right, so Hole in the Wall may be a wreck even though I have people coming over in a few hours. So shaolin monks may be invading British Columbia. So my allergies may be so impressive right now that I have to drink tea like . . . um . . . a chimney. [So I may not have the cliched metaphors I need to be appropriately sympathetic.--Ed.]

None of that matters, because I HAVE NEW PAJAMAS.

At this time I will allow for a moment of awed silence.

Take more if you need it. It's understandable.

It almost makes me teary, but then I remember that's actually the pollen count. Know that I have not had pajamas I liked since I was in elementary school (which is when I had a lot of superhero pajamas and a kung-fu gi). This is made worse by the fact that every Christmas -- every Christmas, without fail -- my mother buys me new pajamas and I hate them. Hate them. Have been known to throw them to the ground and stomp on them a la Yellow Submarine when I'm pretty sure nobody is looking.

It's bad.

I wind up wearing them anyway, because they're all I've got. That, or cobbling together old items of clothing stolen from ex-boyfriends and girlfriends, which I must admit smacks of bad form. So before I go to bed, or when I first wake up in the morning, the last and first thing I feel is either ugly or regretful. And sleeping nekkid only works when nobody is going to see me, (my friends are prudes, Val excluded,) thus negating a certain percentage of the point.

This Christmas, the only thing I asked for -- the only thing in the world -- was new pajamas that I would like. I started this campaign around about Thanksgiving, possibly earlier.

Oi! I said. Pajamas! Let's go!

I visited The Parents several times. Mom said "okay, you can choose your pajamas out of the Victoria's Secret catalogue, just remember that it'll be on video Christmas morning."

There were no pajamas that I liked. They were all uncomfortable and frilly and bad colors. These were pajamas that were made to be taken off, not worn around the house on a Saturday morning. Finally, in the back, I found one fairly reasonable pair that vaguely resembled long underwear, but sleeveless.

"Okay," I said, circling the photograph several times. "Okay."

They weren't the sleepwear of my dreams, those mythical pajamas that lingered just out of my peripheral vision, tantalizingly wreathed in mist and harp music, but they were a damn sight better than anything I had.

Christmas Eve. She gets me the wrong pajamas.

"I'm not wearing these," I say.

She reveals backup pajamas.

"No," I say. "I hate them. If my hatred was visible light, it would be lazing out of my eyes to incinerate them."

Do you want my pajamas? she asks.

"No." I get teary. "They're pretty, but they're not mine and you know it. How could this happen? [insert 'oscar moment' music] I try so hard, you know? I work, I loot and pillage, and for what? It all falls apart in the end and I can't get even the simplest kernel of happiness. Even in my sleep, my time of rest from the hard darkness of the world, I can find no respite, bound in bad pajamas like straightjackets."

"You're ruining Christmas," says my sister Arielle.

"Fuck you," I say. "Christmas was ruined when I didn't get the pajamas I asked for. The only thing I asked for, the only thing I have asked for in several years. And don't talk to me about Christmas when you hate Christianity so much that you refuse to go to the Christmas Eve service that you know Mom and I are singing at and you know how much it would mean to The Parents and it's mostly carols anyway, which you like and always make me play on the piano even if we're supposed to be decorating the tree. Leaving a religion is all fine and dandy -- did it myself, remember? -- but to refuse to treat it with the proper respect and dignity, going so far as to insult the people -- your parents -- who do chose a spiritual life with the church and then to turn around and use one of their most sacred holidays as a weapon is below even what I expect of you. Also, it's Christmas Eve. Get it right."

Arielle trots over to wrap her arms around Mom, staring daggers at me, (which she does badly). "I like MY pajamas," she says.

"Of course you do!" I retort. "They're the ones you ordered, you who already has a plethora of pajamas when I don't even have matching socks!"

"Hey," she says. "You love these pajamas. They let you say everything you want to say."

"Yeah, well they speak pretty loudly to me."

"They're pajamas."

"No, man! The pajamas are everything! I work as hard, or harder, than anybody in this family to make Christmas happen, and yet why do I always feel like I'm some kind of joke to you? And I'm going to say what nobody else in this family is saying."

"What?"

"YOUR LOOKS HAVE BECOME A PROBLEM!"

Okay, so we stole that last part from a movie, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an important and healing part of the discussion.

In any case, I wore the hated pajamas the remainder of the time I was in Boston and then left them behind, as per usual.

Since then, I have taken my destiny into my own hands, and tried to find my own pajamas. It makes me feel very New Age and What Color is Your Parachute? and generally irritable, but it has finally paid off! Yes! Pajamas! I own them! At this time!

::victory lap::

They're great. The pants are soft and navy with red stitching and rainbow elastic at the waist. The shirt is a ripped up red sleeveless tee with navy stitching, a chinese mandala, and a pissed off snake. Now when I wake up in the morning and go to bed at night, I feel, well, okay, comfortable and probably sexy, but mostly, mostly, I feel ready to kick someone's ass.

What perfect pajamas!

I leave you in my non-sequitor way with the first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House:

"No organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

I want to have Shirley Jackson's babies.