Bough-house.

We were trimming the tree on Friday night and listening to a mix of Eighties music I made to please the local fans of cheez. The song was "Bela Lugosi's Dead", which is pretty good tree-trimming music if you're the sort of person that I and Marla and Sutton are, which is to say: weirdo. And we had a bit of a mash-up when Sutton turned on the talking Santa doll, who busted out with "We Wish You A Merry Christmas". It turns out that "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" is almost the same song as "Bela Lugosi's Dead", except for being in a different key and a different time and about different subject matter. Peter Murphy possessed the fat, jocular puppet and jerked it around to a creaky, portentous beat, all the while mordantly intoning: I'm merry, I'm merry, I'm merry.

And then The Winter Party. The gathering of old friends, hugs in the doorway, shoes off, socks on hardwood floor, bowls of vegetables, funky cheeses on wooden boards, red wine, guitar, babies and little kids caroming around at knee level, rain pelting down outside, smoker's huddle out in back of the laundry room, wheels and pirouettes of conversation spinning out to crash, finally, at a quarter past two a.m.

Up a few hours later and into day two. French toast and bacon, mimosas, the Sunday paper. Stockings brought down from the aerie all bulgey with chocolates and CDs and wooden spatulas. Spaced-out, comfortable, reclining in robes near a floppy longhaired dog, Stan Getz on the stereo. More guitar with sore fingers. Never get up, never go to school. Stay in the pillow room with all my friends, tree full of lights, bumblebee daughter, plumluscious wife. Sunday morning forever.