Single After 30 Over the Holidays: Silent Nights

Charlie Valentine

Silent nights,
Horny nights,
My cell phone's calm,
My laptop's bright,
18 year old virgins, mothers defiled,
O how I want a girlfriend so freakish and wild,
Sleep in and cry over my ex's fleece...

Hello friends! Are you currently chewing on the barrel of a handgun? Do you have the intense desire to tear out the jugular of every smiling face you see? Do long nights of eggnog lead to silent tears and heavy breathing while you Private call that married ex with the three kids and perfect life? Well, you're not alone! Tis the season, and you're Single After 30!!

The good news is, if you're reading this, you survived Thanksgiving! Bravo, kudos, and a manly pat on the ass! You're halfway past the holidays, and on your way to a cold and lonely winter wait for warmth, sun, and unattainable twenty-somethings in their really short skirts!! But you've got to get there first.

It's not just Christmas. It's the build up to Christmas. It's New Year's Eve. It's wondering if you've got another year of porn and MeetAnInmate.com on the horizon. It's knowing if anyone eats the cookies and Kahlua left out for Santa, the only one getting excited in the morning is your small intestine.

Personally, I stay as far away from everything Christmas up until D-Day itself. Every day, everywhere you go and everything you see is there to slap you in the face with your failures. No need for malls filled with gifts nobody is buying you, women shopping for somebody else, and happy families gathered around a jolly alcoholic pedophile pretending to be St. Nick. All the while thinking, that should be my family disgusted by the mixed stench of bourbon and vomit. That should be me giving Santa the stink eye for grabbing my wife's ass.

Can't watch TV, either. Nonstop advertisements, happy people enjoying each other; it makes me so sick! Stupid jingles and a United Nations diversity advertisement disguised as a sale on sweaters at the Gap! Why are they so damn happy? Is it the sweaters? They do come in a variety of bright colors. And Christmas specials, the endless Christmas specials. Sure, I could sit there and wax nostalgic over Rudolph and Frosty and Burgermeister Meisterberger, but that would remind me of being a kid on Christmas, with my family opening presents. Remind me of being happy. You know the worst time to be reminded that you used to be happy? When you're Single After 30 over the holidays. And let's face it: nobody ever asks for a Charlie-In-A-Box.

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So I skip it all until the last minute, up until I have to enter the Bizarro Santa's Village my family calls home. Don't get me wrong, they try. But have you ever gotten wire hangers as a gift? I know what these people make! We might also be the last family in America to cook goose on Christmas. You can't just walk into Stop and Shop and pick up a friggan goose. My uncle, however, has become adept at hunting them in that little pond outside the Bostich building in East Greenwich. Hunt might be the wrong word. He usually just grabs the chicks and hits the adults with his car when they attack him. Which lead to our traditional omelet breakfast the day after Christmas.

Dinner is rough, sitting around the table with all my cousins. Well, second and third cousins. Yes, I'm still forced to eat at the kid's table. Speaking of traditions, my grandfather, Tricky Dicky Valentine, has one of his own. He sets a place at the dinner table for myself...and my ex. "How come Too Good For You didn't come? Well, this table is for the grown ups. Brutus, take your uncle's plate by you. And we won't be needing the other one...again." So I grind up glass in his mashed potatoes every year. He's 85, by my calculations, that son of a bitch should have been dead Christmas '86 when I knocked him down some icy stairs in my Power Wheels.

Then it's home for another in a long string of Silent Nights. Hoping maybe New Years will be better. Hell, you've got a whole week to find someone...ahem...trick someone into kissing you at midnight. But then it's a week later and your choices for the night are the Three Stooges marathon and a lonesome bottle of tequila, or the Twilight Zone marathon with a mix of gin and Vicodin.

If you survive that self-induced coma, you live to see another year. Another 365 days of failure and self loathing. Or perhaps another chance to earn your place at the adult table. So what? You're Single After 30 Over the Holidays. You only have to do it once a year. And look on the bright side, things can always get worse! Once you're Single After 40, you'll have to get your prostate checked once a year too!

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