FEAR AND LOATHING AND SNOW BALLS:
CHRISTMAS WITH "PTERODACTYL" GARY GOLDBERG
by DPR

I did visit Pterodactyl Gary one Christmas, now that you ask. Let me just warm my sack near the yule log and take another sip of Grandma's Flammable Egg Nog, in honor of Gary...

It was odd, because it snowed here. Now, this is the deep wet South and we don't get snow, except maybe an occasionally sparse flurry followed immediately by pools of shit-colored dirt-water everywhere. But I mean this time it was really coming down. It was actually "concatenating without abruption". (Look that one up, Harvard bitches!)

And the harsh, driving wind was blowing it all over my glasses, so it was difficult to see exactly who it was coming down Gary's front steps, throwing snow balls with comically serious venom at him as he stood in the doorway, dressed like some drunken Kringle in red longjohns and Santa hat (sans puff-ball), a sprig of mistletoe somehow attached to his small belly just above his "junk"...a fact I only discovered, unfortunately, once I was close-up and spectacleless, dodging snow balls and trying to duck past him into the doorway.

"Why couldn't he be? Jesus was Jewish so why the fuck not Santa Claus?" Gary screamed this right in my ear as a curiously hard snow ball hit my friend Eben directly in the Holly Berries.

"You're never serious, you bastard!" The woman, speaking with a thick Southern accent, was wearing a police jacket. (I instinctively checked my pockets.)

'I'm trying to learn about your relgion, you stupid Heeb!"

"I told you, Darlene, only in the bedroom!"

Darlene then squatted and began forming a snowball that, after a moment, appeared to be approaching the size of a small dog, so Eben and I squeezed past Gary and entered the house, nursing our wounds. I thought Gary was just going to take it...some bizarre display of sacrificial love...but after a moment, I heard him say, "Oh, shit." and he spun around and slammed the door behind him. Seconds later, it sounded as if someone had thrown a medium-sized dog at the front door.

"I gotta stop fucking policewomen..." Gary said.

After that, things settled down as, apparently, Darlene left to plot her revenge, and Gary opened the bottle of whiskey Eben and I paid our friend who worked at Kroger to steal for us. At that point the Holiday Spirit really began to flow. (We didn't drink, of course. We were only 19. And if you believe that, I think I hear reindeer on your roof.)

We celebrated the 8th night of Hannukah with lots of laughs and--once Gary put on some clothes--some serious discussion about why, exactly, all things being equal, Santa Clause couldn't be a really nice Jewish Guy.

"He's a mensch. He just feels bad they're not, you know, chosen. So on Jesus' birthday, just as a mitzvah, he brings gelt for all the little goyim!"

Can't argue with that, I thought. And I still do. And when I recall that night, blearily and quite possibly with drunken revisionism, I miss the Old Coot. The old leathery bastard is gone, but this crazy shit is unforgettable. Gary, your memory is gelt.

Now pass that nog because I'm starting to feel my ankles again.

Happy Pterodactyl Garymas, You Bastards

--Dirty Prancing Ragamuffin