Poinsettias (a short story)

I am non-religious because I think all humans have been guilty of attributing their own qualities of human-ness onto ideas like creation and God itself since the beginning of time. Before there was even a word for doing this—anthropomorphism. I was raised in a family of Mormons but have always been a secret atheist, agnostic on a good day. It’s strange then, that during the holiday season, I’ve always had an obsession with poinsettias, and since I could stand up on my own, I’ve been compulsively poking my fingernails into the velvety red petals and watching the liquid white blood ooze out. When I was four, my grandma found me sitting on her kitchen floor crying because I had “killed the flower.” All around me were ripped up parts of the poinsettia with all of the puss squeezed out, and I was hysterical. “It’s okay, Jeremy! The flower doesn’t feel any pain. It’s hardly even real!”

In Utah, you need to have a license from the Mormons to purchase alcohol, and even though I was technically a Mormon, I could not buy beer. One Christmas many years after the poinsettia incident, one of the few friends I have in town, Ron Stoddard, picked me up in his station wagon and we journeyed out to Wyoming in the hopes that we’d find an open liquor store.

“It’s about time, ya bastard,” Ron said as I slid into his car. His car’s name is Betty, after the girl he supposedly lost his virginity to in it when he was fourteen. Every other word that comes out of Ron’s mouth would be enough to make my mother cry, but if I censored him, you would not have a genuine understanding of Ron as a person, a bespectacled, skinny thing of a man who talks like a 65-year-old cigar smoker who has seen things in his life that you would not even imagine. He looks puny and dorky, but that’s just to fool his enemies, older men he fights outside of bars just to kill time. He’s been doing this at least since we first met as freshmen in high school, when he was even punier than now, and we’ve enjoyed an eccentric, oddly-matched marriage ever since.

“I was going to bring my new girl Jenny along.” He flicked his cigarette out Betty’s open window. “But she’s gotta spend time with her goddamn family tonight. Said the same thing yesterday. My dick’s about to fall off Jeremy, it’s about to fall right off! How’d you like to let me borrow yours sometime? God knows you’re not using it.” He started laughing, and it turned into a cough.

“Hey, you think any liquor stores will even be open tonight? It is Christmas.”

“Ah, Christmas, ah fuck man it’s Christmas,” he said as if he’d just realized. “Shit, that’s why Jenny’s not free. Damn.”

“But I’m sure she’s spending the night alone in her room crying over ever precious minute she could be spending with you.”

“Shit, man. Forgot all about Christmas! And I might’ve said some stuff to her old man over the phone. Sonofabitch wouldn’t let her outta the house. Shit, man, I don’t even remember all I said…”

“I guess that’s the end of Jenny, then.”

On our way to Wyoming we passed by our old high school, the old alma mater, that resembled a detention center more than anything else. “Aw man, FUCK that place!” Ron shouted out the window. “FUCK you high school motherfuckers!” Even though the school was empty.

“To hell with all of Utah, man,” I volunteered. Cursing our home state, hometown, and high school was a regular activity with us, a healthy and life-affirming practice.

“FUCK Utah,” Ron agreed. “Fuck the Mormons, and fuck alcohol regulations. How am I supposed to not shoot myself in the goddamn head on Christmas if I’m sober?”

We screamed obscenities at every bush, tree, and mountain that passed us by. We told the women and children walking out of churches that God is dead, we are God, and we are sending the whole damn Earth into the depths of Hell. “Satan fucked me in the ass!” Ron cried. Then we got onto the highway and nearly crashed into the guardrail as we cursed and flipped off every car that sped past Betty.

Soon we were in Wyoming. We spent two hours in the state before we arrived in a small, all but deserted town that boasted its wealth and attracted a multitude of tourists like us with a gas station, abandoned drive-in theater, and finally a 24-hour liquor store.

“Heavens to Betsy, there it is,” Ron exclaimed, putting Betty in park and slamming her door shut.

The store was a fluorescently-lit box that featured an ancient old gremlin manning the cash register near the front door. “Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” Ron quipped as he speed-walked toward the back of the box to grab a 12-pack.

“What do you know about Jesus, son?” The old man croaked. I suddenly felt very sorry for him. Maybe it was because he reminded me of my grandfather—they were both very old and wore red flannel shirts. Maybe it was because I knew what it felt like to be stuck in a dead-end town with a dead-end life, this man’s clearly even more deserted and hopeless than my own.

“Sorry about my friend,” I said and rested my hand on the linoleum counter. “He’s just tired from driving all night.”

This man was not friendly like my grandfather. “I know all about you boys,” he muttered. “This country is a shithole, and it’s all because of liberal, hippie…Punks…Like you.” He spat out the word.

I studied his face carefully, and saw that one of his eyes was glass. I remembered the shoddy trailer we’d seen next to the store, with a “Beware of Dog” sign and a chain-link fence protecting the few square yards that made up the backyard. I wondered if it was this man’s house. There was a “Beware of Dog” sign on the fence, but I didn’t see a dog in the yard, and I wondered if there even was one. I wondered if his wife lived there with him, or if she was dead.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I finally said. Ron and I made eye contact then, as he walked quickly from the back of the store, 12-pack in hand. My wallet was at home, but I fingered a $20 I didn’t know had been in my pocket, and slapped it down on the counter. “And I’m sorry we’re underage hippie punks and can’t properly pay for this, merry Christmas.” Ron took off running and I followed, jumped into Betty, and we sped down the road, back home.

“You should call Jenny,” I said while we were still in the car. “Tell her you love her, since it’s Christmas and all. I bet she’d appreciate that.”

Ron turned and looked at me like I’d suggested we go back and have an orgy with the hermit at the Wyoming liquor store. “What, you’re some suave-ass romantic motherfucker now? Why don’t you call her, you smug sonofabitch. Tell her sonofabitch father I said hey.”

Ron was the smug sonofabitch, always had been and probably would die outside of a bar in Utah smiling smugly to himself, that sonofabitch. He’s one of my few friends in our town, and I love him. And I love Betty, the screechy cigarette-smelling bitch, and Jenny, who I’d never meet. I love the saggy, wrinkled creature that lived in a trailer and was probably robbed by underage punks like us all the time, and I love tight-fisted conservative republicans and free-loving, free-loading liberal democrats, and I love cranky old gremlins that operate liquor stores all over America.