Shaking the Holiday Blues Away by Christopher Stone

Author:Christopher Stone [Stone, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance, holiday
Publisher: MLR Press LLC
Published: 2015-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2015

Top to bottom, Friday had decorated the office for the holidays: mistletoe hung from every doorway; a fragrant, seven-foot tree, decorated by Friday to the nth degree, his default degree, stood proudly in the anteroom. Of course, Hermosa Beach’s favorite Yuletide image, the Surfing Santa, was represented in colorful cardboard backed photos that Friday had scattered throughout the suite.

The satellite music, pumped into our office, had been set to the Sounds of the Season Channel, and it featured a diverse selection of holiday tunes—everything from Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas,” to Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me.”

Overall I loved the effort Friday had put into dressing our workplace for the holidays. But I’d drawn the line when he suggested spray-painting frosted snowmen upon the anteroom’s huge picture window. Not even in the name of Christ and Christmas would I let my spectacular Pacific Ocean view be obscured.

Friday had pouted briefly—he’d even called me a Scrooge.

But after noting that his sulking and name-calling failed to change my mind, Friday had taken his can of frosted spray paint down to Sushi Kitchen, my office building’s ground floor restaurant where the owner had been only too happy to let Friday paint frosty snowmen on the restaurant’s picture window—thereby saving him from the work of doing his own decorating.

Friday most certainly wasn’t sulking this bright and sunny December morning—the anticipated “too big to fail,” Godzilla El Nino had failed to stomp ashore in Southern California.

Au contraire, my sexy assistant was buoyantly aglow when he stepped inside my office and announced, “Michael Bourlard-Lewis is here, and he brought his husband with him.”

I’d been looking forward to this particular follow-up visit ever since I treated Michael in October. So I quickly rose from behind my desk and went into the anteroom, Friday following.

My career pays handsomely, and my healed patients lavish praise and gratitude upon me. But smiles, such as the one I saw this morning on Michael Bourlard-Lewis’s handsome face, make for my greatest career satisfaction.

Gazing longingly at my fit, handsome patient, I failed to suppress this desirous thought, Why can’t I find a fella like that? But one who is unmarried, completely unattached, and with whom I have no business affiliation.

Of course I didn’t give voice to my libidinous reverie. Instead I flashed my best smile, hoping it equaled the brilliance of my patient’s beaming face.

Michael gushed happiness from every pore as he smoothly moved in for a hug. “Merry Christmas, Doc!” he exclaimed joyously. “You can’t know how happy I am to see you—how grateful I feel. If only I’d known about you fifteen years earlier. I could have spared myself a decade and a half of suffering.”

Returning my patient’s bear hug, I’m thinking, Fifteen years ago was seven years before my metaphysical awakening. Back then, I would have scoffed at the very thought of therapy through past life regression.

But I said, “I’m grateful to have been of help, but I believe everything happens in its right time.”

From somewhere behind Michael, a hand extended itself to me in greeting.

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