Thanksgiving to New Years sucks.

It's the time of year for drooling sentimentality that makes me want to slap the shit out of low brow yokels humming Jingle-bells.

I want to murder those bell ringing f**kers at the mall and set them on fire.

Why do I hate the holidays? It's the time of year when your're supposed to get together with old friends. Have a drink or ten, party, make a jackass of yourself- all the stuff I used to be so good at and enjoyed immensly.

What if all your old friends are dead? What if you watched them all die one by one in the eighties and early ninties?

I'm at a weird age for a gay man in my part of the country. I'm sorta like the last of the Mohicans. All the other gay men, or at least the ones with the guts to be out, my age are either long gone or long dead.

That'll f**K you up. You start wondering why you survived when so many others died. How did I get lucky? Or are the lucky ones already gone?

What did I do for Christmas? I looked up the squares of my old friends on the AIDS quilt. I probably would have cried but I think my pain receptors are burned out. I no longer have to do drugs to avoid feeling anything.