SAN FRANCISCO: The Tenderloin

(In '85, I was using this very humble digs on O'Farrell Street, as seedy a nabe as it gets. The hookers, the winos, the junkies, the rifraff. And I cherished it. I was working alright - home health care with about three different services, VNA, Western, this and that – but as broke as you could be and staying at that level. You could really almost say I didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Yet I remember my landlord very fondly, and his lady-for-life, very dear people. I remember being in my "wife-beater" undershirt and sitting out nights on my fire-escape some 6 flights up, playing on a second-hand 120-bass white accordian to the fighting drunks and strolling prostitutes and general traffic down below – my sole repertoire: everything from "Never On Sunday," from the theme to the other fun melodies giving us the loves of Piraeus. I don't need to speculate on the appreciation of this down on the street but I was having a gas, puffing on my cheap cigar.

 

Now one late night I got a call to have a bundle of laundry left with me ready for someone from the house in Mill Valley to drive by and pick up. No hidden insinuations here, it really was just about some laundry. I was seeing myself as the house idiot, but that didn't matter, I was soon going to be deciding to enter the military, join the Army, see the world. But in the meantime, and on this particular evening, I had taken the only cooking pan I had, and made a nice little soupy stew, with onions and maybe rice, and I don't know what else, but I had precious damned little and was now using up the last of that. I did not even have garlic, on that I had to pass, which I hated to do but sometimes in life you just don't have garlic. And I had something in mind with this, something I was going back and forth about, if and whether I should - because with a certain group of "who-are-the-people-in-your-neighborhood" I still felt skiddishly apart and self-concious, and I wanted to bridge that and embrace them.

Sooo: around 5 a.m., still dark, the car rolls by as arranged and I'm down on the street passing over the armful of laundry - and after mutual greetings from these Dharma-sisters of mine, I'm standing there alone, about to go back up. Then I see her, Black and hooking, standing on the corner, not trying to get me over, just hanging at her corner, so I'd have to approach her. Which I did, saying – just to break the ice and leave her flabbergasted - which it oddly did: "Hey, kiddo,it's rather cold out here! You can't be making any business at this hour on a Sunday morning – everybody's in church!"

Well, she was somehow quite normal, natural, okay to me, not bombed or aggressive or whatever else may have inhibited me. I invited her up, lightly insisting, to a stew - no tricks on my part and no tricks needed from her trade. Just between us. "You haven't had breakfast yet, right, hon'? I don't have much, but I did just rustle something up for ya and would be obliged for you to taste it, c'mon!"

She did, she followed me all the way up, she told me she hooks to cover groceries, her mother watches her child thinking she has some night job somewhere. So oh shit, she's REAL. I really hit gold here, so she got her stew alright, maybe even a second helping. I got her to remove her heels, got out my water basin and towle and oil, and happily massaged her tired feet. She asked about a wife, I said, yeah, mine will come by soon just to crash after night shift as nurse, butnot to worry, she's not due yet and she's very understanding. So I asked her how she liked the stew, honestly now. And what did she have the gall to tell me: "It's not bad, it's alright, but it's lacking something... ...yeah, I know – it's missing garlic."

Every word of this is true. And yes, I was just bringing her to the door to personally escort her back down to the street, as my wife came home, irritated at finding someone in the flat, and I sent her to bed – or rather, to futon. My guest, thinking she was about to be murdered or at least dissed, I assured with, "Now don't you worry a bit, I'll take care of her - she's just tired, actually she's very understanding.")

TENDERLOIN (San Francisco 1985)

Pacing the curb all those hours for a thirty-dollar trick or two

to feed those twins your mother is watching over, she doesn't know

where the groceries come from – you look hot for me, baby,

for a dirty-thirty you'd let me put an unwashed shaft in you

or a bourbon-soaked tongue between rotting teeth- maybe then

not thirty, but fifty? and I could jerk my contempt off

into your belly and I would never have to know you . . .

Honey dammit come in outa the cold just this once I've got a

hot homey stew I made it just for you take off those heels no hurry

let me rub those ankles with a skill and a salve, ok it's not your routine,

but indulge me this once -

my prayers for your well-being are stirred into this stew it's alI

I want to put into your belly.

Body, Psyche, Sexuality

(you must be 16 or older to read this, please show ID)

I've massaged for some 40 years now. It developed ad hoc without schooling, over time, on inspiration and inner movement. I developed a style which made limbs and backs and psyches feel great, I removed headaches in a few minutes, I began with feet and stuck primarily with that for two years, washing and massaging feet of every kind of person, friend or detractor, acquaintance or stranger (and some were pretty strange), in rooms or on the street or in parks, as an act of private discipline and devotion toward my ideal. Foot-reflexological developed of its own and became a specialty – the reflex book or two I much later consulted or owned mostly served to confirm what I had already intuitively learned through doing. And I'm still at it.

 Massage is body work – nothing and no age-process or ill-health either disturbs or disgusts me. I love the body as I love my own. I found through massage that this was always effortless for me, it could not tire me out, as I felt coordinated with the other body (my back is your back is my back, so I automatically know what to do) - I always received energy in the giving, and the person felt great and I felt wonderful. And I'm still at it.

I have massaged men and women, children and adults, of all ages, body types and conditions – gorgeous and hot, ugly and plain, all are beautiful to me, all. In nursing school here in Berlin I did a 6 or 7 week practical stint on maternity – as a bonus I gave pressure-relaxation treatments (Beruhigungsbehandlung) particularly designed for women on maternity but good for anyone, and it was a huge hit, non-stop; this little number I did pick up from someone, an alternative fellow-traveler among my nursing faculty. And I'm still at it.

I have massaged men, gay and hetero, and with the gays all went well (sometimes amusing because of their expectations or because of my own residue of clichés) and even if they had wishes I could not fulfill as a hetero I certainly had no qualms about massaging them, as comfortably as with any other person on earth. And nothing has changed.

Now when I massage – anyone, but let's take women as I am going in this direction in this writing anyway – I see through the massaging itself, only a woman's beauty. There was a grade school teacher, 40ish, unattached with no sexlife (or none currently) and with horrible lifelong acne on her face, she was a client of mine for awhile many years ago. Nice bod, but that acne! When I massaged her she became beautiful. First was my imagination, then the transfer of this recognition into her – not visualisation because I was just recognising her as she was – through the touch, and she'd relax in herself, knowing through my hands that she was loved and even possibly desirable as a woman. No words about, no talk, all conveyed through the massage. She asked me once after many sessions, how I would view her from the standpoint of looks. First what went through my head was, “shit now what – think fast and be authentic but accurate!“ Then I spoke from the heart and knew the higher mind was speaking: I heard myself telling her, when I look at her face I see the beauty behind the exterior. She got it and was moved, soothed, relieved, satisfied. And it was true: hearing my own words I got it: that you don't lie about the acne, you don't give it center place either – you move beyond that and talk real. People will know it, they're not stupid.

So I see the beauty, massage the beauty, the beauty is awakened through this, and in the relaxation of self-loathing, the beauty takes place and is there, it wells up from within and rounds the body again or it descends from its banishment back into the body like spirit and finds it place there where it belongs. No shit. I really really do love bodies and I really really do love women. And no bodily function or happening or excretion scares me or inhibits me or disgusts me. That said, I have no fetish-perversions nor entertain any, so I won't even go there.

Beauty is not in the barbie-look, an exterior, culture-dictated babe-look isn't beauty, it's an empty shoe box. Can't dance. Beauty has so many dimensions, and one dimension which itself is multi-dimensional is the erotic component. I have known this intimately in women who never would have turned a head by ordinary standards – I have my own and stick to that - but I sensed it with a nose for the erotic I could only wish every other guy.

Over the years the massage has also developed its erotic component, I gave this full expression after many years not having done so. And the results have far more often been far more rewarding for both, than the occasional hit-and-miss. I have had many lovers from many walks of life, and many ages, older and younger than I. Some in their eighties. Very rewarding, and I do mean mutually. Each a Sam-Story of its own.

There are - or have been, over my 25 years in this town, bordellos where I was a most welcome semi-regular, where I arrived to massage and we took it all out in trade, where I gave instruction in the “Tibetan 5 Rites of Rejuvination,“ where I was the only male I ever saw being granted the neighbor-status as I call it, of being welcome to hang out at the kitchen table of certain said bordellos and yack with the ladies, proprietess included, whether there was necessarily bed-business or not sometimes.

My eye for erotic is a wide-lens camera: I never compare two women ever, and I never judge – I not only accept “flaws,“ I cherish them, that's sometimes where the erotic component even is, which is why so many guys miss it – it requires a mature eye which most altogether lack because they've bought into the bland dick-tates of cultural status quo and commercial marketing. I rejoice in bodily hair wherever it is, au naturelle, and if a woman is herself more cmofortable without, that's alright. There is not a bodily orifice on a woman I avoid, either in massage or in tongue-play or cock-ulation, not a single one. Firmly but gently, with timing everything is possible – and passionately in-joyed. Nature has given us so and so many digits and so and so many orifices, who needs toys – or to borrow from Monty Python, acoutrements. I love mouths, lips, breasts, nipples, vaginas, butts, anuses, thighs, I absolutely relish armpits, I tend away from too-slender twd. a robuster fleshy, a healthy amount of it, I don't consider any woman “overweight“ until she acutally is. I'm not telling this to be vulgar, it's just a matter of fact and openness, I don't intend to get graphic here. To recall from an earlier passage:

…The wild erotic energy radiating from its female form is full-fleshed, generously-haired, musky and mature, and not without subtlety.
By full-fleshed is merely meant, that the entire span of her corporeal body communicates a hearty welcome to life-radiance at the erotic level.
By generously-haired is meant, she is not bound to male dictates of artificial beauty.
By musky and mature are meant, her own-scented fragrance and earthy experience are her jewels and likewise independent of controlling-male notions toward hygienically sterile bodies robbed of their history and wild heritage.
By subtle is meant, even if the personality were somewhat crude or asleep, the energy is certainly awake, and for those who will encounter and acknowledge it with an attitude of respect and meet it with the proper degree of energy, it is as benevolent as it is wild. …

 

And now I'll finally cut to the chase. An American woman looked me up while here on business, end of summer '94 Berlin, she got a full, good massage. She was by all accounts, in her sweats and bike and glasses, “not a looker,“ yet when she'd disrobed and received the massage, not only was I storngly aroused by her splendid erotic beauty, I felt it in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Still I exercised caution. She was leaving town that day to do a 6-week stint in the new-East Europe as she was with a major news network based in Atlanta, I won't name names though. We hugged and agreed on a massage when she swings back through. I left a message on her recorder explaining my impressions, offering the full monty if she should so wish, and if not then the best massage and we'd leave it at that. On returning she told me she'd played my message back six times, so she got a massage and we spent one long splendifulous night together, followed by a very very hot correspondence until gentle and loving closure – remember, there was no internet back then, you licked stamps with that same tongue you...never mind.

Now here's the kicker: As good as my hunches are, this one went right under my radar. We went up to her borrowed flat that second encounter, and we kissed. I noticed she was a bit unhandy and it didn't matter, it was endearing. When she told me she'd been out of practice for a long time, I only figured she meant at all, but she meant with men – then she explained she's lesbian and in a relationship with her partner back home going on 15 years. I laughed so hard from the belly, I had to explain that the laugh was on me, one because that had not even occurred to me although it ought to have, and two because I could now really be the proverbial “lesbian in a male body.“ She had been harboring a growing need for the whole past year to feel a man in her again. We not only loved and in-joyed one another deeply, erotically, passionately. She said this had healed a wound in her she'd carried since age 16 – I understood immediately without any elaborations. A lot of women could relate. I later encouraged her to remain as lesbian as she wants, whatever came of her partnership, but that she also could know herself now as bi-sexual, and that this was also wonderful. What matters is only to know and to cop to it. I've met lots of lesbians in dail life and the ones I've always really appreciated are the butch-cut ladies who are so fucking cool and mature (usually over a certain age) and self-confident and male-friendly-while-needing-none.

So there it is. By the way, before I clothes – sorry, close – anybody know the one about the old wrangler sitting in a bar having his beer, and an attractive woman takes the stool next to him, has her drink in hand and asks him sort of off the cuff, “So, are you a real cowboy?“ To which he replies, wrangler-like, “Well, I get up mornings early, go out to the horses, tend to them, drive cattle out, brand calves, repair fences, pick up feed and supplies from town,“ etc. etc. - “...yeah, I guess you could say I'm a real cowboy.“ She replies, “Well I'm a lesbian. When I get up mornings I think about women, when I shower and have breakfast I think about women, when I go to work and go through my day I think about women, when I come home and watch TV or read or have dinner I think about women, right up until I go to sleep, I just think about women women women.“ Then she sets down her drink and they part witha mutual nod. He sits there and stares forward, until a nice frinedly middle-aged couple from out of town join him at the bar. “Saayy, are you a real cowboy?“ the husband inquires. The cowboy takes another swallow and considers for a moment, replying reflectively, “Well, up to now I thought I was, but now I reckon I'm a lesbian.“

Much of my poetry reflects what I've written here:

You there, with that nose of yours,
that longish, elegantly erotic nose you hate;
you with your 'not quite symmetrical' face, don't you know:
that very jawline which shames you delights me?
Quit feeling 'fat' - define your standard, who told you that?
Stop chasing warts, leave them;
if your body-tatoos can be so alluring, why can't a mole?
Are your breasts still 'inadequate' - or overmuch . . . but
look at your thighs, what form they give you!
Think of Aphrodite, not Claudia or Naomi!  Erotic, not neurotic!
Go neither obese, nor half-starved to please; shave nothing, smell enticing!
Stop cursing your buttocks, think classic, not anorexic!
Breathe in your own inner aroma, let it wend its way in and out unimpeded,
brightening your woman-face, your sensual sensuous body, restoring health -
or haven't you suffered enough sickness over false self-image?
When you speak against your own beauty, when you deny it,
you speak against me, you deny me - for I,
I am full of your beauty, and cannot get enough of it.

Come-Union, or: On Be-Coming

(not for minors, please show a current ID at the door)

Tongue and lingam should work together,

tongue must lead and lingam follow, always in tandem,

attaining a rhythm most naturally arrived at and held

through wakeful concentration and passion of interest.

And age is no matter, let us

dispense with that right now;

where erotic knowledge is concerned

youth and advanced experience meet well.

And a wizard or crone might bring

more energy and maturity to bear,

having long struck down the conditioned inhibition,

and unlocked beauty overlooked by puerile dictates.

Tongue and lingam should work together;

tongue and lips, stroking and caressing,

flattering, fluttering, probing, preparing,

arousing moisture and goose bumps, bringing flavor.

Entering all the same places, received with wild care,

creative passion always considering you, beloved,

where timing and spontaneity are taken to an art

through intuition or matured instinct.

Tongue tip on tongue, on lips, on neck and throat,

tongue washing armpits, over bitten shoulders,

teasing raised nipples with crazy circling,

tongue over belly, navel, thighs and clit.

Yoni and mouth yielding to swooning but untiring kiss

as tongue sweeps and caresses without care,

the taste of you and your luxurient hair,

your perspiration mingled with rose oil and juices.

Small of back massaged with hand and with tongue,

so the buttocks, kneaded; so also between, where cleft and anus

are stimulated in a manner known since ages

and still indescribable.

Coming in your mouth, lingam gliding over your tongue,

I feel myself entering your very bloodstream,

charging every cell in your entire body.

That is just one variation of course.

Gliding lingam on your neck, over your armpits,

between your breasts, against your nipples, across your belly,

along your thighs – and coming anywhere there,

is well spent . . . but spent.

Coming in your yoni via whichever of so many positions,

your gratification is central to my interest,

for by abandoning the central interest in mine,

my own climax is assured merely by being in you, serving yours.

But for all that, I find coming in your ass to be

the gratification par excellence for both,

bringing forth unimagined fruit, once discovered

never to be forgotten nor forsaken.

I will tell you why I know this.

Deep as the yoni well is, there is something

primally deeper still, in a different and healing way,

about entering that ass gradually with lingam.

The ass is charged with a negative and a postitive

association both, a crossing of pleasure and pain,

reward and punishment, expectation and relief,

tension and gratification, erotic and banal.

Negatively seen, the brutality of a sadist finds

in this the very place to ravage and humiliate,

to abuse and fuck to death your very soul

in that place of your most basic security.

Positively seen, lovingly and consentually entered,

there is deeply erotic, healing, validating union

in a place so deep in the psyche as to defy words.

And to come there in love, respect, appreciation, is ecstasy.

http://titsandsass.com/the-erasure-of-maya-angelou/

The Suit, or The Truth About Santa

(as I lived it in Berlin, Christmas Eve 1990)

'Twas the night before Christmas...no, that would be leaving out too much. 'Twas a couple weeks before I entered the Army, living in San Francisco I made one lone attempt to live out a dream I'd often nurtured: to be a department store Santa just once in my life. And really BE it, express it, do an Edmund Gwinn on it, inspired by the old “Miracle on 34^th Street,“ but it was not to be. I called two or three large stores who offered this, and the answer was always: senior citizens only. They don't use 30-year-old Jewish Coloradan health-care givers, down-and-out in San Francisco. My luck. No sign of snow anyway, some cheer.

Berlin, 1990, five years after that disappointment in the City on the Bay. I'd just lived through City on the Wall, and a new era was in the making, hardly dared dreamed of – and now my own little dream was about to be realized, hardly could I have imagined.

Living in the barracks installation which had once housed Hitler's private HQ, I was employed on the side as masseur in a tiny rec center on this very compound. In a building where the Gestapo once tore muscles and shattered joints, there I was working at deep-relaxing muscles and helping joints bend better. It was called Hi-Light and offered a massage service as well as limo-rental, video-rental, ping-pong and a small library, whatever came to the mind of whichever military wife happened to be running it at the time, and was open to creative inspiration. I was available on commission by appointment, according to contract I also gave quarterly workshops. This all ran until the last American military installation was closed for The Drawback, 1994.

In December of 1990, Kelly from Texas was at the helm. She was a congenial sort, and as with her predecessors I often had a good hearty chat with her in the office after an appointed session on the bench. On this particular day she hit me with a volunteer request. Would I be willing to go house to house, flat to flat, for three evenings running, ending with Christmas Eve, in the military housing areas? Would I be willing to do it unpaid, although families responding to this clever little offer were paying a fee of five bucks for Santa to spend 2-5 minutes “dropping by“ and enchanting the kiddies? Would I be willing to have Kelly as a “Rudolph,“ sledding me and about four “elves“ in green from the Berlin American High School around in her van? My heart jumped.

I said, “Maybe. First tell me about The Suit.“ The Suit was grander than I could have dared hoped: the costume itself was totally alright, with enough room for pillows, and as only the boots were missing, I stuck with my military boots, the kids would just have to deal with that. The main thing, the beard and the wig, were as good as it gets, cotton would help the eyebrows, nothing was loose-hanging, it was perfect. As a pipe smoker with a nice collection, I would use my very long- stemmed number which was right out of the traditional illustrated poem – everything was set. So would I do it? I said, “One other thing. Snow. Tell me about snow, I want snow.“ It hadn't snowed a winter in Berlin worth mentioning. That year it would, and did, and how. I told Kelly, leaving the snow open to chance, “Yes. I'll do it, I'm in. Am I alone with this?“ No, it seemed there was one other Santa going on his own tour for the Hi-Light, a Master-Sgt., a tall and lanky, rather banal and colorless fellow who thought that just wearing the threads made the theme, as if just wearing the duds made the dream, and when I heard that he was all they had and they needed a second for another tour, I said, “YES KELLY! YES! I WILL BE YOUR SANTA!“

And so it went. I fit into the whole shtick like an apprentice to the Real McCoy. I went through every tour those three evenings with one thought: I am He. What would He do if He were Me? And what would The Universe wish to communicate to all these children, or to a specific not-yet-encountered child - in the form of a kitsch-traditional, warm'n'rosy Santa – this creative Universe so electrically resonating with compassion, with warmth and love, pregnant with joy like a Santa.

The effect was a complete outward transformation, and inwardly I was morphing into my interpretation of a divinely-dropped North Pole Messenger of love, of joy, of goodwill, of Christmas warmth and cheer at its best – no clichées, no bullshitting, no “acting“ but being it, taking my time actually paying attention to the kids, listening, playing, laughing and joking – and sharing that twinkle of the glance. And it worked. The ho-ho was heartfelt, and slipping into the role I rolled in and out of each visit feeling enriched and in more than a few cases tangibly enriching.

Among all the many various drop-ins, at some I was known by military co-workers, and for them it was “Sam-ta Claus“ - explaining to the young and inquisitive that the military boots were a logical gesture of solidarity with the troops – heaven forbid it should mean I was actually some seargeant- dude dressing up for a stint... Most of it all went pretty much according to program, I spent anywhere from four to five minutes per visit, and there were quite a few of them. And it was fun.

There were about four incidents which will always remain with me from the latter two evenings. I worked the crowd, as they say, on gut instinct and hunch, or call it intuition. My elves were sometimes nonplussed, trying to remind me that time was running, as five turned into ten minutes, ten into twenty. I reminded them with the sternness of a Papa Christmas, that we were on my clock, not Hi-Light's, not Kelly's, not the 5-dollar fee's. They gulped and must have thought, “Oh, shit, the dude's gone mental, he actually believes he's...“ And they dealt with it.

In one flat there was a young mother with her little daughter. Different than the other families I'd been seeing, the air semed laden with an unspoken blue-mood. It expressed the overall tension over the Gulf deployment, Desert Shield was close to becoming Desert Storm, and everyone was more or less on edge in the face of unknowns. I wasn't here for commercial purposes, but on quite other business: Being Christmas. After entering the kitchenette with a hearty greeting, I sat on the nearest chair and motioned the girl toward me, inquiring as to what was on her heart. If you can't do that, what are you doing Santa for? She hesitated, and her mother, leaning against the counter and reflecting this mood as well, courteously explained that they were both concerned about Dave, a family member or friend being in the Gulf, and what danger might await him.

Nodding sagely (Santa does that), I drew the girl to my knee, hugged her gently closer, and spoke very softly to her. Naturally we had one simple rule, if you happen to know what the parents had in store for the child you could “promise“ that – but you don't promise anything you can't, nor can anyone, deliver. So for warm-ups I asked her if she knew who I was, then I asked her if she knew where I lived. When she answered with North Pole, I told her, “No, that's what everyone says, but the truth of the matter is, I live in your heart, right there in your heart, that's where I live. And all year round I am there, loving you, watching you grow, and there is nothing, nothing you can do that could make me love you less. I am seeing everything, just like they say, only I am not thinking bad or good, I am just loving you.“ Well, good for the warm-ups, that got her up on my lap. Her mother's lips were already quivering.

“Now then,“ I went for the gold. “You're going to get this and that for Christmas, aren't you? I don't have to tell you. But you are worried about Dave, and we are thinking about Dave, now aren't we? There are things even Santa cannot promise you in so many words, there are things we just have to leave up to Jesus, and there are things we just have to leave up to God. So what to do? Well we can pray, can't we? You pray with me, with ol' Santa. Now see if you know this song, and anyone who knows it can sing it with us, right now and right here, and we will offer this song up like a prayer for Dave to come home safely. Alright? Alright, now here goes...“

I broke into one of my own most favorite childhood songs from Pete Seeger, also performed by Simon and Garfunkel, “Strangest Dream“ - the whole song from beginning to end, softly and yet with a penetration which carried the mood in that kitchen into a level of refreshed hope and wonder at the power of possibility. If that ain't Christmas. And the child was much more relaxed, and the mother was brushing away tears, and the elves dealt with it. My clock. In Sufism we call this: effacement-of-the-self-in-the-elf, in Arabic, fana-fi-santa.

Shortly after, the elves got a taste of Santa's irritation. We made a stop at one flat where the only child there was an infant, not even half a year old by my reckoning, and with web-cam running and the adults making jolly, I was supposed to gratify their selfish whims of scaring the living bejeebers out of a little one who had no idea what this massive red and bearded intruder bursting through the door was after. And the child burst into screams of terror, to the gaity of these perverse American idiots. Not even then did they have a clue that they were being stupid. I gazed very gently on the child, then growled at the parents and guests a sarcastic “Merry Christmas“ and beat it out of there in less than half a minute. Their five bucks. The elves, following me down the stairs, were shocked and bemused at hearing Santa muttering a very un-Christmas “such bullshitters,“ and “Santa don't play that shit.“

It was the third incident which most moved me. There the elves had to really learn some patience, and live with my Santa-wrath. While I was equipped with a never-empty sack of little brown baggies of goodies for each child no matter how many I encountered, it was part of the deal that a family could leave a bag with a present or two with a note for me to bring it into the apartment as if it was from the Great One himself, a nice touch when one thinks about it. I was not however, expecting what hit me at this domicile: One, maybe two wrapped little boxes, and a note taped on the door, addressed to Santa, requesting that he ask the girl “in which bed she's been sleeping“- in which bed she's been sleeping? They wanted to draw me into their twisted family dysfunction? My intuition was on alarm, I grimaced as I ripped the note off and crunched it in my North Pole fist, I growled with a side glance to my wondering elves, “Santa – doesn't – play – this – shit.“ And we went in.

There were the parents, with the boy, the older of two childen, dressing the tree it seemed, everything appearing quite normal, none of them actually moving toward me or getting into The Visit much, just carrying on with what they were doing. Then I saw the little sister, seemed not older than four, standing at a distance in the living room apart from me and from the family, standing and looking – well, for me quite clearly traumatized, if one looked at it. And that evening I was looking.

I dropped the rocks, and left the others who didn't even take notice, and sat my big North Pole ass down on that couch where she was, and gestured her to come nearer. My previous experience over Dave and Pete Seeger had prepared me for this moment, and I was dismayed to see that this precious child's clear inhibition, her blank stare unmoved by any little humor on my part, was too deep to just be distracted by grins and jests, it was a sign of trauma. What the game here was I could not for the life of me surmise. But with the same wrathful energy coursing through me toward her parents I radiated toward her in concentrated, attentive stillness, all the compassion I felt toward her, all the cherishment, all the joyous love and aching to wrap this little one in my heart.

I got her over to me and went through the same chat as with the other girl the evening before: who I am, where I really live, and it took twenty full minutes to get her to a normal child's responsiveness, a turning up of the lips, a glint in the eye again, a voice. I told her that I watch over her, that she is an ever, ever so good little girl, that I love her, that Santa loves her, that Jesus loves her, that she is loved by God every moment of every day, and that no one, no other person big or small, may tell her differently.

I had to work for those five bucks, I had to penetrate hard rock in what time I had, and I wasn't leaving till something gave. I addressed her with the authority of my office in The Suit, I addressed her with the sovereignty of love. And I stayed with her till she could return to normalcy, if even for that moment. And she got it. And the elves, I think they got it too. Her family got nothing, they were beyond reach. Had I seen anything tangible I could have reported, I would have alerted our youth services. I left there without a word to the others, but took one last lingering gaze at the door, toward the little sister still standing by the couch in that living room, still apart from her family who had missed everything and would still. And she returned my gaze and was back with the living, I hoped, to stay.

Kelly made a grand “Rudolf“ in all that generous Berlin snow, and we wrapped it up from there. A day or two later she asked me what all went on with my tours, several families had called her up especially to tell her they got far more for their five bucks than they'd bargained for. I said, “Oh hell, you know, Kelly, the Master-Sgt. probably had more goin' on in his bag than we'd thought...“

My tours were over, it was Christmas Eve, and I just wasn't finished, after waiting all these years to be The Fat One. I visited a five year old girl I personally knew, a fair piece away in Kreuzberg, not one of your better-heeled districts in town. I had some fun with Berliners en route waiting for the subway and while riding it, appearing as this totally American Clichée of Christmas walking around in an area uncharacteristic for this, being outrageous, greeting people in my still broken German and getting the jaded, seen-it-all Berliner or dour Turkish faces to break into bewildered smiles and laughter. If this wasn't fun, what the hell is!

En route back to my barracks, still in full dress and character, I left the subway and took a short bus run to the front gate. The driver and other riders seemed to know this American shtick, but sitting there as well was a very traditionally dressed, middle-aged Turkish Muslim couple, who checked me out and seemed to figure in a polite way, as I was reading their faces, “Well, yes, this is their Christmas holiday, it has nothing whatesoever to do with us of course...“ How wrong they were, as tonight Santa was there for everyone, and so was Edmund Gwinn, who'd spoken Dutch to the little Dutch girl on his lap, to a watching young Natalie Wood's astonishment, and the “Miracle on 34^th Street“ was about to be transfereed to “Finkenstein Allee“.

I waited till we reached my stop, made a belly-ho-ho, wished everyone “Frohe Weihnachten,“ this being, Merry Christmas, and directly at the shocked but delighted Muslim couple, a ringing “as-salaamu aleikum, wa-rahmat-ullah wa-brakatu-hu!“ - this being, peace be with you and mercy of God and His grace! An especially Muslim touch to this season of joyous love and renewal.

I wondered how the Master-Sgt. was holding out.

- S. Inayat-Chisti, Berlin - Dec. 2011 

(Pir Vilayat Khan doing my Shtick, early '70s)