Have you taken down your Christmas tree?
When I first walked into Ralph’s apartment on a December evening in 1976, I thought it was the quintessential bachelor pad with a floral couch that looked like it belonged to his grandmother—it had— and a few mismatched chairs.
Not that I actually had ever been inside a bachelor pad. The back of a few vans and parent’s living rooms were my speed back then since I was only 17—almost 18—so I was impressed.
There was a small Christmas tree on a table with colored lights and green and red balls hanging from it. I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t much to look at, and I figured that he only put it up to get in the festive mood or maybe even his mother (or another girl) put it up.
By the time we were a real couple —in April—I was urging him to toss out the Goddamn tree.
“It’s a fire hazard,” I would say as the needles, brown and crisp, just waited for a stray spark from lighting a joint to set it ablaze.
“The tree has a spirit and I hate to kill it,” he answered with all sincerity. I hadn’t started rolling my eyes at this point in our relationship, but I could feel them starting to twitch.
In May, he finally took it to the dumpster, but only because he was moving.
He would have loved this place.
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