GOOD-LOOKING SANTAS

Check out my “Not a Racist” punch card! I got it by having a black friend. Every time I do something that isn’t racist I get a punch, and every ten punches I get to say the n-word!

I don’t say the n-word and I’m not even gonna write it here. I don’t care for the n-word, though, by which I mean the phrase the n-word, as there is something infantile about it.

I have three stories about personal experiences I’ve had with the word this phrase describes, and I wanted to tell them without saying the n-word or the n-word.

I went to my friends and asked for their thoughts on this dilemma. Several friends who are black said, “Just say it.” But at least one black friend said, “Nah. I think you shouldn’t use it,” and I told him I wouldn’t. My joke that’s not a joke is that I’ll say it when 100 percent of black people tell me it’s okay for me to say it.

Predictably, a white comedian friend of mine got bent out of shape at this.

“For fuck’s sake, it’s just a word and your intent is clear,” he charged.

I answered him, “I want black people to come to my comedy shows too, and so I don’t want to make them uncomfortable.”

“We’re comedians. Isn’t it our job to make people uncomfortable?”

“I consider it my job to make comfortable people uncomfortable, but when it comes to black people in my audience, I figure they’ve already been made uncomfortable enough times by people who look like me. I’m aimin’ to give them the night off.”

I burn through online “friends” pretty quick.

Another comedian friend, Kareem Daniels (yes, a black guy; I’m sure there is a white Kareem out there somewhere, but this Kareem isn’t him), was doing a set on a show I produced and he asked me if HE could say the n-word. I told him it felt weird for a dude named Kareem to be asking me for permission to say the n-word, and to go right ahead.

Back to my problem, I had these three stories. They were honest, and they were mine, and I wanted to find a creative way to tell them. That’s when I came across my friend Nat Towsen’s “The Hidden Language of” column for Vice magazine. While exploring the hidden language of department store Santas, Towsen discovered a graceful solution to a problem they had, that I decided might be applied to my problem, as well.

Black families would come in for their picture with Santa, of course, and often they’d want a Santa who was also black. Bigger department stores kept just such a Santa around, but the problem was how to call him to service. Yelling, “Hey Barney, send out the black guy!” is troublesome. “Special Santa” wasn’t going to work either, as special has picked up all manner of connotations over the years. The solution they came up with was to call for “the good-looking Santa.” What jolly black Father Christmas is gonna complain about that? What black family is going to object to their Santa being “the good-looking Santa”?

If it’s good enough for Christmas, it’s good enough for me. So here are three true stories about a horrible word. When I say Good-looking Santa in these stories, you’ll know the actual word that was said. Sorry about that.

NO GOOD-LOOKING SANTAS ALLOWED

My older brother, Henry, and I were playing in our backyard. Henry loved to piss people off. It’s a power that even a kid can wield: say a word and watch people lose their minds, incredibly satisfying for a child, or dudes on Reddit. I myself used to love to get dressed up in church clothes, and when old ladies would bend over to admire me, I’d say “fucking dick shit titty” and watch their faces sour before they walked quickly away. They’d give my mother dirty looks and I knew I could count on them to never explain why.

On this beautiful spring day we were positioning my Star Wars figures for an epic battle. We had the hose ready. There were often floods in our battles.

Henry looked up and saw a big 1970s Afro showing over the top of our brick wall. It was Dwayne, one of only a handful of black kids in our neighborhood at that time. I followed Henry’s gaze and then hopped up to go say hi to our buddy Dwayne, who was closer to Henry’s age, ahead of me by four or five years.

Henry tells me, “Let him know, there are no good-looking Santas allowed in our yard.”

I didn’t know what a good-looking Santa was, but I figured Henry had a good a reason for not wanting them in. I ran to deliver the message.

“Hey, Dwayne!” I called out as I jumped up on some boxes and peered over the wall.

“Hey, Keith. What are you up to?” he answered.

“Just playing Star Wars. Hey, there’re no good-looking Santas allowed in our backyard.”

Dwayne stared at me, and he must have seen innocence or cluelessness. “Is that so? Tell me, little man, is Henry back there with you?”

“Yep.”

“I thought so. Hey, can I come back?”

“Sure!” I answered as I swung the gate open for Dwayne, who ran and grabbed Henry before my brother was able to make it through the backdoor and into the safety of our house. Dwayne threw Henry down, got on top of him, and started punching.

Confused, I headed into the house, where my mom was hosting a PTA meeting. A PTA meeting in Corona, California, was an ethnically diverse affair. I approached my mom, and, standing in the middle of a living room full of Mexican ladies, white ladies, a Hawaiian woman married to a black man, and at least one Samoan, I asked, “Mom, what’s a good-looking Santa?”

The room fell silent, all eyes on Mom to see how she’d handle this. Mom was cool. She looked at my dopey face, and like Dwayne, she knew right away that I had no idea what I was saying.

“That is an awful word, designed to hurt black people. You wouldn’t want Lonnie, or Richie, or Dwayne to hear you say that and feel bad, would you?”

“No.” I answered, staring at my feet.

Embarrassed and mad, I walked back into the backyard and sat down and watched Dwayne jump up and down on my brother’s head.

Note: I have four brothers. None of them are named Henry. One of them will be glad I didn’t use his real name, and three of them will be kind of pissed.

THE OLD MAN WHO LOVED MOVIES

I was doing some shows in Vancouver, Canada, and staying at The Dufferin Hotel. The Dufferin was in a funky old building and the ground floor featured a gay bar and a restaurant that made a decent falafel, and, when you were too broke to order anything but toast and coffee, brought you peanut butter, allowing you to still get a decent meal out of it.

I was initially put on the second floor, where sleep was impossible, as men were partying in every room, chasing one another up and down the hallways. I opened my door and a man in nothing but boxer shorts stopped to say hello.

“Um … is this party gonna go on much longer?” I asked, groggily.

“Oh! I think maybe you don’t want to be on the second floor,” was his confusing answer.

I don’t like to complain when people are having fun on a Friday night, but a couple hours later it was time to get some sleep. I called downstairs. “Hi, I’m in room 203. It’s really loud up here. Can I move to another floor by chance?”

“You didn’t want to be on the second floor? Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t know that I looked like that much of a party boy, but I was flattered by the assumption. I explained that, no, I wasn’t there for the second-floor shenanigans as fun as they seemed to be, I actually wanted to get some sleep. I grabbed my backpack and was delivered to a room on the fourth floor, where I slept like a log, missing all the fun.

Even though comedy keeps me up late, I’m not good at sleeping in. Most mornings I’d grab some coffee and toast (with peanut butter!) and then head out to see Vancouver. In the afternoon I’d watch a movie or two.

So, gay bar, free peanut butter, a whole floor devoted to dude parties, this seemed like a veritable bastion of happy, fun liberalism, the kind of place where I’m comfortable, where I fit.

I became friends with Rod, a senior citizen who spent most of his time sitting in The Dufferin’s lobby. Rod watched as many movies as I did and we bonded over discussing the latest films.

“You seen that new Cronenberg film?” he asked.

“Crash? Yeah, I saw it yesterday. It’s garbage. It’s on a very small list of movies I’ve walked out on. I wanted to make it to the end but the damn thing just droned on and on.”

“Yes. Garbage! Absolutely. Pretentious, mindless, garbage,” Rod replied.

I think it was here that we bonded. Rod and I continued to discuss movies, sometimes over coffee and toast, with peanut butter.

My run in Vancouver came to an end, and I was heading through the lobby with my backpack all loaded, on my way to a very long drive home. I said good-bye to Rod, told him I’d really enjoyed meeting him. As I opened the front door to leave, he called after me.

“Be careful out there. Lots of good-looking Santas out today.”

I stopped in shock. My face went pale, which probably made Rod more comfortable. I didn’t know what to say. Rod couldn’t be a horrible racist, he had good taste in movies. He knew Cronenberg’s Crash was garbage.

This is where I discovered how invisible racism and racists can be to white people. They’re not always sporting white-power tattoos, sometimes they don’t even have goatees, or hipster Hitler haircuts. Sometimes they’re the sweet old dude who discusses movies with you in the lobby of the gay-friendly hotel.

Rod knew why I was awestruck. Rather than walk it back, he doubled down. “I’m staying in. There are good-looking Santas everywhere today.”

I was frozen with no idea how to respond, but feeling a need to do so. I heard my mouth reply, “That’s OK, Rod, I like ’em,” and I walked out the door.

“You like ’em?” I chastised myself as I navigated the busy sidewalk. But, as I thought about it later, this may have been a perfect response. I wasn’t gonna change this old man’s mind by getting mad at him, or telling him to piss off. But a nice, friendly “I like ’em” might just make him think. It’s unlikely but it could happen. He might say, “Hmmm, Keith likes ’em, maybe they’re alright. After all, he knew that Cronenberg’s Crash was garbage.”

A DOG NAMED SANTA

My little brother James is a goddamn sweetheart and sometimes it pisses me off.

We were living together in a flat in Sacramento shortly after he turned eighteen. One day he showed up with an adorably ugly, seemingly untrainable dog.

“What the hell, James? You can’t have a dog. You ain’t figured out how to take care of yourself yet,” I berated him. He told me the story.

An old homeless woman was feeding the pup beer and rotten milk by the dumpster next to our place. James told her, “Hey, you can’t feed a dog that shit.”

“Fuck you. It’s my dog, I’ll feed him whatever the fuck I want. If he’s your dog, you feed him, asshole,” she snapped back.

“Fine, it’s my dog then. Give him to me.”

“You want him, you give me five dollars, fuckwad!”

“Fine! Here’s five dollars!” and that’s how my bleeding-heart, softy brother became a dog father. “What’s his name?” he called after the woman as she hurried away with his money, before he had a chance to change his mind.

“Indo!” she shouted back. Indo was popular slang for a strong strain of weed.

Indo was a pain in the ass. Indo tore up pillows, shit in the house, and had no idea how to walk on a leash. He was also a snuggler and I fell in love with him, mostly because it was James who had to pick up after him, not me.

James took Indo across the street for a walk in the park and the squirrelly maniac dog got off his leash and bolted, not trying to get away, but running in big circles loving his freedom and taunting James hoping to play chase.

James called him again and again. “INDO! INDO! Come, now!”

Two black kids walked up to James. “Hey mister, what are you doing?”

“I’m calling my dog. He won’t come back.”

“That dog?” one of them asked, pointing.

“Yeah, that dog.”

“That dog used to be our dog. His name ain’t Indo.”

“Well, what’s his name?”

“His name is Santa.” Notice, dear reader, the abbreviated, more casual version of good-looking Santa, with no hard Gs.

“Santa? I can’t stand in this park yelling Santa!”

The kids laughed hard, and then called the dog over by the name he actually answered to and helped James get a leash on him. Unfortunately they had no interest in changing Santa’s status from used to be theirs back to theirs, and they left my brother holding the leash.

James carried his dog upstairs to our pad, and I saw his distraught face. “What’s up, dude?”

Looking like he was working hard to contain tears, he sputtered, “My dog’s name is Santa!”

A few weeks later our friend Caroline, much better with dogs than us, agreed to adopt Santa. She renamed him JoJo the Dog-Faced Boy, taught him how to behave, sort of, and loved him to his dying day.