So in the end I called the father. I must have been in a moment of stupor or unconscious lucidity (if anything like that exists) because, as sometimes happens, the moment I took the phone I forgot entirely all the conjecturing I had gone through for it. The hours passed picturing the consequences of that phone call dissolved, and while I listened to the free line signal I couldn't recall anything at all of what I had planned to say. I wasn't even nervous or angry or scared. I just waited for him to pick up the phone. Like I was a normal son and he a normal father.

Then my father answered, and didn't recognize my voice, probably because he's becoming a little deaf in the years, and this gave me the inspiration to say something like: "it's me, your son. I know you haven't heard much of this voice lately, but still."
How very thankful I am to my muse for that.
So a brief conversation followed, during which we both stated unconvincingly that we were "doing well". He didn't say anything of what he had said to my sister, of his resentments and accusations and the whole thing lasted only few moments-- in diplomatic diplomacy. I agreed to go and visit him for Christmas, even if there wasn't any official reunion, even if one or two days later, even if at any rate I'd rather disappear from the planet.

Then before hanging up I said: "I am sorry if I caused the cancellation of our Christmas reunion."
I wasn't sincere in saying that, since I hadn't caused anything like it at all. But it was important that I had managed to say it anyway. Plus suddenly I realized that in my heart I was sincere in saying I was sorry. I was sorry because in that precise moment nothing indecent, no blackmailing or yelling was going on. If you're a dreamer and absent-minded like me, it is easy and sweet to forget-- at least when one doesn't feel in danger which is all I usually feel when I'm next to my father.

"It's not just you," was the father's response. "Your brother doesn't come out of South America, your sister is going on vacation. The toy is broken."
And so I thought, how many years I had waited for that toy to break? How many years of Christmas reunions I had waited for the burden to fall, those reunions pervaded by self-censorship and hypocrisy and lies and misunderstandings and commonplaces and slivers of cracked love slipping from our hands, shadows of the love that could be there? I had stopped being there for the presents when I was like twelve years old. From then on it had been just a matter of fear and worries, chiefly for my father's expectations and silent reproaches.

I didn't say anything, I just sighed. Deep down I knew that the toy could never actually be broken, and even so its shreds were going to be inside me until the day I died, as a nightmare or a menace or the ironic representation of my guilt in form of a sinister Christmas dead tree.
Still it was a relief to the sorry stomach --only to consider the possibility.

Everything was fine yesterday. Awake at three and a half AM-- sipping the tea in silence, only the occasional flapping of lips around the hot suckled mix of air and dirty waters.
I put myself at work at the green table in front of the window in the dining room (which is also the other room)-- the hour is acceptable, the city asleep in the finally-cold darkness never dark of it. My favorite hour-- when the street washers are going back, the orange turret flashing lights singing hi-ho.
Morning arrives, the sky's odd and unexpected and the chemtrails bright and inclined as if hand printed in the sky. Chimneys are billowing smoke into the exhausted city's lungs-- people appear and disappear at the chilly windowsills. I write and draw and listen to music and everything is fine.

Later I receive four marvelous pairs of socks for my birthday, all stripes, and a compass and a small vase of arbutus wood where to keep the erasers and the sharpener in (I scheme).
It is my birthday but it feel fine, although I expected to feel depressed and lonely --as this usually happens on the occasion.
Later my productive mood isn't fading, my mother calls (she needs help with the PC but surprisingly remembers the occasion) and anything I want to use seems to be at reach.

Then my sister calls, we talk about a number of things-- like she buying a house, and me reassuring her it is a good idea to buy twenty miles from Rome-- "you'll be in the woods!".
Then I ask about our Christmas reunion.
The Christmas reunion is something that nobody wants really to do except my father, who expects from it I don't know what-- the digest from our separated lives --of which he knows nothing about and at which he looks with a deformed lens, like we were the people we were years ago or never was. As a result, the reunion regularly turns into a series of clumsy efforts to be sincere-- followed by an equal number of efforts to hide the truth and avoid pointless criticism. Unwelcomed hypocrisy like a plumber in the house-- all sounds sounding fake.

--sister: "I talked with our father and he said that, since you never called him this year, there won't be any Christmas reunion this time. So I booked to go away with my boyfriend that week and we--"
--me: "What? Wait a fucking minute."

Shit. Sure I hadn't heard from my father since when I last called him on his birthday, last February. And everybody knows our relationship is fucked up. And sure, I didn't think very sympathetically of him lately. And notoriously he never calls or shows interest whatsoever but always expects me to look for him --acting like he is forgotten and misunderstood big time.
And yes I haven't looked for him lately -although that would be the simplest solution- because every time I hear from him or spend time with him I feel like shit for days. But these are no reasons to bury me under the guilt of screwing his only day of the year.

I tried to explain in the past.
--me (years ago): 'it's not that I have something against you. It's that being with you is something I don't usually have the energies and the optimism or the indifferent superficiality to do.
--father (years ago): I see, I see.

Oh, father. What does he do with what you give him, be it tears, hugs, self-criticism or good will? He puts it in his big pocket -- it is a dime squeezed from life --and do nothing else about it. His major drive in life --desperation for love which in his book has nothing to do with giving something in return. This can be bearable sometimes but these last years evidently wasn't.

--me: "Thanks a lot sis. Couldn't you patch things up instead of instantly taking the occasion to jump the reunion without feeling guilty?"
--sister: "I guess I didn't think about it. Anyway it's too late because I booked."
--me: "...couldn't you say something like, 'Corpodibacco never even dreamed of jumping Christmas, even if you two didn't call each other I am certain he'd be surprised...' Couldn't you? uhu?"

It is too late. Words are hollow. After a while I am almost hysterical and desperate. That's my sister. Dozens of time I interceded with my mother or father to save her ass and she hasn't the slightest instinct of solidarity.
But I know it's not her fault-- That's how my father brought us up. One against the other. Everyone in the family-- his wife included-- eager to turn the others in for a bit of father's respect, which after all is a typical Italian family outcome, although ours was more violent or exposed.

--me: now all I should do, all he left me with, is to supposedly call him to humbly apologize for the turning out of things and swearing it wasn't my intention-- that his sacred reunion-- it shouldn't be touched-- something like this. Only I can't do it and besides it is useless, 'cause you won't be there. Thanks a lot.
--sister: He's an old man. You just should be more normal with him.

Just an old man. That's typical.

--me (mad): what, are you prizing on the sense of guilt my father just set up for me to fall into? Besides not all old men are innocent and harmless simply because they're old, sister. They are just persons and they can be disloyal and dangerous like anyone else.

When I hang up, suddenly I have a bleak day in front of me. In that moment I actually feel the positive energy getting drained out of my hands-- I sit at the table and do nothing but cursing and breaking the lead pencil tip and then I get out --knowing I will spend the rest of the day hoping in vain from a call or an email or fucking anything from my father-- which naturally won't come. I love my new socks and I wish birthdays didn't exist.

(...) as you'd know Milano is under a white gray sky and the streets are Christmas lightened up and wet of peeing rains. The angry faces of the citizens know no repose. Clothes are forgotten hanging out of the windowsills. The radio says that an ATM conductor talking on the phone run over and killed in Via Procaccini a woman crossing the street. The woman was young. I wonder whom the conductor was speaking to? Instantly I think: a woman who was pestering him or whom was pestered by him.
It's all about the living, any thing visible on earth, except maybe certain portions of art. The world disgusts and never satiates. The speaker of Radio 3 rants about soundtracks and says 'indemuddforlovv' and must be turned off. I think about death but it doesn't help me to live more intensely because I can't believe it it's all here even though I repeat it every morning. Etcetera.

I know, I haven't talked yet about the thing that is occupying us all right now, filling our brains with thoughts that never even dabbed us once during the whole year.
Things like, this shit costs 50 bucks, it's pretty useless/disgusting/unfit/inappropriate/trivial, but, on the other hand, 50 bucks are enough. I'll take it.
Or things like, what if he/she gives me another of those shitty presents, should I compromise this year, like, I didn't give you crap this year, you see, so let's hope you don't crap me next, uh?
Or again, nobody is going even to touch this thing, there's too much to eat anyway, we don't need anything, God, think of all the people starving in the world, I'll take it just for the fucking show.

Well, it's a hard useless crazy time and we all know that. I don't believe much in the tradition and not at all in the religious idea behind it, but I'd fancy Xmas if it wasn't for the presents. This probably means I lost my childhood for good into me somewhere. My feeling is that I don't trust anymore what's inside the box, I mean, what's hidden behind the colored paper. In other words, I rip the paper, but my heart does not accelerate anymore.

I am not even going to mention the situation about my father and his expectancies on the whole thing. But thanks to Dennis Cooper I managed to say something about it anyway.

Happy Santa and stuff to you all people. Whatever that means to you. Love.

-- In picture, above: "One-hundred-thousand years of evolution and now I am walking here --- Thank your lucky star!!" exchange of writings, in Viale Sabotino, Milano