Stiff Santa

By Paul McGuire © 2009

Josh used to have the life we all dreamed about. The flattering blurbs in Ohio University's alumni magazine made his peers insanely jealous. He was on top of the world until two major incidents contributed to his world imploding; losing his job after a major studio canceled his TV show and a bitter divorce.

Josh lost his job as the head writer for a sitcom in the wake of the writer's strike. He was unable to find work after that downtime which contributed to his wife ending their six-year marriage in favor of a new lover -- her transsexual personal trainer, a former weightlifter from Austria named Gretel.

They say that you lose 50% of all of your assets when you get divorced in California. Not the case for Josh. After all the lawyer fees and other bullshit, he was left with less than 10% of his acquired wealth. He toiled for almost two decades in Hollywood only to be left with a 2006 Honda, his golf clubs, and $175,000 in cash. At least he was able to keep his award from the 2002 Portland Film Festival for best original screenplay, but that keepsake wasn't worth a dime.

After two years without steady work, Josh was down to his last $10,000 and sold his golf clubs. No one in town wanted to buy his scripts in an stingy era when studios banked on sequels and established brands. Love stories about zombies and vampires sold like hotcakes, but erotic tales about magical elves with ESP and alien hybrids seemed uncool in comparison. Josh came close on landing a reality show writing gig on a few instances, yet always got beat out at the last second.

Josh temped at a law office for a while, but he hated commuting to downtown L.A. from Culver City. In the Spring he swallowed is pride and took a seasonal job at the Beverly Center as the Easter Bunny. He wore a pink bunny costume and posed for pictures with rich kids in the middle of the mall. The gig paid well but the downside was an unbearable and suffocating fur costume. Josh drank water constantly to stay hydrated, but too much made him have to piss all the time. If he drank too little, he would pass out.

The Beverly Center had one strict rule -- never under any circumstances remove the bunny head in public. That would mortify young children. Josh turned to Ritalin to solve his problems. The pharmaceutical drug, originally given to children with ADD, had had a different effect on adults. The speedy, cocaine-like euphoric high kept him blasted for many hours on end. It also cooled Josh's body down for some odd reason which is why he ingested a pill before every shift.

Josh suffered from a nasty side effect -- spontaneous erections.

By no means was Josh a pedophile or attracted to children. Rather, he was fondly aroused by MILFs, cougars, and nannies. He couldn't keep his eyes off of the women who brought the children around. The 40-something cougars had bodies like 20-something co-eds courtesy of the best plastic surgery in town. And he had grown attached to the nannies and au pairs. They were mostly young South American and Central American women. San Salvador. Nicaragua. Chile. Argentina. He loved them all. Their skin. Their hair. Everything about them. Between the spicy nannies and the sculpted cougars, Josh could not contain his erections.

He had to constantly shift so the children did not land on his stiff member. He also had to make sure that the handler, a half-Korean, half-Canadian lesbian with a mullet named Sandy, did not place the kids on or near his erection.

Josh attempted to tape his penis to the inside of his boxer shorts, but that proved to be too painful. He tried freeballing, but he'd get pink fur all over his junk and his testicles. His only solution was to relieve the pressure at least once an hour. He'd lie to Sandy the handler and say that he had a bladder issue.

"Flomax doesn't work despite what the ads say," was Josh's excuse.

He'd scurry off to the break room, peel off his costume, lock himself in a stall and masturbate on the toilet seat thinking about having threesomes with a Venezuelan au pair and a cougar from Brentwood. After he shot his load, Josh would re-dress and head back outside to take photos only to get riled up by the women and repeat the process an hour later.

When the Christmas holiday came around, Josh was still out of work and unable to find a steady writing job. He interviewed at the Beverly Center for a Santa Claus position. At first he thought that he was denied the job because he was Jewish, but Josh realized that Sandy the lesbo-handler must have ratted him out for taking too many unscheduled piss breaks. Josh emailed applications for Santa positions at malls in the Valley, but he only got a call back from a mall out in West Covina that desperately needed Santas. He didn't want to take the gig because the commute was too long, but he had no other choice.

Josh developed a routine. He'd wake up, hit up McD's drive through, wolf down a breakfast burrito, crush up a Ritalin while stuck in traffic on the freeway, snort it up, and listen to talk radio for the rest of his commute. He loved the political shows mainly because the people who called in to chat were complete morons. Their lack of understanding of the political system gave him an added ego boost, but at the same time he was interested in writing a stage play about a conservative talk show radio host who was a closet S&M freak.

Josh detested Christmas music but that was not always the case. Growing up Jewish in a predominantly Christian suburb of Dayton (with communities of Amish in the surrounding towns), Josh never minded Christmas. His family embraced the holiday (mainly so they weren't completely ostracized) and proudly displayed a Christmas tree and a Menorah. Shortly after Josh moved to L.A. to become a writer, he grew increasingly angry about the consumerization of Christmas and the evilness of Black Friday (the shopping holiday after Thanksgiving). He detested how the media and department stores colluded into extending the Christmas season to over a month.

It was only the first week of November and Josh had already been working as Santa in West Covina for two weeks. The worst part of the extended Christmas season was the overplayed Christmas music that the mall pumped over the PA. Many of his favorite radio stations also joined in on the Christmas conspiracy. Plus, it barely looks like Christmas in Southern California, so everyone has to go overboard with decorations and music in order to remind/sell people that 'tis the season to buy useless shit for materialistic relatives who don't deserve gifts in the first place.

The erections returned for Josh during his stint as Santa. He had a higher volume of customers and he was only allowed to take a break every two hours. He was forced to sit with a bulging erection while kids screamed and kicked and pissed all over his red Santa pants. They greedy little rugrats terrorized him.

His elves were no help in reducing the sexual tension. One sultry elf was a young college student with a tramp stamp who spent all of her breaks getting stoned in the parking lot with the baristas from Starbucks. When she noticed his boners, she did everything possible to accidentally brush up against it or place kids on his lap within striking distance.

On his breaks, Josh sprinted to the bathroom to jerk off in the stall while conjuring up images of the big breasted cougars in various sexual positions. There were not as many exotic-looking nannies living out in West Covina, but there were a significantly higher amount of young mothers. MILFs. Most of them were single moms, but it was nearly impossible for Josh to work his game and try to sweet talk a MILF while his erection was stabbing her kid in the leg as he begged for a Wii.

Josh gave up on the MILFs and cougars. He focused on the pool of talent at Starbucks to unleash his vented up sexual fury. One of the freaky Goth girls who worked the cashier offered sexual favors in exchange for Ritalin. Every night after his shift ended, Josh parked his Honda behind the Best Buy where he and the Goth girl took key bumps before she blew him with a Santa's hat still sitting on top of his head.


Paul McGuire is the author of Lost Vegas.