Crashing the Christmas Party -- The Legend of Precious: Part II

Not long after Precious saved Tommy's life, she disappeared. Sure, we spent the rest of the vacation talking about her heroic appearance in the rapids and trying to snap photos of each other holding onto her, but once that week ended she was gone.

My four roommates, including Jim, her rightful owner, and I went back to our place in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. The boys from Dublin came, too, for another week or so before flying home. The rest of the guys returned to jobs and family in Maine and elsewhere.

The leaves changed, the temperature dropped, and one of the best vacations of all time faded away.

Then came December.

December was time for Christmas N The Hood. We'd had the first one a year earlier. Friends came down from Maine, up from DC, and over, through, and around every place in between. The invitation had a chalk outline of Santa in the street. We filled the water bubbler with alcoholic punch, and opened our doors to somewhere around a hundred people. I slept on my bedroom floor because a buddy had already laid claim to my bed when I got there.

The second year we decided to really do it up. The official name was "Christmas N The Hood II: As Jolly As He Wants To Be." The invitation was a fake CD case, featuring songs such as "My reindeer weighs a ton" and "O Little Town of Bedford-Stuy" performed by the likes of Rudy "Red Nose" Gambino, Dr. Dreidel, and Morning Mistletoe. We sent it to pretty much anybody we knew how to reach.

The first guests showed up Thursday for the Saturday night bash. By Friday night our house was jumping. On Saturday we put the finishing touches on the Christmas tree, moved furniture around to create more space, made sure all the decorations were in the right place, and loaded up on obscene quantities of booze.

I have no idea how many people made it to the party. The photos show college friends, friends from old and current jobs, hometown friends, random friends picked up along the way, and even a few folks none of us recognize. The closest I can come to putting a number on attendance is to say around 30 people spent the night. One person slept in the tub for lack of space elsewhere.

In the middle of it all, Jim went into his room. And there, waiting in his bed with plastic arms outstretched and a happy caroler's O-shaped mouth, was Precious.

One of the guy's from Maine had brought her, inflated her, tucked her in, and rejoined the fray.

There's no telling how many people saw her there before Jim did. He squeezed the air out as fast as he could and hid her in the corner of his room.

The party finally ended sometime early Sunday. The last guests trickled out sometime during the day's NFL games. The house had survived yet again and we all rode the high of a party well-thrown for a few days.

Until about halfway through the week Jim came home from work. He wasn't quite right and he didn't join in the typical TV-room banter. If we had Chinese food that night (a safe bet), he didn't eat much.

He eventually shuffled off into his room and called Tommy up in Maine. He needed to talk to an old friend. Apparently the conversation went something like this:

"Hey, Tom."

"Hey, Jim. What's up?"

"Not much."

"You don't sound good. Everything OK."

"Well, yeah, I guess. But I went to the laundromat tonight to pick up my laundry and...."

"BWAAhahahahahahaaaaa!!!! Oh, that's awesome! You drop your laundry off?! Oh man. I had no idea."

That's when we heard Jim shout, "You bastard."

It seems that Tommy had been holding onto Precious since July and was the mastermind behind her appearance at the party. When he went to check on his prank and found the doll deflated in the corner, he stuffed her in Jim's laundry bag. Wouldn't that be funny when Jim was doing his laundry?

But we didn't have a washing machine in the house. Every week or two, Jim dropped his bag at the place around the corner for a little wash and fold. The owners were a nice Asian couple with school-age children. When Jim went in that night, they chatted about the merits of math tutors.

Then Jim noticed an unfamiliar color and fabric peeking out the hole on top of his tightly tied bag. With one touch, his world fell apart. And when he got home and opened the bag, sure enough, there was Precious looking right at him, clean and folded.

"Not only do they think I own a blow-up doll, they think I need to wash it!" he later said.

He took his laundry somewhere else for weeks.

And yet we were still too stupid to throw Precious away.