Lesbians' Christmas Tree

The pieces of music coincident or referred to, within the story are the following, in order: 'One Last Breath' – Creed (AKM Melodic remix); 'Without You' – Manu Zain (Silk Music); 'Horizon' – Seven Lions, Tritonal & Kill The Noise Feat. HALIENE.

***

The Canadian black spruce Christmas tree was standing righteously in its corner, full of fairy lights and surrounded by all those expensively-wrapped luxury presents; beautiful colored wrapping around boxes, of various shapes and sizes – some oblong, some square, some round, some slightly round.

Audrey had invited us all over for something special, she had said.

Audrey was this older, very experienced and super-connected Hollywood producer lady. Well, I'm not even actually sure she was ever credited anywhere as a producer, but that's what she was; she was the one who got all the money. Everyone in the biz knew her. Those who knew her well never talked about her to outsiders - all the rest whispered about her, and what they said was mostly just a bunch of unsubstantiated rumors. She was certainly legendary if not almost mythical in the industry.

I had come over with a woman Audrey had asked me to pick up and convey here as well. This lady was, oh maybe forty-five, maybe -, tall, slim with decent curves; to me she was obviously of Cuban ethnicity. Kind of dressed like a Caribbean pirate tonight... A pirate with a religion; she was wearing a silver Christian cross on a thin silver chain around her neck. She called herself 'Lil M.' And typical of me of course, I just had to ask whether to address her as 'Lil' or as just 'M.' I really liked her right off because she didn't scowl at my impertinance, just smiled with these beautiful epicine lips, not thin, not overly thick, kind of a little boyish, very very slightly squared on the uppers.

Beautiful gleaming white teeth...

She told me her full real name. She was quite famous, or at least had been in the music business a while back.

I hadn't recognized her to begin with until she told me who she was.

Oh then yeah, it was her all right. The person you 'knew' from off the television screens, the music videos – all those tiny little 'jump cut' segments, moments in time, sensitive expressions, emotions captured on film.

Audrey Audrey Audrey. I know what you're up to, Audrey – I couldn't help thinking.

The Paterson woman was apparently going to be here as well. With her friend and late-in-life 'protege' Kim. Real blonde Kim.

Audrey's place – her places, because she had many places – well, it was just spectacular interior décor, wasn't it. Velvet banquettes, large, deep pile New Zealand wool rugs, books, original publicity posters – signed. Oak coffee tables. Little framed photos of Robert Panté. Another person with that white gleaming smile.

Except all of Audrey's friends and associates were never the kinds of people with false or guarded smiles – maybe except for me, I guess; I'm sure I have a very guarded smile. LOL

Everyone Audrey tended to know was almost always of the 'innocent' kind, you'd have to say - I would even call them damn naiive. Audrey was – had been - friends with Prince! What can I say?!

Talented, though. She only knew talented people.

Flitting past us – Lil M and me, as we took a position at one end of a fairly large semi-circular banquette – were these gentlemen and Eastern European-looking girls dressed in livery; real actual starched white linen shirts and marcella-striped black pants-type livery.

One of them stopped right there in the middle of the large living room holding a big cream glossy box and opened it displaying a gleaming red sequined and ruby bejewelled dress: "Nice isn't it? Dolce and Gabbana. Thirty five thousand dollars. You like?"

Audrey's voice entered the room from somewhere behind me I couldn't exactly see, in pure matronly, not quite totally stentorian tones: "That's enough Charles. Get it to her right away, she's probably standing there totally naked and freezing."

Charles lifted his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. Was he gay? He affected it very well, put it that way.

Lil M was still smiling, half-laughing really.

There was an extremely noticeable odor of balsam fir in the air – it was supposed to be the scent from the spruce tree obviously since it was Christmas but I know spruce and this was a balsam fir scent.

As though reading my mind Audrey entered the salon from behind my left shoulder, touching me briefly, and went up to the Christmas tree with a small bottle in her hand and began sprinkling liquid onto its dusky green and spikey needles. And she turned and looked directly at me like Annie Lennox doing a crazy 'Dame Daphne' look in one of her crazy music videos.

All I could think of doing was to raise an eyebrow. Years of playing at being Spock as a kid. Kind of effective I thought. Charles had done a similar thing... So why not me too.

I was, after all, up against a phenomenon. You cannot win at repartee against a phenomenon.

The Paterson girl arrived and entered with a few murmured 'hellos' and then sat beside me on my left, dragging the much older blonde Woodland Hills identity with her by hand and it was quite cute, really, when she curled her left arm around the older woman and guided that one's tousled head to rest down against her own chest. ...Where the other woman remained quietly too, evidently happily enough in a kind of louche and retiring repose.

Spread before us on the low – but otherwise rather large and heavy-looking wooden coffee table – were pretty decent gourmet platters: copycat fake KFC half-breast filets with juniper and cranberry sauce, choux a la crème, clementine crème brûlée, little fried stupid vegan things for half the women there who claimed to be vegetarian or vegan or whatever. And there were these amazing little glass bottles of maple beer. And striped barber's pole straws.

More chicken for me then. Good.

No sooner had I popped the first half-breast into my slavering mouth when miss nervy anxious hyperactive enters wearing the D&G glittery red dress. Well that's the end of that then, I thought. No more quiet, slow digesting of all of this tasty fare. For one thing, she was not a vegan and prolly because of all the exertion from the live stage performances she could always eat two-to-my-one - and she never gained a millimeter; ever.

"What do you guys think?" She asked, breathlessly, doing a turn to show off, er, her legs?

"Yes you have fantastic legs." Sarah said. I coughed. I had this impression Sarah had actually placed her left hand over the blonde woman's eyes when she was giving her review of the D&G dress being worn by whatsername.

So there was this fizzy dizzy – and super hot Jane Fonda look-alike (well, I do think that's what she does look like, if you take a close look...) taking over the spotlight in front of the Christmas tree. But young of course, she's still relatively young. I mean she's only thirty something. That's young as far as I'm concerned.

Loud, 'pixie-trap' dubstep music began playing through the barely visible Bose microstax and miss dizzy was gyring and gimbling in the wabe as it were, and then singing along quite loudly. She knew all the words. She was a helluva damn good singer. No doubt about that. ...She was getting a bit warm, I could feel the heat.

And next to the Christmas tree there stood Audrey. I think I'd better tell you a bit more about Audrey at this point, though. Audrey... ...is not young. But she is amazingly well-preserved. And she has ridiculously good looks. Red-orange hair, a few whisps of grey in there. Very

fair and orange-freckled skin, and these piercing green-gray eyes. And she has this incredibly calm demeanour. Exactly like the Paterson woman. The two of them are this tag-team of power.

See when Audrey took a step forward now, and placed a hand around the upper arm of the ditzy glamour girl (who is absolutely no dope by the way, it's just that she needs to quieten down sometimes. Yes, her life is this amazing ever on-ward and upward success story and yes she is super dooper talented and all that, but still. She'd drive you fucking nuts if she didn't calm down every now and again at least) – when she took her arm, there was this sudden silence manifest itself and the glam chick rocked back on her heels.

"Tonight, all of you, we shall be joined by another two people, who haven't been with us before."

The music had gone down.

"Oh," I heard myself saying. This will be interesting.

"So if you could all be on your best behavior, that would be useful, wouldn't it." Audrey's hand dropped from the younger woman's upper arm and snaked around her waist and it was almost immediately obvious that in spite of the very large age gap, this was a couple. How it was a couple god only knew because how the hell the younger one was being reined in by the older woman was beyond me. For one thing, she had that many male admirers, and some had been actual partners as in you know, hit the sack with her and all, been to Spargo's or whatever – I don't think anyone had ever opined that she did not like men. In fact I'm pretty sure she did like men; a lot.

Audrey Audrey Audrey. What's your secret, Audrey? That was what I was thinking. Next thing you know, here was the dizzy wizzy fizzy D&G clothes horse, becoming all quiet and demure and um, dare I say, relaxed, even?

There she was, all relaxed in Audrey's arms.

"So what can I give you kids for Christmas? That was what I was thinking for a good long while. You kind of have everything, don't y'all?"

I was noticing that the lights were going down. Slowly. Yeah they were going for sure.

"Charles." Audrey called out to the main man. She turned around and picked up a simple brown paper bag from the base of the Christmas tree. Charles came in from the servery direction.

"More canapés?" He volunteered his suggestion as to what she required.

"No, Charles. Nope. What I would like you to do, is here -" She held out the brown paper bag to him. "Take this, and go out and find some needy people and give them what you think is reasonable, and take some for yourself too, for your costs and just for, well, for yourself and family and that."

I chimed in. "Yeah we'll all chip in something as well. That's a good idea, Auds."

There was a car coming up the drive outside. I could see the twin headlights moving around in the typical arc through the window to the rear and left side of the Christmas tree.

"And that will be the two I'm expecting now." Audrey said.

She went on. "Now see money is not going to solve too many problems of the kind we have around us all these days. When our two new friends are here with us, we're going to have some bites to eat and open some Perry or Champagne – whatever you guys like – and then I'm going to take us all, all of us, up to the Eagle's Nest. To the high place. And people are going to be looking for us but we'll be 'away' for awhile and we won't say where we have been when we get back or what we've been doing. I hope that's fully understood."

"Understood." I said.

"And you're going to have to settle these new kids down because they will not know what is going on... You're going to have to help keep them calm."

Charles was standing there, waiting for his final instructions, clutching the brown paper bag, knowing it was full of wrapped slabs of new bank cash.

Audrey leaned over to him. "They'll be at the door now. Just go let them in and then you can take off. We won't be back for at least a month – but I'll send you our due back date. Don't forget to pick up the mail and open all of it and send out the apologies and make a list of the priority stuff for me for when I get back."

He nodded and left towards the front entry hall.

The lights had really gone right down now and all there was were the bright glowing white Christmas tree fairy lights, and the shadows, and you could feel the warmth of people and the scent of iris from the red lipstick that most of the women were wearing. And the fake KFC chicken. And the vanilla bean of the crème brûlée. Senses were starting to get very blurry. There was some kind of electro-magnetic thing going on in the atmosphere, it was acting like a strong drug.

The audio system came on quite warmly, and loudly, again.

There was this tall English actress I recognized enter into the room. And someone very familiar with her with absolutely incredible legs. Better than miss dizzy fizzy's...? Hard to say.

Audrey spoke above the music that was slightly menacing, hypnotic, mesmerizing -, slightly glowering, frankly. "People out there have fallen into a deep shaft of bad, haven't they? There's no love. There's no sensitivity. And the situation is dangerous. We are going to have to be preserved against all of that. Which means we..."

English actress came straight up to Audrey and gave her a hug with the consequence of it seeming like there was a group hug going on involving miss dizzy anxiety and the other spectacular-legged woman too, so all four of them together.

Me, I go up to the Eagle's Nest – well it's a lair, really – comparatively speaking, quite a lot. 'Quite a lot' being a relative term, of course... And I won't be the only guy there, much though it seems that indeed I am the only guy here with these people right now and that that is the style of the composition with these people. It's not.

...I have to be honest and tell you that I always think the blonde woman has a lot of copulins.

The room is swimming in front of my eyes now.

"...Which means we have to allow ourselves to fall too, to yield, into the Love. Into the Goodness. To overcome everything else."

Is there drugs? You'd imagine there is, wouldn't you.

I can see the two who only just joined us but a second ago have also all of a sudden just 'gone out like a light' and just silently dropped to the floor..., totally unconscious. LOL. It's quite funny really. I've been through all this so many times before so I kind of can stay a little more 'awake' when the, what I call the pixie-dust trap door, opens up. The music Audrey had been playing happens to be labelled a style of 'pixie trap' genre out in the daylight ordinary world. You gotta laugh.

There's all kinds of glittery things float-falling through the dim light around us all now. A field of silvery objects is circulating around us like one of the rings of Saturn.

'Materialization and re-materialization' is a phrase you will understand. It's a very 'big data' exercise though, make no mistake. Not easy to accomplish, not 'cheap' if you make it commensurable with something understandable at the current level of science that obtains on the Earth right now. And not done as an altogether too-common practice, not even for us.

The Baker Beach black magic and sorcery event of the Summer Solstice – the so-called 'Burning Man,' now a commercial festival in Nevada - was for the 'other people.'

For us there is Audrey's house. And it was always at the Winter Solstice.

The Northern Lights shone from up that way, after all. All the beauty was in that direction – Altair, in Aquila, the eagle descending to gather up the exhausted; away to the nest... People who read the National Enquirer always wanted a space opera answer to 'the theistic question,' as it is so called: 'if God, then why do bad things happen, et cetera' and they add, 'and why not a landing on the White House Lawns anyway?'

...They are actually guessing something that is real, inside.

They don't know that it is real. They intuit what is going on but they will never see it, never really know it.

On one level my own senses now are all incredibly, absolutely incredibly, heightened. I can really smell and discriminate between the juniper, the black spruce, the maple beer, the real Madagasca bourbon vanilla, even the milder cranberries; certainly the spicy fried chicken.

Dizzy anxious had staggered a little at first, next leaning, and then of course she just crumpled too, fallen over like the others who had just fallen straight onto the floor in front of her, but she had come to a position on the end of the banquette the rest of us were all sharing in one way or the other. She was totally asleep now, or 'out of it,' as they say.

Humans. Asleep, their fractious brains were on pause, thank god. All the frequencies could be aligned at last. We were all connected now.

As we are all being 'moved' I can literally feel every one of us; each individual one of us, we are no longer separate individuals at all. We were a single hive mind personality. ...Of course they – the humans - are all breathing very deeply. Their minds ticking over quite slowly.

I can see the ditzy girl dripping saliva out of her mouth as she lolls there on her side on her new soft slim bed.

The humans were kind of pinioned into slim soft rather puffy beds. Holding them down, a barely visible, diaphanous cloying warm ever so slightly moist graphene and celophane wrapping.

Humans as a broad group are very naiive, if not exactly stupid, you see. They ask the same incorrect question over and over without getting any satisfying answer but then without even thinking at all that maybe the question is wrong.

...My antennae are extending from the top of my forehead now that all the girls, well, all the women, are fully asleep. My skin is just a touch bluish to the naked eye now. I have my aerogel glassette helmet on. The electro-magnetic spin rate is increasing dramatically and if an ordinary human were awake they would be thoroughly shaken, likely with fear as much as with the high frequency vibrations.

The question is a question Jimi Hendrix posed once. And the answer is that the rest of the Universe doesn't demand absolute experience in extremis. It just requires that you have sufficient experience – so that you do know the true difference between the results of your practicing what is generally benign, or your practicing intentional malice. But 'sufficient' is still rather complex; for one thing it is represented by an asymmetrical sine curve with differential qualifiers – these things are not stochastically comparable: for example Pol Pot killing millions is not measurable against Charlie Chaplin making the same numerical amount of millions feel good.

And in the middle, mostly what humans do, is all just very messy.

I can hear the chatter of the crew technicians through my headset now. Terse, economic, polite.

One of the biological technicians comes over and wipes the girl's mouth. It was so caring, cautious, precise.

There's this whine building up in the background, and if you are able to even vaguely envisage the levels of power being generated, you would assume a massive machine howling across the skies in glowing thunderous magnificence and then shooting away like a starburst.