Stay Another Day

by Juno Dawson

As soon as I step inside, I smell fresh pine and the nasal tit-punch of Yankee cinnamon candles, and also, faintly, curry. Ah fuck it, it’s Christmas. I can’t be mad at a time of year where people thrust alcoholic beverages in your hand from sunrise to sunset.

I don’t know how to explain this feeling to someone who’s apparently DEAD INSIDE. I spin the bauble around so it catches the light from the fire. ‘Christmas is magic. It is. Can’t you feel it?’ He shrugs again. ‘It’s hard to explain. I love everything about it: the build-up, the anticipation, opening the little windows on the advent calendar.’ ‘See that’s what I don’t like,’ Thom says. ‘Loads of foreplay, and then it’s like … meh.’

Everything in this room feels uncannily big, all the wrong size, like that fucking Cats movie.

Oh, and it doesn’t matter how many times I chuck Philosopher’s Stone into the fireplace, another copy appears on the shelf like literary herpes.

I do not, and I cannot stress this enough, wish it could be Christmas every day.

They launch into ‘Fairytale of New York’ and I brace myself for the delirious, foaming delight of straight people screaming CHEAP LOUSY FAGGOT at the top of their lungs. Can’t get enough of that.

I mean, no one wants to hear their boyfriend bummed their twin brother, right? Funky Pigeon dot com don’t do a card for that.

This is a freakish occurrence. This is like when … the Segway inventor was killed on a Segway.’

‘I swear on Nana’s life.’ Nana has been dead for eight years, but go off.

Oh, just fuck him, he’s getting even better looking as he gets older. Which motherfucking attic is his haunted portrait hanging in, and can I rent some wall space?

Every boyband has the boring talented one, the cute one, the one who stands at the back and doesn’t do much, and the one you just know is secretly a bit filthy: Robbie, Harry, Joe Jonas.