And you thought your Christmas was strange

And then you saw the pictures from our high school Christmas bizarre, where katooeys could only sit and watch for so long before taking over the stage and re-inventing the holiday altogether. It started quasi-normally when some students sang Christmas carols and I gave an unrehearsed speech about Jesus Christ and the history of Santa Claus in front of the whole school, but then they turned up the speakers and cranked out Shakira and Tata Young and the katooeys came out in colorful outfits shaking it for Santa or perhaps for Jesus or who knows why, and it was at that very moment that, of the hundreds of days I have spent abroad, I felt so very far away from home, sitting there on a plastic chair drinking instant coffee and watching 16 year-old katooeys dressed in colorful drag, suggestively dancing with chairs. In such a conservative place I still wonder where they learned their provacative moves but I've learned better than that, I know not to ask questions I don't really want to know the answers to.

Then there was this beautiful young, girl, boy, katooey, whatever, that did her/his own show in which she sang a tradition Pattaya song bemoaning over a heart broken by her/his lover's disgust and shock over his/her sexual ambiguity. That's all I could pick up over the first two parts of the song, but then in the third, the big finale, the katooey picked up momentem and started to tell her man to take her/him as she/he is and he/she vowed never to lie again. And as he/she did this, he/she started to reveal her true identity, throwing the pads she/he stuffed in his/her bra out into the crowd, then ripping of his/her wig off and throwing it as well. Then, in the final show of his/her ultimate love, or no, sadness? Confusion? I suppose we'll never know, becuse whatever the strong emotions that supposedly took over at the end of the song, the Katooey took out a fake small pistol and shot himself/herself in the head, falling to his/her death. The crowd roared as I wasn't sure what to do.
And there it was, our Christmas show, unlike any Christmas show ever before and I can only wonder if I'll ever have a Christmas again where, when sitting around with family and friends, that I don't start telling a story by saying, "This one Christmas in Thailand, there were all these katooeys dressed like they were color blind and running around with their arms flailing like little propellors swinging off their shoulders..." and on and on. Or maybe I worry that the old Christmas days will never do, and that I'll need something strange, something shocking, more so than a talking snowman or a reindeer with a shiny red nose and I'll always look back on December 25th, 2006 and say, "now that was a memorable Christmas."