#InstaChristmas

This is how you Instagram Christmas.

First, you need to decide what your color scheme will be. There’s the traditional red, green, and white, but that’s kind of yawn-inducing and will figure prominently in a lot of Instagram photos.

Metallic seems like a good bet, with the warm glow and cool glint of gold, silver, pewter, and copper. It picks up a lot of glare, and the glossiness of it is somehow too shiny and artificial, even for you.

Settle for bold and interesting, a modern blend of candy pink and soft mint and rich, regal purple. Plus, you know, anything can look Christmasy. Ribbon you used for your — for Jonas’s last birthday gift, a jar of sprinkles next to snowman cookies, mulled red wine and boozy, amber cocktails.

Remind yourself not to say you are “settling.” No one is settling.

You have to find those moments. The slivers of each day that are flawless, whether they are shaped by God’s hand — or, more than likely, yours.

You have to place each ornament in the perfect spot on the tree, backlit with the right color of bulb. This may require redoing your Christmas tree multiple times because each time, you think maybe you’ll wake up from the nightmare and Jonas will be next to you, Christmas tradition in progress.

Bake a lot. If you are not sleeping or taking pictures, something should be in the oven or on a cooling rack. Make cookies and tarts and brownies and cakes. Purchase more sugar than should legally be allowed in one household. Use that weird new app Boomerang to make glorified .gifs as you whisk ingredients and make light, airy clouds of powdered sugar.

Don’t forget to artfully stack the dirty, batter-rimmed mixing bowls and spatulas because life is messy, but it can still be like, peak messy. 

Christmas presents can be wrapped (and posted!) while you’re baking. Select a matte, solid wrapping paper and go crazy with curled ribbons, elaborate bows, decorative pine cones, and recently-harvested sprigs of your neighbor’s holly bush.

Arrange gifts in towers or flat lays, with handmade gift tags and ornate calligraphy. If he’s paying attention, Jonas can make out his name at least a dozen times over. Some of the boxes are empty, but most aren’t: new cufflinks, a fancy pen, a copy of The Martian on Blu-Ray.

Will he remember it was the last movie you saw together? The last experience you shared before he cleaved your life in two, the perfect half of the Before and the desperate hollowness of the After? The residual warmth of the happy Before haunts you and teases you, and you will do anything to get it, to get him, back.

Your first Christmas together you were huddled together, a shrill ice storm whipping through the neighborhood that morning. When it died down, you walked into the yard and the world shimmered and sparkled.

Just for Jonas, and not Instagram: cut off one of the branches on your Christmas tree, throw water on it, and put it in your freezer. Make sure it’s not lying on top of anything else or you will end up with branches that get stuck to like, Otter Pops and frozen peas. You can ask your best friend’s husband to construct a stand for it and then awkwardly overhear their conversation, which includes Todd saying you’re going through a rough patch and need support and his husband David replying that you’re being coddled and need a reality check before you go totally mental.

Just shake your head because you never understood what Todd saw in David, and this was for Jonas, for the perfect Before he needs to see from you again.

Be ready to spend Christmas alone, with your iPhone and the perfectly-staged photos and messes. Be ready for each moment to be exactly what you want, the only thing you can control. 

Hear the doorbell ring, feel the adrenaline surge into your veins. You are the sun in the center of his galaxy. His path may be elliptical, he may be as far from you as his orbit allows, but he is forever circling you, forever connected to you, and he will always come back around.

You open the door, ready for an embrace, an apology, a cropped square of happiness and the mess right out of frame.

It’s not Jonas, but David.

“Todd doesn’t know I’m here,” he says, “I said I was getting Starbucks.”

“Are they even open?” You ask, because it is the only reasonable response.

“I don’t know,” David rubs his left eyebrow, a nervous twitch you never realized you noticed. “You’re his best friend, Katie. You’re miserable, and you’re alone, and you and I will never be best friends.”

“Merry Christmas, David,” you begin to close the door.

“A thousand times, you could have told Todd you don’t like me. Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t see it,” you say, “but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just not for me to see.”

“He would have listened,” David says, and his brown eyes grow bleary and distant. “He loves you more.”

“Maybe. But we’ll never find out. We don’t even need to ask,” you say.

“We’ll never be best friends,” David repeats, “but you can’t be here, miserable and alone and pretending everything is still fine. Come over. We’ll get drunk on cranberry margaritas and play an Elf drinking game.”

You do not take pictures of your Christmas sock-clad feet in front of the television, Will Ferrell’s tall frame ruling the screen.

You don’t capture the second pitcher of cranberry margaritas toppling from the kitchen counter onto the floor, sticky puddles like blood from some kind of holiday horror movie.

And you definitely don’t immortalize Todd’s absolute failure at red velvet cheesecake, a soggy mess that the three of you promptly spit into napkins.

You leave your phone in your purse, and you miss Jonas’s curt, impersonal text: a Christmas tree emoji.

This is how you have the best Christmas of your adult life.


Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

Incogmeato

Courtney pulled up to Gil’s Glutton Shack thirty-five miles west of town. She had a shitty week, and the scenic drive down the highway was exactly what she needed to get her mind off of the rally tomorrow. Months of social media marketing, meetings with community leaders, and skipping savasana at the end of her yoga classes was wearing her thin. She felt like her brain was shaking inside her skull, a bumping from side to side like a claustrophobic version of Pong.

Her stomach was growling as she opened the iron gate before the door, set against a mural of a heifer divided up into delectable sections. It was dark inside and there was the faint smell of cigarette smoke, a scent that recalled the days before the ban. Red-and-white checked cloths covered the tables, topped off with those classic metal dispensers holding thin and useless napkins that always tore when you pulled them out. Red and yellow squirt bottles held ketchup and mustard right next to the salt and pepper shakers. You wouldn’t expect to get the best steak within a fifty mile radius here.

Courtney sat down at the table by the pinball machine as she reached for her iPhone in her jacket pocket, but stopped halfway and shook her head. She needed to unplug, ignore the impulse to retweet, and keep away from her inbox. Deep breath. No need to look at the menu or ask about the specials. Sandra, the owner’s wife, came up and smiled.

“Well, missy. It’s been quite some time since I saw you last. You look skinnier and that’s no compliment.”

Courtney lowered her eyes and nodded. “Yes, ma’am, but that’s why I’m here. Need to get back to my fighting weight.”

“Porterhouse, then?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” Sandra said, emphasizing the double o’s and turning on her heel toward the kitchen.

Courtney’s mouth was watering just thinking about the beautiful t-bone making its way over to a two-level fire, the strip cooking above the flames as the tenderloin pulled in the residual heat. She heard Sandra yelling at her husband Leo to get off his ass and get to cooking before she came back with a lidless mason jar full of iced sweet tea and a lemon wedge.

“Forget Michelin stars and swanky high-rise restaurants,” Sandra said. “If you want a fine piece of meat, you gotta get out of the city toward places where people still make things with their hands, grow their own food, and raise their own livestock.”

Courtney smiled, daydreaming about starting over, about getting away from the corrupt non-profit sector as Sandra disappeared back into the kitchen. Every organization starts out with good intentions until the donations start pouring in. Courtney was so busy branding the activist non-profit that sometimes she completely forgot what they stood for in the first place. Being the marketing director also required her to portray a matching lifestyle, otherwise how could she live with herself? By running away once every so often to this meat-lover’s paradise and forgetting. Maybe she could cut ties, move to a small town, and do good work for the locals.

“Now, I already let the steak rest a minute so you can dig right in, but if you wait just a bit, it’ll be even better,” Sandra said as she sauntered over with a plate of crispy fried onion rings and red meat.

Courtney leaned back in her chair, resting her hands on her thighs and gazing at the char lines across the cooked flesh. The scent of fire and coal wafted up to her nostrils and she closed her eyes, pulling it into her lungs like the dankest bowl of her college career. Her palms started to sweat and she licked her lips in a moment of primal desire. It was like watching Anthony Bourdain moaning over a piece of pork like porn. Courtney opened her eyes and picked up her knife and fork. It would take her an hour and a half to eat it, but that’s how she liked it. Good and slow.

She cut a piece of the tenderloin first and placed it on her tongue, pulling it from the fork with her teeth before closing her mouth. The juice electrified her taste buds, and she rolled it over to the right. The more she chewed, the more of that salty, smoky liquid filled her mouth. Courtney passed the piece from left to right, tenderizing the meat further. When it became nothing more than a tasteless, flaccid morsel, she swallowed. Shut up, she thought. Just shut up.

It was dark outside when she got in the car, filled to the brim and riding on the waves before a food coma. She didn’t turn on the radio or roll down her windows. She drove in silence back to the city, thoughtless and free.

                                                                                                     ***

The next day, she stood behind the stage left curtain, biting on the corner of her iPhone as Katie Marsden, the CEO of Vegan City, took the lectern to an eruption of applause.

“Being vegan isn’t a dietary restriction; it’s a way of life. As vegans, we must stand together for the rights of animals everywhere!”

An intern nudged Courtney’s arm and whispered, “I think this is our best rally yet. Look how many people are out there! And all because of #lookatmeat. You’re a genius.”

The Twitter campaign challenged followers to take photos of animals who are slaughtered for food and tweet them with the hashtag. It was a viral success in less than 48 hours. The intern scurried away to answer a call before Courtney pulled up the photo of her beautiful porterhouse. She began to resent the meatless spread they would offer at the reception, the carrot sticks and soy-based veggie dip. She ran her tongue over her lips, remembering the fiber of each bite from the night before, then blacked out her phone as the CEO thanked her audience and walked away from the stage.


Written by: Natasha Akery
Photograph by: Chris Boyles