During a Christmas Eve dream, retired professional glass blower Roy Splutternut was making love to a still living version of his late mother’s late best friend Flossie Burnham, on her knees with the poodle skirt she wore during Splutternut’s youth pushed all the way up over her head to expose her bare buttocks and an inflamed set of loins, when suddenly he noticed that his boner was missing.
“Where could it have gone?” he asked, awakening with a start.
“Don’t ask me,” said his wife. “I’m way too busy making the most of my golden years by gardening, knitting, birdwatching, learning the ukulele, joining various clubs and organizations, and volunteering at my local library to keep track of your shit.”
“In that case, I guess I’ll have to find it myself,” sighed Splutternut.
Wielding the tactical flashlight he always kept in his nightstand drawer in case of a blackout or need to blind someone by shining it in their eyes, Splutternut checked all the usual places – under the couch cushions, in his car console or the little box by the back door where he tossed his wallet and keys upon entering the house, etc., etc. – but there was no sign of his missing boner anywhere.
Consequently, he decided to venture into the basement to check his toolbox, which was where he found himself confronted by the Ghost of Christmas Past. He knew it was the Ghost of Christmas Past, specifically, and not another kind of ghost (for instance, the ghost of his mother, come to scold him about making love to her friends), because upon flickering out of the front of his flashlight like a spark from a campfire, it said: “Woo, wooooooooooo, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Nice to meet you,” replied Splutternut. “By the way, have you seen my boner anywhere, because I’d really like to get back to making love to Flossie Burnham in my dreams, but technically speaking, I’m going to need my boner for that.”
“Wooooooooooo,” said the Ghost of Christmas Past. “If it’s your boner that you seek, might I suggest looking in your long, lost youth.”
“I suppose it’s worth a try,” shrugged Splutternut, who’d after all uncovered nothing but some old roof tacks and a vintage brass fish scale in his toolbox.
Well, as it turned out, that dusty old ghost was on to something: there, amidst a heap of the curly, black hair that used to sit atop his now bald head, stood Splutternut’s missing boner, as strong and proud as ever. The only problem was that locating there – that is to say, in the past – was about as useful as when a gumshoe finally tracks down the star witness he’s been searching for high and low at the latter’s funeral. In other words, he’d found it just in time for it to be of no use to him at all!
Unless…
“Hey,” Splutternut said to the ghost. “I don’t suppose you grant wishes, by any chance.”
“Wooooooooooo,” replied the ghost. “I think you’re confusing me with a genie or a fairy godmother.”
“My bad,” said Splutternut.
“Don’t give up so easily, man,” said the ghost. “As the Ghost of Christmas Past, I may not be able to grant wishes, but I can fulfill requests for Christmas gifts.”
“Even for Jewish people?” asked Splutternut, who wasn’t Jewish himself but was extremely egalitarian-minded and thus would not have wanted to take advantage of a privilege unavailable to others on the basis of their race, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
“As long as they’re not the type of Jewish people who are like, oh, all you’re really doing with this Christmas bullshit of yours is obfuscating the material realities of production and consumption while making a folk hero out of a man whose supposed generosity is predicated on the unpaid labor of a bunch of people too short to effectively stand up for themselves?” said the ghost.
“In that case,” said Splutternut, “for Christmas this year, I would officially like my old boner back.”
“Ask and thou shalt receive!” boomed the Ghost of Christmas Past in his best Wizard of Oz basso profondo. And with that, he flickered and disappeared into the darkness surrounding the flashlight’s luminous halo like a suffocating firefly.
“Perhaps the whole encounter was as much a dream as my amorous adventures with Flossie Burnham,” Splutternut speculated.
Come morning, however, a mysterious box of oblong dimensions had appeared under the Christmas tree, Splutternut’s name scrawled in unfamiliar handwriting on the tag attached to it with a length of red yarn.
Splutternut tore it open eagerly.
“Help!” cried his wife when she saw what was inside. “It’s a random amputated human penis in a state of extreme rigor mortis!”
Splutternut, on the other hand, immediately recognized that so-called ‘random amputated penis’ as none other the glorious boner of his long, lost youth; and while this wasn’t exactly what he’d been picturing when he asked for it back, he had to admit that as far as Christmas presents went, it was still a heck of a lot better than socks.