Known Unknowns #3: “Is This Okay?”

These were the words spoken to my wife and me as we stood at the gates of Santa’s inner kingdom in December 1999. Well–one of Santa’s kingdoms, but I’ll get to that. We were at Macy’s in Manhattan for our first-ever trip through Santaland. For fun, we’d even brought our new baby. Our family’s been every year since, and I can’t remember if 1999 was one of the quick trips where you walk right up and a cheerful Macy’s elf waves you right on in (i.e., up a ramp and onto the fake train car that leads to Santaland proper) or the other kind. The other kind is where a way less-cheerful elf grunts, “Two hours,” then sends you down a series of winding, ever-deepening hallways and TensaBarrier mazes until you are literally steps away from becoming an employee of Macy’s at Herald Square.

Eventually, you get to go in. Once inside Santaland, you’re led through darkness around a series of animatronic installations — giant talking tree, skating teddy bears, etc. — until you bottom out at a cluster of five or six wooden structures painted to look like Swiss chalets. This is Santa’s inner kingdom. Elves bustle back and forth with headsets and clipboards, and you wait at the bottom of the ramp until one of them says, “Come with me, please?” and then you’re in the room with Santa.

Except that first year.

The first year, we got to the bottom of the ramp and there seemed to be some confusion already underway. A group of elves were looking at each other with panicky eyes, like a flank of Secret Service who’d just lost all earpiece communications. Finally, a lady elf grabbed us and said, “Um, okay, this way.” She led us to one of the chalets — up close, we could see they were made of painted plywood, like the sets a really good performing arts high school — and stopped us again just outside the door. From inside, a flash went off, and it was then that I realized these chalets were where you saw Santa Claus. And there were half a dozen of them. It was a warren of Santas down here.

The lady elf turned to us. “Um….”

But Caissie and I were busy trying to get baby Eli ready for his first Santa picture. He was in the Baby Bjorn on my chest, and we needed to get him out and looking presentable.

“Um,” said the elf again. Shit: We were holding up the line. We were being those parents.

“Sorry, we’re almost ready,” Caissie said. Finally, we had Eli out and ready to go in.

“Is this okay?” whispered the lady elf. She wasn’t being insistent at all. If anything she seemed suddenly hesitant.

We looked at each other. Had we gotten the one shy elf at Santaland? She was asking if we were ready, wasn’t she? “Sure,” we said.

Somehow, we hadn’t answered to her satisfaction. She clenched her teeth and near-hissed: “Is. This. O. Kay?” Then she made a motion with her eyes, toward the wall that kept Santa Claus just out of view. We craned past her and looked in. There, on the big chair at the back of the little room, was Santa. He was big, he was bearded.

He was black.

And that’s when we realized what this woman — this Caucasian she-elf — had been getting at. The Santa in there is black, you white people. Are you cool with that? Caissie and I looked at each other, had a split second of wordless discussion, and plowed in. That’s our first Santaland photo, at the top of the post. Eli is the little one.

Now: Was she being racist by asking, “Is this okay?” Better question: Since we hesitated, were we racist? No one ever likes to think so, unless you’re one of those people who LOVES to think so. (Looking at you, Klansmen!) Either way, it’s a fact: most Santas you’re likely to encounter in these camera-ready lap-factories are white. None of our thirteen Santaland photos features the same Santa as the others, and Santa #1 certainly does stand out. But I love Santa #1. I love his kind eyes, I love the way he’s holding up Eli’s little hand, and I love how he and Eli just look like they’re settling in to watch a movie together.

How is this a Known Unknown? you may be asking. Here’s where I play the part of Oblique Strategies. At some point in a creative venture — story, novel, script, painting, song, PowerPoint presentation — you’re going to come to a section where you’re certain you know all the options, and have already chosen your direction. These are your common (white) Santas. But suddenly there’s another possibility, one which may threaten to derail all your precious plans. That’s your you-know-who. Jump right into that unknown Santa hut.

Why, though? Why would you want to purposely go a different way, especially if you’ve got a thing all planned out and it’s beautiful in its structure and order? Because it’s not all about order, cap’n. It’s also about getting some you in there. Anyway, that crazy new possibility? That came from you, same as the other stuff, so why not trust it as you were trusting the other stuff?

It’s hard. So much of our formative creative years are spent fighting impulses, ignoring what our brains think are GREAT ideas. When your new-writer brain is getting shove-y, howling, “I WANT TO WRITE A FORTY PAGE STORY ABOUT A SAD WOMAN LOOKING IN A MIRROR THINKING ABOUT ALL HER SAD TIMES I THINK THAT WOULD BE GREAT,” veering away from this is a good thing. So when we finally get a handle (as much as one can) on story, scene, pacing, etc., we may find we’re a little tentative, like that elf in 1999, about messing with the regimen. But this is exactly the time to do that, because as I’ve said, this is about getting you into the work.

Listen, I’m no expert. What I am is a guy who’s made every possible mistake, sometimes the same one forty times, and is interested in passing along my knowledge of those bad places, like a hobo marking the fence in front of the unfriendly house.

When I was first working on my story “Kate the Destroyer” (available in this award-winning volume), it was never supposed to be called that, because it was never going to be about Kate LaPine. It was another in a series of connected stories about Kate’s son, Miles. In the four Miles stories I had so far, Kate was mostly a bit player, showing up to add some mother-son poignancy or to help with Halloween costumes. So I began this new one, intending for Kate to merely drop Miles off at a Dungeons & Dragons convention in 1985; we’d see her go to the movies to pass the time, and then we’d go right back to be with Miles at the convention. I don’t often have a whole story in mind when I sit down, but this time I did, and I knew I’d probably end up cutting even that little part with Kate going to the movies so I could focus on Miles’ confrontations with grown-up D&D fanatics. In fact, I was irritated with myself for wasting time on the Kate/movies bit at all. This Miles/convention thing was going to be rock-solid.

I rushed it. Rather than make up a whole new location, I tossed Kate into the old Showcase Cinemas theater on Main Street in Worcester, MA, which is where I saw most of the movies of my pre-adult life. “What would she see?” I wondered. What had I seen in September 1985? Back to the Future. Okay, so it’s afternoon on a Friday. Who else is in this theater? People ducking work, old people, someone smoking a joint, maybe a couple up in the balcony. Suddenly, Kate became very interested in this couple, maybe inappropriately interested. And that’s when I realized I was going down the wrong path — into the “wrong” Santa hut, as it were.

It’s also when I suddenly got very excited about this story. Musicians know this feeling: It’s where you’re trying to get the chord progression from that song you like, but you mis-finger it and suddenly you’ve stumbled on something so wrong and yet so much better — so much more yours. In the case of the thing that became “Kate the Destroyer,” I’d been trying to write something I thought would be a fine story, but I was patterning it, frankly, on a certain type of story I liked, and that I thought I could carry off well. Here’s a lesson: Never write a fine story. Never make a fine anything. I had an idea and a template, and I was going to hammer that idea into that template no matter what.

It’s possible the Miles D&D story would’ve been great. Maybe better than “Kate the Destroyer.” But as soon as I followed Kate out onto the sidewalk so she could see the balcony couple as they exited, I forgot the Miles story entirely. I’ll always have a special love for the story I ultimately wrote, because it was the first time I let a story tell me what it was going to be.

By the way, you can’t make the unknown Santa appear. If you go rushing into every one of those warrens, you’re bound to find only the Santas you’d expect, plus a lot of annoyed parents. But he will appear*, as long as you’re not looking for him. The trick, maybe, is to keep moving, while keeping one ear open for the voice of the elf who will ask you, in the voice of someone who doesn’t want to be asking, “Is this okay?” And then you barrel on in and you greet your Santa, however he may appear.

* Am I suggesting some sort of Magical Negro scenario? I hope not! Macy’s might have given us an Asian Santa or a Latino Santa. What they gave us was the perfect Santa, one who happened to be black, and whom I’ve since appropriated as pure, convenient metaphor. Which is a troubling literary heritage all its own, but not the same heritage as the Magical Negro. I think I’m safe on this one.