Happy Holidays
From Susan Elizabeth Shepard's "For Black Sheep on Christmas Eve":
"My uncle handed me their present, and I opened it to find a pair of purple-gold-green tasseled, sequined pasties. Nobody else found it funny but the three of us laughed like crazy. It was ballsy of them to make a joke of the family shame that was my topless dancing career and made me feel understood and not utterly alone that morning. Thank god, someone can have a sense of humor, is what it felt like. It was one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever gotten, and I hang pasties on my tree now because that’s part of what makes it Christmas for me."