Frosty the Snowman stepped onto the stage for the third time that night. With one icy hand he grabbed the stripper pole and swung his hips to Bing Crosby’s voice crooning over the club’s PA system.

A gang of bikers crowded the club. Every seat was filled with tattooed, leather jacketed, pierced members of The Crack Pipe Kings Motorcycle Club. They had been here all night, just like last night and the night before.

Frosty didn’t know why they were always there. He figured they liked the girls of the club and he was a snowman. But he seemed to be their favorite and they did tip very well.

The stage lights illuminated his snow body and the crowd went wild. They cheered, clanked beers, and head butted each other in excitement.

Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul.

Blue sequin bikini briefs glittered in the spotlight on his pelvis. The light was hot and Frosty could feel his snow beginning to melt. Fortunately, his dances were only four minutes long.

He began to dance around.

That was his cue. He turned slowly, facing the audience, reached down sliding his finger under the special Velcro strap and quickly tore off the briefs revealing his smooth snowman physique. Frosty ground his hips against the pole and the audience roared.

* * *

Karen, Jackie, Billy and June were building a magnificent snowman. He was almost as tall as the stop sign he was next to. They had given him two pieces of coal for eyes, a red button for a nose, and even a corncob pipe.

The last touch was the black silk hat that Karen had found. It was hard to reach, but with help from Jackie and Billy, Karen got the hat on top of the snowman’s head.

All four children stepped back to admire their creation, straight into the path of an oncoming snowplow. The driver wasn’t paying that close of attention, he was shitfaced. All four bodies were very small so there wasn’t even a thump as they got over taken by snow and pushed by the plow. They were crushed into a large mound of ice and their bodies weren’t discovered for two weeks.

It turned out there was a little magic in that old silk hat they found. The snowman they had built leapt to life and began to dance around.

A bum walking by yelled “Yay! It’s Frosty!”

Frosty waved back. “Good Day, Sir.”

He went walking down the street, as happy as could be. Everyone waved at him and shouted greetings as he strolled by.

He came to an alleyway and there was a very skinny man wearing a very dirty trench coat leaning against the wall.

“Good day, Sir,” said Frosty.

The man, whose name was Alan, beamed the biggest smile he had in years. Instantly, he was transported back to those childhood Christmases and remembered how in- between his dad beating him and putting out cigarettes on his arms, he would escape into the magic of those television specials: Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, A Garfield Christmas and his favorite, Frosty the Snowman.

So Alan offered Frosty the one thing he had.

“Hey Frosty, wanna do some ice?”

Frosty assumed, since he was a snowman, that “ice” must be something good for him. He did not know what was being offered was methamphetamine.

Frosty hit the pipe and the drug went straight to his head and heart. Euphoria overtook him, he loved it! As it turns out, snowmen are quite addiction-prone. Frosty was instantly addicted.

*   * *

Bing Crosby stopped singing and the PA began to blast The Beach Boys’ rendition of “Frosty the Snowman.” The sweet sixties pop had been specially remixed by the Club’s DJ to include a booty-shaking, boot-stomping bass line.

The bikers cheered louder, this was their favorite song for Frosty to dance to and every set he did ended this way.

A skinny and sickly looking biker climbed onto the stage and rushed at Frosty. His lust making him forget proper club decorum.

From the shadows, two obese bouncers moved with surprising agility grabbing the biker. They lifted him up, one putting him in a headlock and the other grabbing his legs. They carried him off the stage and through a door. The stage invader would be found in the hospital the next morning. This was not the first time the club had to aggressively enforce the no-touching rule. It was that kind of club. The rest of the gang paid no mind, their beer-and- boner-goggles keeping them enraptured with Frosty and his stage show.

*   * *

So Frosty spent his days smoking and hanging in alleys with other bums and wastes of life, and it was a happy time. Each day blended into the next in his drug haze and Alan and Frosty became the best of friends.

But one day the money ran out and Frosty and Alan found themselves with handguns holding up a liquor store. The store clerk had a shotgun. The first shot took Alan’s head clean off, splattering the snowman with blood and brains. But when the clerk turned the gun on Frosty, the buckshot passed through Frosty’s torso of snow with no ill effect.

Frosty fired back and ran, leaving the clerk to bleed out. In a short time he was caught. The red-stained snow made it an open and shut case.

On his first day in federal prison, he was cornered by a group of Crips. They mistook the blood stains in his snow for Frosty reppin’ the wrong colors. They formed a circle around him and pushed him back and forth hurling insults. In the jostle his hat got knocked off and Frosty immediately turned back into a plain old snowman.

When a guard finally put his hat back on, Frosty found himself covered in sticky, white goo. After a trip to the med ward and a few meetings with the prison counselor, Frosty understood what happened to him.

That was how he learned to perform “snowjobs.”

He used this peculiar talent to get through his time in prison. He was able to trade snowjobs for protection, smokes, and when the prison served ice cream, extra dessert. This gift to leave his body proved vital for the survival a snowman who, for some unknown reason, aroused the lust of the biggest and meanest inmates.

*   * *

Frosty sat in his private freezer/dressing room. The club owner had been nice enough to build a special room for Frosty to refreeze his snow after every dance.

Frosty took a drag from a cigarette and placed it into the ashtray on his dresser. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. The years had been hard on him; his once pure white snow was now an ugly grey.

In front of the mirror was his only personal possession, the corncob pipe he came to life with. He thought of all he had been through and all he had smoked with that pipe: meth, crack, marijuana, and on the rare occasion, tobacco.

There was a knock at the door and Cinnamon poked her head in.

“You got a private customer in booth three,” she said and shut the door.

Frosty sighed and took a hit of ice from his corncob pipe.

He stood up and left the room. The private booths were just down the hall, each one labeled one through six. Frosty walked into number three.

* * *

Eventually his sentence was up and Frosty’s debt to society was paid. But what was a living snowman with no job skills and a criminal record to do?

He found that his snowjob skill from prison had use on the outside as well. In no time at all, Frosty was trading snowjobs for his precious ice.

One day he was lying in an alley, the same alley where so many years ago he met Alan, stoned out of his head when a fat greasy man walked by. The man stopped when he saw the snowman. This man owned Jezebel’s, the city’s most notorious strip club.

He had been looking for something new for the club, something to revive customer interest and looking at the down on his luck snowman, he had an idea.

The man helped Frosty to his feet.

“Hey kid, I gotta business proposition for you.”

*   * *

The booth was small, barely enough room for the burly biker and the portly snowman. The walls were lined with mirrors and a single bare light bulb hung from the ceiling.

Over the room’s private speakers, Alvin and the Chipmunks were singing.

And the children say he could laugh and play just the same as you and me.

That damn song. It didn’t matter what time of year or what month it was. His customers always requested the same song. Sometimes different artists—The Jackson 5, The Ronettes, Ella Fitzgerald, Cocteau Twins, Fiona Apple

—but always the same damn song.

Frosty wondered all the time about the song. Was there another snowman that came to life before him? Was that one lucky to lead a happy life? Or was it really about him? Everyone did call him “Frosty.”

The biker stood up and approached Frosty. No matter how hard he tried, Frosty never got used to this. He felt the heat of the lightbulb above his head. A tear ran from his button eye but was indistinguishable from the just beginning to form slush.

The biker kissed Frosty softly on his lips of coal. Flecks of snow dotted his bushy beard. He gently removed Frosty’s hat and unbuckled his pants, preparing for his snowjob.U