Happy New Year, I Guess
The first and last time I went on a date on New Year’s Eve, I was 16. So was the girl. We went to a fancy restaurant in Midtown. I was dressed in what I assumed was proper attire for New Years Eve, a day I assumed was a Big Deal, romance-wise, requiring sophistication. I do not recall the rest of my sorry, pimped-out ensemble, but I do remember my shoes looked like this:
My date was dressed and coiffed normally for a 16-year-old girl in 1968 who was trying to look mature, which means she sort of presented thus:
When we arrived, the maitre d’ sized us up and led us to the table he had decided was appropriate for this awkward couple who would not even be able to order price-gouging alcoholic beverages. The table was right outside a one-seater bathroom. The walls were thin. The acoustics were not good. The table was so close to the bathroom door that when people exited, the knob whapped into the back of my chair. We spent the meal beset by fartings and flushings. I was too young to have the audacity to complain. New Year’s Eve had put me in my place, and not for the last time.
That experience kind of ruined New Year’s Eve for me. Plus, I dislike parties in general, and, as parties go, in terms of oppressive, socially enforced intimacy, New Year’s Eve parties resemble something I also deeply dislike, the “Kiss Cam.”
The only other time I happened to be out on New Year’s Eve, it went no better. This was not intended to be a date, however. It was New Year’s Eve in 1980, and my pregnant wife and I had tickets to a Broadway comedy titled “Fifth of July.” It starred a still hale Christopher Reeve, who played a paraplegic — a sad irony that would depress me years later.
The play let out around 10:30. Because Broadway plays occur in and around the Times Square area, we found ourselves walking out into the night about an hour before the event — the festive Dropping of the Ball — would officially begin. Unofficially, it had already begun, judging from the ocean of vomit through which we were wading.
Hey, you know those upbeat televised events that you watch, scenes of joyful people merrily cheering the start of a new year? Well, those people are stupefyingly drunk. Just so you know. The scene was one of apparent convivial joie de vivre, masking desperate personal solitude and despair and addiction.
I also do wish to say, in summary, that I can attest to the fact that it is not a good thing to be a pregnant woman suddenly having to wade through puddles of chunky sick.
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I have summoned New Year’s Eve at least once in fiction. I once wrote a play — as yet un-produced — set on New Year’s Eve. It is a bleak, horrifying dive into cruelty, revenge and guilt, and it involves a young woman who cannot walk. There is the Christopher Reeve story lurking in there, somewhere.
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So. Happy New Year! This is the Weekend Gene Pool! Your challenge for today is to send in stories of your own New Year’s Eves: Funny is great. Bad is good. Poignant is fine. Interesting is essential. Send them here, along with any other questions and observations you might have:
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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
Hey, kids. Are you somehow reading this on New Year’s Day? Are Mommy and Daddy still asleep from last night? Great. Don’t wake them. Just hit the button below, and where it says to buy a year’s subscription to the Gene Pool….