I sat down at this desk about half an hour ago with the idea of writing about New Year's Eves I could recall. NYE is one of those overhyped, underdelivering holidays. How many times have you had a truly remarkable one? Considering we all top out at fewer than 100, and probably missed most of the first ten, we should to try to make them more memorable, shouldn't we?
I vaguely remember staying up late to walk out on the tiny front porch in the thick fog in Modesto when I was between 10 and 15. I banged a pot with a wooden spoon and smiled when I heard someone down the street doing the same.
We've all watched Dick Clark (finally!) get older year after year until at last he's as old as he really is.
I remember a bleak one in high school when this sort of runt-of-the-litter cheerleader (whose name I have deleted since this post was first written) convinced me to go to a "real" party with her. I must have been 16 or 17. She tried really, really hard to be a cheerleader, but she just wasn't cut out for it. She was, let's say, a bit on the trashy side, and not in a good way. Desperation oozed from her pores. Her claims to fame were her "Bacon Frying in a Pan" imitation, during which she writhed on the floor, and "forgetting" to wear underwear to a game once. Or twice. Imagine Britney Spears without her looks. (I just tried googling her: she is either the receptionist for a very shady moving company, or a big Obama supporter. Whoops, no, she's not black.) She wasn't a bad person, just misguided. She was trying to find her tribe, just like the rest of us. But she asked me, and I wanted to feel grown up, so I agreed to go. I think she wanted to set me up with someone. Yikes.
The party was in a house on the wrong side of the freeway, out by the mall, where the streets have not-very-nice-neighborhood names, like Buell and Farkman and Loser Lane. Or something like that. It was shabby and the guests were smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. I recall muscle cars were parked on the grass out front, but that's probably being generous. They were probably crummier cars than that. Or up on blocks in the greasy driveway.
Soon after arriving, Roni disappeared into the back bedroom, where people were doing some substance I never could figure out. This was before "crack" was something people did, so I think they were doing "crank". I still don't know exactly what that is. (Hey, Mom and Dad, if you are reading this, yes, you let me go to a party where drugs were being used and no parents were present.) Ok, this is getting depressing. What happened was I sat around mostly by myself mostly being bored, waiting for midnight and drinking a very watery tasting beer, even by my standards at the time. The sound on the television was off, and the stereo was really loud, and as the ball dropped (WHY, by the way, can't we Left-Coasters have our own celebration? Isn't it a little lame to watch a TAPE of midnight in New York every year?) on the fuzzy screen, a red LED clock radio on top of the TV counted down the seconds. And then it was midnight, and it was over and I could go home. And that is the beginning of my general disappointment with the holiday.
Later, when I still lived at home, one of my very favorite NYEs was one I spent absolutely alone. I took a bath, gave my feet a good hot scrub in the sink, my face a masque, and my hair a hot oil treatment, drank some tea, and went to bed early. When I woke up, I felt great and I think I looked pretty fresh, too. I still remember that one.
Then there was the one I spent with my former swim team friends in San Francisco. That's another one that it's better my parents don't know about, because I spent some of it in a service elevator in the St. Francis hotel, wrapped up in a 12-ft mauve table skirt which was borrowed, along with some commemorative glassware, from a banquet room, some of it in the Oakland BART station (still with tableskirt-- I have a picture in my mind of it trailing behind me as I rode the escalator down) and a large part of it on the doormat outside my friends' dorm room in Hayward, as no one could hear me knocking on the door when I got back. That's pretty too, eh? The fun parts were fun: singing TV theme songs with a whole carload of drunken BART passengers, watching the streets fill with people when the clock struck midnight, kissing people. But a lot of it was not fun, and I'm glad I was young enough that it is now a very, very long time ago.
Midnight of the turn of the millennium was special. We spent it with our dear friends Tyla and Vincent, and their friends Jon and Drianne, before they all had kids, back at the cozy old Rose Lane house. Food is very important to me on momentous occasions, and Vincent did not disappoint. We had a nine-course dinner, if I recall correctly, complete with really fantastic wines, and a la French Laundry, wherein the courses are small and by the time you are done, you feel smiley and full and fine, but not like you're looking for the Alka Seltzer or surreptitiously unbuttoning your top button. It was really fantastic. I believe Tyla even made up little menus for the occasion.
Ok, it's time to go and have a little evening celebration with my husband. Tonight, we had a simple dinner of some homemade and very delicious beef stew (Mike made it) and brown bread with walnuts. We may watch a movie, or just listen to music, or I might take a hot shower, give myself a new coat of nail polish and read about Shakespeare. Somewhere along the line, we'll open up the bottle of rose champagne that I brought home, and toast each other. And we'll sleep really well. Tomorrow, we're going to drive out to the coast and then have dinner with friends again.
Happy New Year to you, my dear friends who read this. Whatever kind of year you've had, may you have more of the good and less of the bad, in the coming one.
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