I want to talk specifically about my history with New Year’s Eve. I love New Year’s Eve. It is my favorite holiday. It is about dressing up and drinking too much and kissing and basically just letting go. And I like that. Last night was the first New Year’s I’ve spent in Portland since 2004. It was a surprisingly appropriate way to finish off my first decade of adulthood.
(What follows is an account of my past decade of New Yearsing. Some details have been left out because this is the internet and that isn’t your business. Last names have been left out to protect the innocent except in cases where there are Famous People. In that case I left last names intact in order to look cool)
I don’t remember a whole lot about New Year’s 2002 simply because it was so long ago. I didn’t drink back then because I was 18 and on top of that, I didn’t do ANYTHING back then. I went to a small party with my date, who I had met at art school. I’m pretty sure there was pizza. And video games. I remember midnight coming and going and not much being made of it. My date drove me to my parent’s house which was about an hour away and kissed me goodnight at around 2AM. He was so sweet, and I wasn’t I’m still sorry.
2003 was the EXACT opposite. I went to this huge magical party at the Cloud Club in Boston. It was a masquerade theme and I got there embarrassingly early. I was at my gothest. There was a veil and a lot of white pancake make-up and a floor-length black ballgown and very high heels. It was the first time I’d ever gone to a party alone, specifically one where everyone was a total stranger and most assuredly quite a bit older. Bands played in the basement. People drank champagne in the garden. My mind was blown. At midnight I found myself sitting on the floor watching the Dresden Dolls cover “New Year’s Day” by U2 (this will be a theme). Someone passed me a bottle of champagne. Brian, the drummer, kissed me full on the mouth and I’m pretty sure I died. I took a cab back to Allston at around dawn and experienced my first real hangover.
I spent 2004 with friends at this dive bar in Portland called Amigo’s. I used the fake ID (well, it had been SOMEONE’S real ID, just not mine) I’d acquired in Boston so I could get into shows and gay bars. There had been a plan to kiss my friend J. at midnight, but when the ball dropped he was either in the bathroom or getting a beer and so my friend M. did the honors. I’d had a giant crush on him when I was 14, so I thought this was rather poetic. I think we watched Family Guy after that.
2005 was the first year I’d ever had a real boyfriend on New Year’s and I remember that being pretty exciting. I wore a silk Chinese dress and red lipstick and a sullen expression. We went to a house Party in Rockland, ME and my boyfriend, T., kissed me. This will also be a theme… 2006 was pretty much the same. Different outfit, same everything else.
2007 was kind of great. A bunch of my mime friends from all over the country converged on Richmond, VA. We’d been on tour together that October, so this was kind of a reunion. We all played a show the night before. There was a lot of baking and chopping of vegetables and a house full of wonderful, beautiful people. I kissed my friend D. at midnight because he’d never had a midnight kiss and had recently learned that it was in fact a tradition. We drove back to New England after sleeping on the floor with twenty of our friends.
2008 was weird. I went to New York with my by then on-again/off again (and very soon to be permanently OFF) boyfriend. We got into a massive fight in Strawberry Fields which is a very strange place to have a fight. We did some kind of weird performance art for the Dresden Dolls show at The Hammerstein. We kissed in a flurry of confetti and black and white stripes at midnight. I went on stage for the encore and thought a lot about how strange it was to be where I was and how far I’d come in five years. I woke up in Brooklyn on my friend Cullen’s couch. We had eggs at a diner.
I spent 2009 at a small house party in Cambridge. We drank champagne and watched Dick Clark. I kissed D. (different D.), my boyfriend at midnight.
2010 was a mixture of bad and good. I was in the process of moving out of the apartment I had shared with D.. We had broken up before the holidays and I’d been spending a lot of time in Maine or on Cape Cod. A friend had somehow gotten me a ticket to the symphony where Amanda Palmer was performing. I was mostly jazzed about seeing Sxip Shirey play in such an amazing venue and seriously, if you ever get the chance, SEE SXIP SHIREY. Anyway, there was a lot of wine and fancy seats and dinner. And more wine. At midnight I kissed this young conductor guy called Walt. I think he’s internet famous for doing an orchestral arrangement of “Poker Face” I witnessed this live. It was kind of awe-inspiring. After the show we walked a few blocks to the after party at the Cloud Club and I played piano and climbed the tree they have in the attic (I KNOW) in heels which was a giant mistake because I fell and had serious bruises for months. We stayed late. I had a discussion with Neil Gaiman about the weather at around 4AM (which I had a panic attack about the next day because – Seriously? I meet the guy who wrote probably the greatest comic series of all time and all I can think to talk about is the WEATHER?). Eventually my best friend Liz and I took a cab to The Distillery in Southie and slept in our new home for the first time.
Last year I had a sprained ankle. My housemates and I party hopped around the building and then went to a party in Chinatown. The party was up a very steep flight of stairs which were in no way pleasant. There was a huge punk party on the first floor and we crashed. There were easily a hundred people crammed together. I got stuck to a girl’s studded wrist cuff. I felt old and kind of out of place in my cloche hat and Link boots. I kissed my roommate at midnight while waiting in line for the bathroom. One of my housemates was being a bit over-festive and we volunteered to get him back to Southie. I half-carried him to the corner so we could hail a cab and cursed my swollen foot. We sat in a snow bank and I tried not to think too hard about it. We went home and my roommate and I watched Queer As Folk and drank champagne.
This year I spent an unnecessary amount of time getting ready. I reinforced the seams on this vintage dress I got from Oona’s a year ago but which never fit right on my beer swilling, eight-hours-a-day computer job, T-taking Boston body but which fits great on my walk-a-mile uphill to get anywhere form. My lifelong friend B. shot down my four-inch-heel dreams with his weather report while we waited on the arrival of the rest of our crew. We made our slip-sliding way deep into the West End and dropped in on a fancy-dress cocktail party where my Miller High Life promptly fizzed over on to my beloved and much fretted-over blue satin dress. We stayed for 45 minutes. I talked a lot about Doctor Who because that is what I do now. We went to another party where the lights seemed too bright and I didn’t know a soul. B. and I hid in the kitchen where someone gave me a glass of wine. The ball dropped. I think I may have nudged B. or something. We left at 12:01. I got home at about 12:10. I drank champagne in my bathrobe and listened to records on my floor. I thought about how far I’ve come in a decade, what it is to be an adult. What I’m doing with my life. How awesome I hope 2012 is. My resolution and whether or not being resolved is always the best idea. I thought about how much I love my tiny apartment and my friends and my new, quiet, mostly solitary life. I thought a lot about the choices I made in 2011 and how, for better or worse, they led me back to Maine and what it means to live here. What it will mean. How happy I am to finally close various chapters and to actually, for real this time, start anew. The first hours of 2012 have been bittersweet . I have no idea what the future holds but for once I feel… pretty optimistic. There will be things that will devastate me, surely – stiff upper lip and all. But the rest will be so, so good. It has to be.