On New Years Eve
It was new years eve and I’d already had my night. I spent it with my friends. The clock had struck midnight and my New Year's kiss was platonic.
It was new years eve and I’d already had my night.
I spent it with my friends. The clock had struck midnight and my New Year's kiss was platonic. I played skee ball with free tokens from the bartender. Not a bad way to ring in a new year. I ignored texts from a woman who still loved me. She was eight hours ahead in London, well into her own new year. I’d already made a decision she wasn’t privy to.
I heard about a party still going and I asked a girl if she was still there, she said yes.
Arriving at a party, much less a new years party, at its dregs is like coming into a conversation you weren’t invited to. Though polite, the people who were already there would probably prefer you kept to yourself. There’s no real use in catching up.
Her name was Maya and she had taken mushrooms earlier in the night and would I like a microsdose? That way we’d be on the same wavelength. Sure.
2 hours into the new year.
I sobered from the free beers as I gently ascended on what was less micro and more dose. I floated through the party with and without her, answering the same three or four conversational questions the same one or two ways. Any time we’d separate I’d seem to know how to find her, like a glowing trail was left in her wake.
3 and a half hours into the new year.
We sat in the dressing room together, heads bowed and knees touching. The party was being held at a small theater we both performed at. We held hands, intently. The mushrooms and the auspice of the new year intensifying our closeness. Her friends, with whom I was acquainted, buzzed around. High Schoolers with syrupy gossip of our impending union.
4 hours into the new year.
Set wide in her moon face, her eyes shone black at me.
“Do you want to leave?”
I called a car.
Perceiving our mating ritual as platonic, one of Maya’s friends thought my invitation was an open one. Somehow, in the span of a minute, I was one of a half dozen headed back to her house.
I couldn’t tell how complicit she was in this error. Was Maya relieved that our romance had been foiled? Was she too afraid to call attention to our secret affair by making it clear I was the only person invited back? Or was she just as surprised as I, to see that we were returning home with a troupe of clowns.
We got to her house and everyone would not stop talking. Rambling nonsense. The nothing words of nothing people, I thought, prattling to hear their own voice vibrate the bones in their inner ear. Not the type of magnanimity normally granted to those tripping on psychedelics but I had a singular focus. I was here to do the one thing worth doing. What’s the point of talking if your goal isn’t to get someone out of their clothes, into your bed. God gave birds plumage and men the ability to lie. It wasn't just for aesthetic purposes. I closed my eyes and laid back in a beanbag chair, pretending to have a bad trip.
5 hours into the new year.
When I opened my eyes the door was shutting behind the last guest, I’d either dozed off or perhaps the prayer for my soul to temporarily vacate my body had been granted. At any rate we were alone and I was ensouled.
6 hours into the new year.
Slunk is too mammalian and slither too reptilian, she flowed. Into and onto me. The sun began to rise. I flowed back into and onto her. We kissed, hard, and deep. Her tongue tasted like relief.
She warned me she was on her period and could I be tender. The way she kissed me reminded me of a documentary about how clownfish eat coral. Her lips pulled tight, each kiss pinching up a bit of flesh as her lips made their way around my body. We made love. A kind of retroactive love. I wouldn’t have called it love at the time, but knowing now the things I couldn't know then, we made love.
7 hours into the new year.
A second relief came, as we began to sleep. The relief that I was not a fucking creep overstaying my welcome. That she too was praying for the departure of the tittering gaggle so we could do the one thing worth doing. That someone here, now, wanted me.
We slept until 1 pm.
13 hours into the new year.
The sun above my head on my final January 1st in Los Angeles, I wished that woman in London Happy New Year for the last time.
I called a car.
“God gave birds plumage and men the ability to lie.”
Simply brilliant.