Crappy New Year!

Two year’s ago I found myself third wheeling on New Year’s Eve with my friend Kiki and her boyfriend at the time, a practically mute, although totally inoffensive, oaf named Joe. My ex-boyfriend had very recently broken up with me and I was still in total mope mode; just the thought of being without him on New Year’s made me dissolve into a sniveling puddle of lameness. Thankfully, Kiki and Joe took pity on me and offered to spend the night with my sorry self.

On the evening of December 31st, after several bottles of champagne and a platter full of semi-burnt hors d'oeuvres, we headed out to the bar. It was nearby, possessed the distinct, hovering aroma of Fraternity House, and was the go-to spot to a plethora of stupid, jocky, undergrads in graphic tees and baseball hats. Heaven, if you ask me, but it’s definitely not the type of place to go to on a night like New Year’s, or if you’re over twenty-three. All the same, we got there early to take advantage of the open bar and buffet. Before it was even officially 2011, a huge stack of soiled napkins splotched in tomato and buffalo sauce, pools of watery ketchup, and Lincoln Log cabins of chicken bones blanketed our small table, in addition to many, many empty glasses, melted ice cubes and lime husks collected at their bottoms.

Although initially entirely unenthused, I wore the requisite New Year’s Eve crown and forced myself to enjoy the cheap cocktails and even cheaper beer. At Kiki’s urging (Who am I kidding? I barely had to be egged on at all), I swiped a bottle of champagne from a neighboring table of bearded boys, and we giggled maniacally when they spent the subsequent half an hour yelling at their server that their bottle was missing. I devoted a solid twenty minutes to fixing the ends of conical noise makers into my eye sockets (see below), which, at the time, seemed like an appropriate thing to do. As the countdown wound down to 1, I became immensely engrossed in my drink, and not Kiki and Joe and everyone else who were shoving their tongues down one another’s throat, as if going on an expedition for a misplaced set of tonsils.

Somewhere after midnight, I wobbled to the bathroom where some poor girl in a see-through polyester dress was spending the first minutes of the new year on her knees in a bathroom stall. A friend with a hellacious Boston accent was holding back her hair and telling her to “Get ’er done!” as if we were in the final seconds of the 4th quarter of a football game. I returned from my bathroom experience to find Kiki looking extra grumpy, and Joe with that blank look guys get when they’ve just found out they are in serious trouble and have absolutely no idea why.

“I want to go home,” Kiki told me. “Joe was texting his ex-girlfriend!” At the time, this was a constant source of contention, as Joe’s ex-girlfriend simply refused to leave the scene of the crime, even two years after they’d broken up. “I’ll do whatever you want to do,” I repeated to Kiki over the course of the next hour as she kept demanding we leave, but then instead launching into another extremely loud, stop-talking-to-your-trashy-ex-girlfriend diatribe against Joe. I did my best to ignore the situation, silently gulping down the remaining drinks on our table and searching for someone, anyone, to rescue me. No luck.

Finally Kiki made moves to leave the bar, and I was right behind her. Outside, Kiki hurried away from Joe, and I trailed after her, glancing back at him, my shoulders shrugged in apology. He plodded across the street and disappeared, or so I thought, into the frigid night. That winter, Boston got over EIGHTY INCHES of snowfall, and there were huge mountains of dirty, hard snow everywhere. Kiki and I stood on the corner for what seemed like an eternity, talking about what a loser Joe was, and how could he do that?, and didn’t he have any respect for her? All the types of questions drunk girls ask about their boyfriends when they’re teetering on the edge of drunken belligerency. I was freezing and finally told Kiki I was going home. “That’s OK!” she said brightly as she plopped herself down in a huge pile of snow in front of the Hess station. “I’ll wait here. Joe will come back!”

The idea that leaving my friend, all by herself, in a pile of snow, at a gas station, at two in the morning, on New Year’s Eve might be a horrifically horrible idea never even crossed my mind. I was out of there lickety split without even a second thought. “Bye!” I yelled as I scampered away.

When I woke up the next morning, Kiki had already called me a dozen times. “Are you OK?!” She screamed, when I eventually answered, sounding as if she thought I might have been abducted by mustached hipsters and forced to wear flannel, or something equally unspeakable. “Uh. Yeah. Why?” I asked, half asleep. “Ohmygod, Sasi, Joe and I were so worried about you. He couldn’t believe I just left you like that! To get home by yourself! I’m so glad you’re OK! I’m such a horrible friend! Please forgive me!” Kiki’s concern for me was lovely and all, but wasn’t I the one who left her all alone in a pile of snow? “Oh. Yeah. Wait. Are you all right? And didn’t you and Joe basically break up last night?” I asked. “Nah, of course not,” she said, as if nothing had ever happened. “We were just worried about you!” 

I thanked her again for worrying about me, but it took me months before I confessed that I was the one who abandoned her on that cold night, leaving her drunk and deserted in the middle of the city on a filthy, oily snowbank. When I finally spilled the beans, totally mortified by my abominable behavior, she laughed and said, “Oh really? I had no idea!” Three cheers for vodka.