When it cracked open, the new year, I was at a bar under the baseball stadium. Nearly only men were inside, which might explain why such a place in such a city would be so desolate on such a night.
The sticky floor was concrete. Iron handrails borrowed from the style in the stadium pressing down on us gave the space sections, the impression of a design. My brain grayed out the hideous square pillars like they were power lines or the panes of windows, grayed out as many of the sad, middle aged men drinking by themselves on New Year’s as it could.
New years press down like that stadium. A tiny rehearsal for death: who will be the last person you see – a lover? a friend? a stranger? will you even remember? What are the last words you’ll say – advice your grandchildren will take to their graves? or “could you pass me a glass of water?”
It ticked down on the TV, the year. My friend and I had scuttled in to this den at 11:51pm, figured it would be better tomorrow to be able to say we’d been somewhere doing nothing than nowhere doing nothing.
He likes to tease me. Was it this year I first grumbled that New Year’s was, “the one night of the year where you have to do something or everyone thinks you have no friends?” I don’t know if it matters; I felt that way then.
So time ticked down. Little boils of adrenaline sank in my belly, wondered if these last words for this practice death would be profound or pass the water?
Honestly, I don’t remember which they were, but I could guess. I do remember the first words of 2014. If a new year is a little rehearsal for death, isn’t it also a new lease on life, a chance to change our ways?
Red-faced and balding, a man, in his fifties, wearing a green polo shirt with a stain on the belly, standing next to me, turned with a stagger and, shrugging, slurred, “no champagne.”
“No champagne,” I mimicked. He stumbled off into the gray noise.
I guess that was my kiss for good luck for 2014. No, it was no great rebirth, that year; it was another year; it passed.
Since, on New Year’s – if I remember to – the first words I speak are “no champagne,” and I wonder in what gutter that man might be curled up, what bar could’ve just thrown him out, or if he’s yet found a place to drink champagne on New Year’s Eve, a place better than the basement of that baseball stadium.