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Every New Years Eve we are faced with the prospect of flinging ourselves out among throngs of other drunken revelers, hoping for, at least, a real good time. Maybe we’ll wake up on the floor of a stranger’s house! Maybe we’ll go to a party where people will take their clothes off! Maybe we’ll get in a fight with our best friend and lock ourselves in a bathroom! One year, I saw a couple having sex against a tree outside of a mansion in Hancock Park. It was memorable. New Years Eve is meant to be memorable, filled with booze, random make-outs, and thumping up-tempo beats from either The Black Eyed Peas or someone who could be The Black Eyed Peas but you’re not sure.
This is all why I drove to a cabin in the woods and spent the evening looking up at the sky. To clarify, ten humans and three dogs drove up to a big cabin in the California mountains and hid out. There were no laptops, no business calls, and no cable. There were: board games, a big gas stove fireplace, Tom Waits, Nina Simone, Michael McDonald singing Grizzly Bear, endless games of hearts, spades, rummy, and euchre, hikes, trips into town for pizza and football, pancake breakfasts, dog snuggles, human snuggles, sing-a-longs, dance-a-longs, my failed attempts at reading tarot cards, charades, celebrity, catchphrase, home cooked chilis and cassoulets, girls-only pottery painting, “walking the grounds,” which translated means “taking the dogs out to pee,” reading books around the fire, lawn games, a lot of gross jokes, and continuous howling laughter. When the clock struck twelve AM on January first, one of our friends took the ol’ Napoleonic saber to a bottle of champagne and we all huddled out on the dirt road reading constellations.
It was quiet, it was peaceful, and it was the most fulfilling New Years Eve I’ve had in a very long time. I’m reading Just Kids right now, and Patti Smith quotes her grandmother during her New Years Eve show at Max’s Kansas City saying, “So as today, the rest of the year.” If that statement is to be believed, 2012 is going to be my favorite.
