Holiday reporting by Terrance Doyle

“How
much?”

"85
bucks.”

“To
go to a bar?”

“Yea.”

“Do
you get free drinks?”

“No…but
it’s a really cool bar.”

“Yea,
fuck that man. You can count me out.”

Eighty-five
dollars happened to be the most inexpensive of all of my potential city-based
New Year celebratory options. Eighty-five dollars? Are you serious?
For what? No live music. No free booze. Nothing. So I’d get to hangout
with the pretty girls that wouldn’t talk to me while I was in high
school and still wouldn’t talk to me now. An expensive rejection,
I thought.

So instead
of dishing out a near c-note to get in, another c-note for what must
be the best Budweiser in the world, and my dignity on the dance floor,
I opted to go home.

Ah, yes.
Home. What could be better than spending the New Year in a townie bar
with a bunch of townies?

Okay,
that, on the most basic level, sounds depressing. But it wasn’t, I
assure you all. Because after a few gins and a couple cigarettes, we
(I was with two other friends jaded by the would be city New Year) were
loose and ready to roll.

We saw
Jenny. And we saw Tommy. And we saw Phil. And we saw Carl. And we saw
Julio. And we saw Betsy.

We saw
everyone.

And everyone
saw us.

It was
a feast of visibility.

And it
was in no way depressing.

I saw
Ms. (insert generic high school teacher’s name), and it was fantastic.
She looked as good on New Year’s eve as she ever did in the classroom
while I was a barely-post-pubescent boy praying that her skirt was too
short or the cut of her jeans was too liberal.

“Hello,
Ms. (insert generic high school teacher’s name). How have you been?”
I asked.

“Terrence!”
She seemed genuinely excited.

We hugged.
She let go before I did.

“How
have you been? Did you finish school?”

“Yes.
I got an English degree.”

“I
always knew you’d go to school for writing.”

By this
point I’d had enough gin to pretend that she never taught me, and
that I’d never sat behind a desk in her classroom.

“Well
I always knew too. You know, you played a big part in that decision.”

“Which
decision?”

“Me
going to school for writing. I loved you—your class. I loved your
class”

She was
blushing. By god, it was fucking working!

“Oh,
come on. You didn’t need me.”

“Yes
I do, uh, did. Yes I did. Do you want to go have a cigarette?”

She hesitated,
but then smiled the coyest smile ever smiled by a 45-year-old single
mother of two.

“Sure.”

We disappeared
into the cold and the dark and when we returned my friends were staring
at me and saying things just loud enough to potentially embarrass me.
I didn’t care.

It turned
out that she had to get home though and I couldn’t come because her
children were not accustomed to black Jeeps. It didn’t matter.

We went
to another bar, at which there was a massive amount of free champagne
that apparently no one else had seen. We drank most of it, our heads
spun and we walked to someone’s house. I ran outside, puked in the
snow and walked home.

The door
to my house was locked, so I had to break in with my college ID. At
least it still had a use. I got in, threw up in the bathroom again,
got a call from a buddy, waited for him on the porch and went to another
kid’s house.

“Fuckin’
ay!” screamed my friend!

“Yea
man, fuckin’ ay.”

When
we got to the last house I vomited on a white rug in the living room
and pretended that I had discovered it.

“Hey
man, someone puked on your rug.”

“Fuckin’
ay! I’m gonna kill the bastard!”

“Yea
man, not cool.”

I went
outside, smoked from a bong that was lying on the hood of a strange
automobile, and walked home. I had to break in with my college ID. Still
good for something. I passed out on the couch and when I woke up my
cat was sitting on my head and I thought my dream was true because it
felt like my head was gone. But I woke up and had my first cup of coffee
in 2008.