Imaginary Holidays
I Can’t Stand New Year’s Eve Parties
Stop counting down and get your fucking hands off me
Humans are weird.
We make up special occasions, assign importance to them and celebrate them as if they are real.
And, don’t start, okay? I’ve had all the lectures about how we have to start the new year positively.
Sure, let’s celebrate another year of human achievements:
- The military-industrial complex
- The prison-industrial complex
- Nuclear weapons
- World hunger
- The various knobheads of TikTok
- Parasitic billionaires
- Climate change
- War
- Pharmaceutical companies aka legal drug dealers
- Governments lost to corporate corruption
- The Metaverse, aka Virtual Nintendo Wii
- The commercialisation of spirituality
- Battery farms
- Artificial intelligence aka real-life Matrix
Please excuse me while I pop my bottle of 1959 Dom Perignon and pull the string on my party popper.
POP!
My wife and I spent last New Year ignoring New Year’s Eve.
We ignored it to such an extent that we were in bed at 10.30 pm only to be rudely woken at 11.59 by the bastard neighbours counting down to their make-believe event.
This disturbance was followed by a million-dollar fireworks display filling the Melbourne air with toxic smoke to celebrate the worst year of bushfires we have ever experienced.
The last New Year party I went to was in a friend’s driveway in 2019.
My friend’s neighbour was a militant vegan and she filled the party with all of her extreme friends.
Personally, I don’t mind vegans — I was one for two years once. But, I can’t stand militant vegans who are too shortsighted to understand consumer power and the psychology of persuasion.
Those people and some purple witches huddled in a corner made up ninety percent of the ‘party’.
My friend brought out some food he had made.
One dish was a homemade chicken korma, and one was this greasy pepperoni bread thing.
All the vegans looked at each other in confusion. Everyone was unsure how to proceed given the presence of pepperoni and chicken. I told them it was simple.
Just don’t fucking eat them.
I know cool New Years' parties exist. I’ve seen them on TV.
Throughout my life, I have always been unhappy with where I was at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
I mean, you would have to be somewhere pretty damn cool to not have that anxiety that you could be somewhere better right?
Even if you are somewhere cool, wouldn’t you feel anxious anyway about not being with the people you love and the fact that they might die soon?
Or is that just me?
Come to think of it, there was one time when I was comfortable at New Year.
I was standing on a roof in Kathmandu (The city in Nepal, not the warm clothing shop). I was drinking vodka and Nepali Red Bull with a Buddhist monk. We were shining spotlights in people’s faces during a power cut while shouting at them through a megaphone.
HALT, Hands UP!
But that's another story.
Anyway, back on the driveway.
A fight almost broke out at 11.58 pm when a few people insisted on putting the radio on for the ‘countdown’. Somehow these idiots got their way and my anxiety and irritation grew like an abandoned tampon in the rain.
As the countdown began I sat there shaking my head in disgust.
I was bloated from eating chickpea ‘sausage’ rolls and tired from listening to people explain why meat is murder and how crystals can cure cancer.
About twenty percent of the people counted down and finished by shrieking,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Then somebody started singing that fucking New Year’s song, whatever it’s called.
Several of the crew were doing the rounds, hugging strangers and wishing them a Happy New Year.
I wondered about their motivation for wanting to hug everyone at the party.
I knew they must be at least a little deranged. This was confirmed when they got close, and I saw the madness in their eyes.
I made some mathematical calculations and realised they would be on me within a minute. I went to stand up and leave but crashed into a thin-fifty-year-old woman in a purple dress.
The bastards had hit me from the side like those damn Velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
Clever Girl, I whispered.
Happy New Year, the woman said to me, leaning her arms out expectantly for a hug.
No thanks, I said, taking a swig of beer and, for some reason, stuffing another chickpea sausage roll in my face. She leaned over and put her arms around my shoulders anyway.
I chewed harder.
Get the fuck off me, I muttered, spitting pastry and chickpeas down her back.
Her friend, a short, round guy wearing glasses and a very tight t-shirt, stood behind her. His jovial New Year smile turned to a look of fear.
She stood aside, and I looked at him.
Don’t think about it, I said.
They both awkwardly shuffled off to their next victims.
My friend came and sat next to me.
This is fucking shit, he said. Shall we get some weed?
Nah, I said. Fuck this. I’m gone.
I called my wife.
She is a photographer and was working at a New Year’s Eve event.
But the phone signal was jammed with all the fuckers calling the people that they suddenly realised they couldn’t live without.
I put my phone away and got in an Uber.
On the way back, I watched the beasts in their party gear pass by — their eyes filled with total ignorance of impending death —their empty celebrations dissipating into the wretched night.
Sadness replaced my anxiety.
I got home and patted the three cats, who seemed undisturbed by the fireworks and idiots singing.
I put on Meet the Fockers and made a cup of tea. I was in bed by 12.55.
As I said, I can’t stand New Year’s parties.
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