While my belief in God has diminished and my fear of path-crossing black cats has waned, the New Year’s Kiss is the one superstition I’ve clung to in adulthood. Against better judgment, I tell myself that whatever happens at midnight on January 1 sets the tone for the year to follow.
Unfortunately, I’d had a string of lousy New Year’s Eves. In 2005, I had broken up with Zoe. Around Thanksgiving that year, she had told me she loved me, and I didn’t say it back. Heartbroken, she didn’t speak to me for weeks until I asked her to meet me on New Year’s—to kiss (when the ball dropped) and make up. She showed up drunk. We kissed reluctantly, not at midnight but fifteen minutes later, and within the hour she told me she didn’t know why she’d come, finally seething, “I hate you.” I’m pretty sure I slept alone on New Year’s two years ago. In late 2006, Alice had come back to New York from studying abroad in Europe. I saw her on New Year’s Eve that year; we were in a neighborhood bar, Sparrows. I hoped we might rekindle our romance, nearly four years after our first breakup, but her friend Matt was there. I’d heard that there might be something going on between them, and when they said their hellos I looked away because, I imagined, they would kiss—and not on the cheek.
Shortly thereafter, they left together. It would be another month before Alice and I got back together. Drunk and feeling sorry for myself, I wept the whole walk home. um im pretty sure i slept over and we had sex Was this Zoe with a new phone number and a mixed-up timeframe? or was that last new years? Or was it Alice with a new number, asking me back? On New Year’s 2007, Alice and I had gone to a party at Matt’s apartment. I had convinced myself that nothing had happened between them; she had told me that she wasn’t in touch with any of her erstwhile lovers.We drank champagne from the bottle and kissed passionately at 12. But she drank too much. On the way home, we stopped at a 24-hour diner and she threw up in the ladies’ room. She stumbled home as I walked patiently beside her, my arm around her shoulder to keep her steady.
Even though I’d had my New Year’s kiss that time, the year that followed hadn’t progressed as sweetly as the midnight make-out— it was more like the post-party vomiting. I was unemployed. Alice and I weren’t talking. And
I had no one to kiss in two days. yeah that was two years ago, remember I had ppl over my house and then we went to sparrows and then i slept over ur house and u raped me lol This was definitely a wrong number.
And because the texter mentioned Sparrows, I started to suspect the message was meant for Alice. Well why don’t you just tell me who this is and end all this confusion? its matt. im disapointed that u don’t remember, even tho we was mad drunk Since Alice and I had broken up, I’d been sick with loneliness and jealousy. The former I was managing; I could spend time drinking with friends, taking my mind off the big empty bed at home in which I hadn’t been able to sleep over the past few weeks. (I’d been sleeping on the couch, which my roommates were kind enough to tolerate.) But the jealousy I couldn’t shake: stalking her on Facebook, I read flirty wall posts from our former mutual friends, going in for the kill now that she was single. I had long been jealous when it came to Alice. She’d had more sexual partners than I had; sometimes, I despaired over those other men who’d been with my love, and I worried whether I measured up to them, literally and figuratively.
Probably because this isn’t Alice, for whom I presume you’re looking then who is this? Warren then this joke isnt that funny No, not really But what part was the joke? A few hours later, Alice texted me herself: i accidentally put yr number on a fbook msg.i didn’t sleep with matt, haha, sorry for the awkwardness : I had been on the receiving end of phony flirting, the victim of a comedy of techno-errors.
On New Year’s Eve this year, I went to a party and ran into one of Alice’s exboyfriends. I thought it might prove a poignant coincidence—it was like a genderreversed Fellini movie, a meeting of Alice’s exes—but it turned out to be meaningless.
When the ball dropped, I stood in the eye of a kissing hurricane, surrounded by a swirl of Frenching couples. I watched confetti fall on Times Square, double-fisted beer and champagne and wondered whether Alice had smooched anyone at midnight.
I made a resolution: by December 31, 2009, have somebody to kiss.
Warren Shetty is a freelance writer based out of New York City. He no longer responds to text messages from strange numbers.
Grow a Pair?
