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| <<<>>> |
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New Years Eve |
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| Created by Chained Wings at
| [+ favourites]
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Its New Year's Eve. As I write this, I can hear cars rumble past my window, screams, laughter, and about 20 different songs blaring from 20 parties in my neighbourhood. Everyone is carefree and happy. Everyone is drunk, or drunk on life.
But I chose not to go out tonite.
Why?
I'm not really sure. But I think its because I'm tired of it all. Or maybe I'm trying to step back and recall what I felt so long ago which has been lost in recent years to cynicism and what I see as a cheapening of the world I live in. And im just weary of so many times stumbling home, the last one on the streets, feet about to explode after standing and walking and dancing all nite, my head full of broken dreams. While street-sweepers clean broken glass and rubbish from the streets, carefully avoiding a few lost souls sleeping their actions off in any space that looked cosy the night before.
And I always went out with such hope for night ahead. Such vigour and determination to be happy and to ignore all my problems. (and in later years, all the problems of the world.) To drink and dance and screw the pain of existence into oblivion. To scour it away with a brush of denial and burn it clean with a heart full of fire and passion.
And it has been the same every single year. So many of them I've lost count. So many nights out, so many New Years Eves. The faces and places have all blurred into one. The girls I kissed at midnight never to see again, the friends from years ago, gone about their lives or dead too young. The people I danced and laughed with. The ones I clapped on the back in drunken brotherhood. The revellers I saluted the evening to with a rise of my glass and a cheeky smile. All, gone.
And so I sit here and remember back over all those times, the good and the bad.
The first New Years are lost to me, just childhood memories. Being sent to my grandparents, the scent of mum's perfume, trying to sleep with so many people shouting over blaring music. Then in the early hours of the morning, being woken from my childhood slumber and driven home by my arguing parents. As I sat wrapped in a blanket, tracing the rain drops running down the window, and watching the stars blur when I squinted my eyes through the wet pane at them. Keeping track of the moon as it watched me from on high like a benign guardian, seeing it get lost behind trees and buildings, only to reappear someplace else, as if it played hide and seek with me.
Then the first years I was able to grasp what this magical night was all about, and feeling caged as I was still too young to go out and be part of it. Watching Scarface at 13 years old, my nana oblivious to the killings and blood as she knitted in the other room.
And of course the first time I was allowed out, if only on a leash. My friends across the road held a big street bash and it was the year my dad had walked out on us; my mums first year alone. I remember her and one of my uncles going over there and me being allowed to come too. Being allowed to drink and feeling like I was an adult- but in truth, being far from one.
I remember the drink making me bold and trying it out on my friends sister and her rejecting me like she always did. Falling into their swimming pool and the moment of total calmness being drunk and underwater instilled in me, feeling a whole new world and wanting to stay there. But how odd the sounds of laughter and jeering sounded underwater to my submerged ears. I remember dancing to what I thought was "cool" music and the adults looking at us younger ones like we were aliens. And how I felt superior to them because they just didn't understand. And wanting to grab a bottle of left over champagne and go sit and watch the sun come up with my friend, but he couldn't go the distance so I went home and threw up and was sick for a days after.
Then the next year, which in teen years is 20 years for an adult, I was old enough to go out by myself. (As if my mother could stop me back then. I was out of control, crazy, rabid on hormones, I didn't care if I lived or died. And very nearly died on more than one occasion.)
I remember looking the oldest of our group, so always having to go into the bottle shops to get our alcohol. This peach fuzzed hybrid of a man and boy, all gangly arms and legs, pimples and spiky hair. And how I used to rehearse what my date of birth was for when the guy serving me quizzed me on when I was born and what my star sign was. I'm sure he knew we were underage. And I'm sure I knew he knew. But it was a necessary game we both went through to keep the peace.
Then coming out with our prize! A cheap flagon of white wine that mostly only homeless people drank as it tasted like the piss of a cat that'd been drinking vinegar for a month.
But we didn't care. We were young and didn't know about a sophisticated pallet, or even how much was too much when it came to alcohol. The nights of teen drinking were all about sitting in little circles handing this cheap gut rot around, sculling it and not feeling anything, so the next time it was passed to us we'd scull even more, till our heads span and about 15 mins later we'd either feel really good, or we'd pass out.
And I remember some us saving up our money for proper drink, and the few six packs of beer we were lucky to have between us. Man, that stuff was so nice compared to cheap wine. And just ONE beer made me feel so magical back then. You could wash the problems of the world away with only a few mouthfuls.
I remember being summer, it was still light at 8pm as we walked about getting drunk, and meeting up with so many different groups from school and other schools and the local shopping centre, swapping people between us so that Id feel like Id lost someone I liked but found another who was just as much fun. And trying to keep our group together with all the different places we wanted to go and being teens with goldfish attention spans.
There was such a fresh new, "everything is amazing" feeling to that time. Getting drunk was such a big deal back then. And the energy from new years eve with thousands of people all being happy and friendly in one place at once was so awesome.
And the night had a scent to it. Hairspray and summer and girl's perfume and alcohol and laughter and so many other things, all mixed into such a unique aroma it would be impossible for any expert to distill and market. Its not something that could ever be bottled, nor is its something that could easily be conjured and only ever came once in a blue moon.
Drinking, laughing, seeing a blur of stuff... then I'm with a smaller group of us and its about 10pm. I'm at Glenelg. The very same suburb I am in now as I write this. Down near the beach and the Ferris wheel and the large square with all the trams.
And I don't even know why or how, but I boarded a random tram with just 2 of my friends to go into the city. One of them was a girl who was my girlfriend at one stage, but I don't remember when. And everyone was shouting and laughing and saying Happy New Year to each other. And these two girls who I thought were cute came and sat with us and I somehow found myself with all 3 girls at once. And I can still hear the tram rumbling through the urban sprawl into the city, cars driving past, windows open, honking their horns and yelling Happy New Year to us. While we stuck our heads out the tram windows like excited dogs, letting the wind whip our hair as we yelled Happy New Year! to every passing human we could see. Until our throats grew too hoarse to yell anymore.
And me kissing the girls in-between all of this.
Then getting off the tram and following the massive throngs. A moving stream of people, like the arteries of a living being. The lifeblood of the city we had built. All happy, all friendly, all so full of love and hope and good will.
I lost my male friend in the crowd, and then it was just me and these 3 girls on my arm. The night went on for so long and was so wild but it was too long ago to recall in full. Just the enjoyable feeling of arms around me, the taste of lipstick, head humming from cheap alcohol with the nice touch of soft fingers entwined in mine, and a sense of belonging.
Then somehow I found myself back at Glenelg again, and the last of us reuniting and sharing tales of our adventures. And my friend Jarrod, who was so drunk he staggered up to the police station in the square, pulled his pants down and took a leak on the front steps, while shouting happy new year to the men in blue inside. And somehow magically, he never got arrested.
Then as the first rays of dawn came up, the crowd thinned like vampires escaping the sun. We all went our separate ways, trying to find our way home.. however far that was.
And just as I was 2 streets from my house and my feet were so sore from an hours walk, and I was so close to crashing out, a toot from a horn turned my head to see this hobbit like face grinning out the window of a beat up car at me.
It was Jarrod (who'd disappeared earlier to go get us a lift home) driving his parents car he'd somehow "borrowed" and come to give me a lift in.
I still recall that magical nite. My first "real" New Years Eve.
And my consecutive search for one of those girls on the tram who I had become smitten with, but never finding her again. Adding her to all the other girls who I had pined for and never really gotten to know.
And then came my "nightclubbing" New Years phase. When I was at the peak of popularity and felt that my looks were some kind of key to happiness and a badge of self worth.
I remember the smoke and the lights, the tinsel and streamers, the sound of house music and techno and the whole rave scene which had just arrived in Australia.
I remember the excitement of the end of the decade and the coming of a new one. As if numbers on a calendar could somehow make your life better or somehow had a magic of their own.
I even remember the song which marked that change, like all decades have songs that herald in the new one. The decade is dead! Long live the decade!
For me it was Infinity 1990: Time for the Guru. I remember the saxophone in it and how it lifted me up to some magical place high up in the heavens where no one could touch me. And how those notes could make me immortal, like just hearing them made memories eternal.
And the drugs of that time. Speed and the new one Ecstasy. And my dabbling with them.
And how the night, the people, the music, that song, the end of the decade and the drugs, all combined into one, to create a golden moment which I can never forget.
My blood on fire, my heart smashing against my breastbone, my mind in the clouds, my veins full of alcohol, adrenaline and Speed. Walking through a throng of people so thick it was like a traffic jam. Two steps then stop. Wave to people in the crowd as I wait to go again. Feeling the soft curves of beautiful women up against me, their breasts gliding across my chest. Their behinds rubbing against mine. All like some lurid dance of shapes and flesh that was neither seen nor heard but only ever felt. A memory of movement and mutual pleasure, a celebration of the human form at its finest.
And all the while staring at the world around me. Such vibrancy, such energy, smoke shooting from vents as technicoloured lights danced and played hide and seek with each other like magical sprites in the mist. And the people. So full of energy. So alive. Their faces, so happy. So young.
Such beautiful people.
And their song. Our song. Blasting from the walls while playing on the TVs above. Infinity: 1990. With that saxophone. That saxophone, sailing in my head, making me feel like the moment would never end. Keeping it crystalline and pure all these years.
We were so alive so young. So full of potential. Our night would never end. The world was one big long night, one celebration of being alive and happy and beautiful and smart enough to realise it.
But the thing I recall from the nightclub era most of all. It was the time of The Lady. The woman whose face encompassed everything that meant beauty to me. The most beautiful face I have ever seen. Even to this day. Who was like an angel haunting every walkway of every club I ever went to, with her big brown eyes and her graceful, serene figure. And how my desire for her nearly drove me insane with need and how there were days when I couldn't walk from wanting to be with her. How entire weeks would go by as one long thought about her eyes. I followed those eyes wherever they went for new years eve for over five years.
We were like the Prom King and Queen who had never been crowned. The most popular, most desired and sought after couple of the night club scene. And we both watched each other from afar. Both stealing glances at each other whenever we could. Both pretending not to be interested in the other. But both totally smitten by the other.
And in all my years, I could never work out, how with all the people we knew, and all the circles we moved in, for some cursed reason... none of those circles ever led us to each other. We spent half a decade admiring each other from afar. Standing right next to each other, both longing to reach out and touch the other, yet both stuck in totally separate groups.
I have never felt so right about a woman in my life. There were times when I would be walking through the crowd and Id feel a pair of hands on my hips as they moved past, or a foot would touch mine and it would feel like I knew that touch. It stood out from all the other touches enough to make me look at who it was. And every time... it was Her.
And all our lives we were never together.
I suppose eventually we both got too old for the nightclub scene, and somehow, despite feeling she was "The One" we both disappeared from each others lives... never to be seen again.
But never to be forgotten.
And then came the years after my nightclub phase. The years after The Chaining. Years when life was never as golden or fulfilling as it used to be. But like a hang-glider who has reached his peak, I glided down from the heavens, determined to make the most of the dizzy heights I had once soared.
And years blurred into one another, times going into the city to try and find a new years eve that felt golden like the first ones, the bands, the parties, the acquaintances, the late nights. Till I guess oneday, so may new years eves had come and gone, I just decided to accept that it would never be magical again.
But still, they were all good years and good times. Times when they drank to my name and called me the life of the party. Times when I felt a breath of wind that had the scent of that first summer. Or times when I felt fire in my veins and a song that encompassed and entire feeling in just its chorus.
And all these New Years Eves. They grew into one big long eternal night. Like they are apart from the normal nights of the year. And each one is just the next night in an eternal dream that will never end. A time when I am a child and people are really nice to one another. There is no war and famine or hatred. No egos or insecurity. A time when we as humans are all one race. We are all the same inside. Just wanting to be happy and to know the feeling of a hand entwined in ours, or the touch of someone special, or the smile of a complete stranger who wouldn't normally smile at you.
And the scent which cannot be bottled or sold because it has no price wafts through the air. And the music which accompanies it feels like you have always known it, because its the song of your heeart. And it represents us all, and our desire to be one. And is as eternal and magical as this one long night.
And as I end this... I'm sure, coming from one of the many houses blasting their music, I can hear the haunting sound of a saxophone... and everyone is beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNlDczS4YK4
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| Created by Chained Wings at
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