Closing Time

I absolutely abhorr this whole fixed perspective that people seem to have regarding New Year's Eve, as if this was the one night of the entire year for us to look inwardly, and try to run up a tab of all that we are, have been and will be. The things that we've done and will do. The things we swear to never do again.

It's worse that the birthday syndrome.

The night began rather dull if optimistic on my part. I was slaving at the office until ten anyhow, and my left kidney was heavily yearning for a drink. Everyone was busy planning and pinning down the details of their festivities, but I mostly felt apathetic.

Kissing someone at midnight? Pure bullshit.
At last year's New Year's Eve party I was wiping away pointless tears at midnight, nursing the very first minutes of a then-traumatic breakup, and lord knows it was the beginning of the best year I've had in quite a while.

I figured, this year simply had to be better, no matter how I might sabotage it.

I said I'd be alone for an entire year. That was my goal, really.
Somehow, in the first week of the last month of this year of self-celebration, I found myself waking up in another bed, and not even sneaking off in the morning.

It was after a few tough weeks of emotional courtdates.
The defendant: yours truly. The plaintif: all the people I've found myself entangled with from cradle to present day. The jury: fuckign absent, that's what.

First there was the whole international angle. Sometimes summer flings are meant to be summer flings, sometimes more. I can't say that I ever committed to something back in Berlin, but I had been secretly worried that I had given off this impression, projected onto the sky like the goddamn Batman signal.

Suddenly there was a plane ticket in his hand. He was coming in a week's time.
I was still in bed with The Clarinet Player, wondering if again, I had botched shit up.
Making lists on how one might end things. It's not as easy as we'd all like to assume.

Then there was The Lukewarm Guitarist. We slept together on my ex's birthday, not so much because I found him particularly charming or because I was dying to get to know him, but more because I needed someone to take me out for a fucking drink after hearing about what The Evil One had told The Clarinet Player. I suppose that aside from being irritated with him for sticking his nose(hmph) where it doesn't belong - my sexlife - I was also just in need of someone to buy me a drink and give me a fun ride, so to speak.

So we met up on Allenby and after parking Baby on King George Street, we headed to his place, stopping by at th AMPM to pick up a bottle of wine. Now, I don't know - maybe it's just me - but if a girl comes over to your place to kill off a bottle of wine, what exactly makes you conclude that she'd want a relationship?

If she'd wanted that, she would have dragged your ass to one fo the overpriced bars this city is so annoyingly overpopulated with, and made you pay before proceeding to milk the cow. Speaking of which, why hurry to buy the cow if you just got the bloody milk for free?!

I honestly do not understand today's men.
And I know why that is...because today's men are yesterday's girls.

In any case, we fucked. Not anything too glorious, although it was an entertaining night to say the least. He was visibly drooling over my fishnets, adoring them. He said he'd just tumbled off the relationship wagon, which would have been an obvious sign to flee had I gotten my hands on this piece of info a bit earlier.

Say, before I ordered him to drop trou.

"So, are you ready for me to fuck you hard?" he asked.

I laughed, sat down on his chest and explained very clearly that I am used to being the big boss, and if anyone was to fuck anyone, it would be me.

"Okay then, go ahead and do whatever you like to me."

Music to my ears, it was true, but as things progressed, I couldn't help but feel somewhat bored. Things were just very...standard. Not anything too shaky on the Anna Gramm scale, if you feel me. And as I stared at the ceiling trying to figure out what the hell it was, it seemed impossible to pinpoint.

He was an okay fellow, really. He's good-looking, reasonably fit and in shape, owns a respectable chubby pecker, and did superbly from a technical standpoint. But there was just no yay-factor.
At all.


It's not that I could say anything negative about him, either. Well, except for the music that he makes, which I think is God-fucking-awful. The poster of his nominal Eighties Israeli rock band staring back at me from the wall was no great help, either.

Just as I was trying to explain to my shrink a week after, planted on her couch, explaining why I feel a teensy wee bad about politely telling this cat to sod off, it's not that there was anything so necessarily wrong about him.

It was just not it.

On the other hand, I didn't want to feel haunted by this notion that he'd keep asking himself over and over why he wasn't a keeper.

But the again, I never said I'd call. I never promised anything, painted any illusions... Social circumstances would not dictate that a guy in this situation would be obligated to call. So why was I suddenly getting upset phonecalls and accusations of screening his calls?

Oh well. That following Sunday night, I was due to meet R., but his bike died on him so he cancelled. In effect, this led to a drunken dial to Agent S., and what at first innocently appeared to be nothing but a marvelously sleazy encounter.

Only it wasn't.