I’ve changed my flights to get home to L.A. tomorrow morning instead of on New Year’s Day. The logistics of getting around on the mainland, finding an available taxi to get to YVR, and doing everything in cold, damp rain was just too much for me to deal with. I’d rather catch the gang for samosas tonight & get on a plane tomorrow & spend New Year’s in L.A.
That’ll learn me to book plane tickets for winter vacation when depressed! I planned to spend New Year’s in Vancouver last month, when I just wanted out of Los Angeles, and the thought of spending the Highest Pressure Party Night Of The Year with my countrypeople was comforting. I love my friends in L.A., and that’s definitely where my life is, but in the horrible state I was in last month, the security-blanket appeal of BC took over my better judgement. I felt like I’d been turned inside-out for a couple weeks last month, like all my nerves were exposed without skin, like my heart and my lungs were being torn apart from the outside, and decided that the easiest path, would be to return to a city and era where life was easier & less overly dramatic for me.
Here’s my problem: New Year’s is just too much pressure. I always feel like I have to find the right party and have the best time possible. I feel like I have to be able to say, “yes, I had a wonderful time at New Year’s!” instead of the usual, “I ended up at some random party, drunk off my ass, making out with some guy I just met at midnight.” I have to go someplace fabulous, or else I feel like a loser. I hate dealing with it. Last year, I escaped to Vegas – and hated it. This year, I copped out by planning a night in Vancouver.
Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking. New Year’s Eve in Vancouver is always a gong show at best. The last one I spent actually out partying in Vancouver was when I was still going to UBC, 2002 going into 2003. I started doing tequila slammers in cracksmurf‘s Gage quad with the crew there, and then party hopped across town. I don’t remember a lot of details from that night – surprise! – but I do remember that we all started at a two-degree friend’s party, and then I left to go to the Animal House up in Dunbar. The Animal House was so named because it was occupied by a bunch of stoner lunatics, and because they threw the best bad-movie style parties, which usually involved both types of bong – beer and regular. And I took off for it because I almost always scored at those parties.
That was the night I met suchiiban though. It’s also a night that’s very much lost in my memory. Not only did I go through an awful lot of Cuervo (I was in college, I was an idiot, I still consumed cheap tequila), I kept drinking god knows what at the House. Which is probably why there’s a complete blank in my mind, outside of a few snapshots of the rest of my friends arriving, making out with suchiiban at midnight, getting heckled for my actions by said friends, and then saying goodnight in the rain.
Obviously, on the first day of 2003, I was ridiculously hung over. So much that both monkeybutlers and I were wearing sunglasses to drive out to Castle Happy Fun Park, out in Abbotsford, on a cloudy New Year’s afternoon. We worked out some of the hangover at minigolf, but really, to this day, I still can’t drink regular Cuervo.
The next year 2003 going into 2004, I spent New Year’s Eve at my friend Kristen’s wedding. She said she planned it for that night so her husband wouldn’t forget their anniversary. Unfortunately, not many people made it out from her university friends, because it WAS on New Year’s Eve, and I left earlier than I’d planned to. I can’t even remember exactly where I was when 2003 turned into 2004, but I suspect it was actually at my house in Kitsilano, throwing clothes into a backpack. I had a 7am flight the next morning to Oakland airport, out of Sea-Tac, and I had to go home, finish packing, and drive down to Seattle to catch it. Between the wedding and the mini-vacation to San Francisco though, I had excuses not to try to find a party in Vancouver. It was a great escape from any social pressure.
Then last year, I was in Vegas, and I never want to spend another New Year’s there again.
Anyways. I’ve received a few party invitations in the last few days, and I think I might take people up on them, back in L.A. Both are out in the same area of Los Angeles, which is convenient, and both are with exceptionally good, much-loved friends. This is good. The reason I planned to stay in Vancouver for New Year’s was so that I could ring in 2006 with people I loved, and it seems I may get the same opportunity to do so in L.A.
Besides, this gets me out of this dreich. Y’all don’t even want to know what the weather’s like in L.A. today.
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