From Something to Nothing
If you are reading this essay, perhaps you too are interested in nothing in particular, and if so, I welcome you.
***
I have been celebrating New Year's for many, many years at this point in my life. I remember the first New Year's Eve I was allowed to stay up until midnight--I believe I was fourteen or so, and it felt as though I had been given the keys to a magical kingdom that had previously only been discussed in whispers among adults. I remember thinking at the time that I could not possible imagine what could be going on after 9pm in the world. I mean, it was dark for fuck's sake! It had to be very exotic at the least, I assumed.
My parents would always celebrate New Year's by either going to, or hosting, a party for their friends and the extended family. I remember them clearing out the garage and making it into a "dance area". Once the streamers were up it actually looked pretty festive. Mom would wear one of the new dresses my father bought her for Christmas from Marcy's in the Chula Vista Mall--all I knew of the store was that it sold really beautiful dresses (or for a fourteen year-old they were beautiful), and that when my father went there to shop the salespeople always treated him like royalty. All of this was of interest for me, perhaps because of my budding homosexuality but also perhaps despite it.
In general, when I was a child, nights were for sleeping. I never really questioned this--it seemed reasonable to me to go to bed at 9pm. That was late and I was a child. Being up past my bedtime was akin to being invited into a type of forbidden Wonderland--I did not belong--and yet I very much wanted to be there! Even as a child I was drawn to exotic things, which for me at the time meant anything about which I did not know very much. Turns out that there was a lot that I did not know very much about, back then, and I suppose I thought that I would find the answer to all my questions in the world of the exotic. Little did I realize that, once I arrived there, it was to give me more questions, not less. One might say that my life since has been an ever-expanding series of more and better questions.
New Year's Eve posed many questions for me, with the main one being "Can we really start over?" I am certainly not the first person to ask this question nor will I be the last, since our minds are wired to ruminate on roads not chosen, wondering into eternity if our lives would be better if we could simply make another choice. If only it were that easy! It is not, of course, but damned if we don't try every fucking year on the first of January. This is the year I will fill in the blank. Why can't we just love the all of it, the joy and the pain of it, the wins and the losses, the successes and the failures? Because we are taught that these pairs of experiences are in conflict, rather than complimentary parts of the same experience.
The Experience of Life.
***
What in the world did I, at fourteen, want to start over for? I had barely begun!
Fourteen is an odd age, perhaps the oddest age on one's life, a time that could appropriately be called the "in between". In olden days fourteen was an adult, capable of hunting and having children, and being an adult in general. But we are not in olden times, are we? For me, fourteen was, well, full of promise, even though I did not know what the promise was. It felt, at the time, that the future was a big shiny light that was both fuzzy and pointed. I had a sense, as I recall, that I was in for something in the near future. I didn't know what it was I was in for, but I knew it was there, and that I was in for it. This "in for something" feeling turned out to be my prime motivator for the next forty years of my life.
Starting over at fourteen is not too much of a stretch, is it. Starting over at fifty-eight is, truth be told, a fucking joke. If one needs to start over at the age of fifty-eight, I suspect that there is something decidedly wrong with you and I will leave it at that (while also giving you a hearty "Good for you!"). At fifty-eight, one tends to look behind, perhaps, more than ahead. At fifty-eight, one is more concerned with taking the stairs one at a time than getting to the top. At fourteen, I did not have very much behind to look at, so the future took my attention like a crush on a matinee idol. At fourteen, I was obsessed with the future because there was so much of it! When I think about it, it was pretty much all I had at that age. At fifty-eight, less so.
When I look back at New Year's Eve, 1977, when I was fourteen years old and finally allowed to stay up until midnight, I was full of hope: hope for high school, hope for love, for college, for my body, for my future, for the choices that would lead me into adulthood, and I had the perfect pop soundtrack to back me up. It was a great year for music, wasn't it? Beyond Fleetwood Mac, which was pretty damn great, you had to emergence of disco into the mainstream, with its glossy, sexy dance beats and lyrics about love being "just around the corner". Disco was like catnip for this fourteen year old--hinting at an adult life where finding love was actually as easy as putting on a pair of Calvin Klein jeans and hitting the town. Love: smooth as milk chocolate. This is what drew me on New Year's Eve in 1977 when, as a fourteen year old, I was allowed to stay up until midnight and touch the exotic, forbidden world.
***
In 2021, as I celebrated the new year with my boyfriend of five years in a hotel room nine stories above Hollywood, I was full of something other than hope. Fleetwood Mac and disco are long gone from the radio landscape, and most music today is about transaction sex rather than love (perhaps that is just the old man in me. I don't think so though). What the fuck do the fourteen year-olds of today have to give them hope? Where are Fleetwood Mac and disco when we need them? What is wrong with the world when Rumours is an album that feels optimistic in retrospect?
In 2021, in a hotel room above Hollywood, I was full of...not optimism, but...intention. Truth is, I no longer have the luxury of looking forward with hope; I am too old for that. Hope requires time, and though I may still have a good amount of the latter left, I have less than I did when I was fourteen. Much less. Intention cuts to the chase on New Year's because it requires action to see it through, the final step towards change; hope requires nothing but belief, and belief is really only appropriate when it is applied to trust. Other than that, hope is nothing more than a false panacea--offering everything but giving nothing.
Something more than hope is required at this stage of the game.
Intention is what was going through my mind on December 31, 2020, nine stories above Hollywood, as I watched the sun go down in the west and the streets descend into reluctant darkness. Intention led me to the question "How do I want to live my life this year?" and I found that as I thought about that, less things were certain than uncertain. And that's okay. I need a bit of uncertainty right now, since it gives me something to "look forward to". Uncertainty opens up options for consideration, while certainty allows for little more than appreciation, if you're lucky.
***
For me, this New Year's Eve will go down as The Big Bluff. In other words, just when we thought we were at a crossroads, it was revealed that we were to continue on the same damn road. But...but...the road is veering left, if I'm not mistaken, and this adjustment turns me toward the sun. I am not yet sure if it is the sunrise or the sunset I am headed for, but I'll take it, goddammit. Either way, it is the start of a new day or the end of one, both of which are harbingers of change.
I'll take it either way.
