I'm super bittersweet. Everything that should be utter amazingness has a silver lining. Moral hangovers, as I like to call them. But, being the creature of contradiction that I am, I sometimes wake up feeling like all of the previous night's mistakes were the right ones to make. These are my mornings of pure bliss. Sure I may've gotten a bit slurred, maybe went home with a random, probably spent all of my food money, but it was worth it. Walking on sunshine so please clear the sidewalk. (Full disclosure: Sometimes I'm just still drunk but I take what I can get.)
I'd love to resolve to wake up in this mental state after every everlasting night next year but I'm way too realistic for that. Instead, I'll indulge in a little reminiscing of the years I began on Cloud 9, confident that I could block all blows no matter what punches life might throw.
2000
Everyone said the world was going to end. Big. Fucking. Deal. My first apartment and everything I owned had burned less than two weeks before. My world was already in shambles so I was RTR in the worst possible way. 18-years-old, fresh off of house arrest, nothing to lose. Atlanta was not ready. Of course we waited until the last possible second to book our room so, naturally, we ended up at the Ritz paying premium rates. I was the eldest and, thus, in charge. I Sharpie'd my name and phone number on each of the boys' arms (this would become tradition), donned my black leather/red fur Guess coat then hit Underground. Never mind the smeared residue of a few hundred dollars on the bathroom counters or the bottles littering every other disposable tabletop. Like I said, it was the end of the world and we were still heady off the late 90s boom. Fuck the Ritz-Carlton. Blur, blur, blur, then I started losing guys something serious. As it turns out, a certain someone had engaged all the others in getting rid of a significant number of stamps. All good and well except it was snowing, vulnerable stamps were in pockets, sweaty coke hands were in pockets and, well, the rest is history. It was like herding delirious cats. Finally (finally) I rounded up the crew just as the Peach dropped and pandemonium broke out. 10 candied, bedecked big bodies whipped onto Peachtree Street in formation with bass so deep the buildings echoed. The streets shut down. It was Freaknik on uppers. The police cavalry closed in with their pepper spray and pretty soon everyone scattered. If there was one thing I knew how to do then, it was run. I ended up with a rag-tag crew on the other side of 85 around MLK, heel gone and fur ripped. Eventually I made it back, talked the front desk into a 3pm check-out and semi hooked-up with a kid with a tongue ring. All my boys eventually stumbled in with only one emergency phone call from a concerned stranger at a pay phone. The next afternoon we dipped quickly, stopped for $3 pizza buffet at Cici's then quite nearly ruined our year (and life) in a domestic dispute with a neighborhood meth head at the gas station 10 miles from home. I slept a full 24 hours then woke up to make my 2000 time capsule that never got buried. Inside I placed a Crown Royal bag, a chewed up glow-stick and one quarter, all I had left.
More New Year's Eve stories to purge. Stay tuned...
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