Charming, but single

So, this New Year’s was supposed to be a couple of friends at my place. Snacks, drinks and a late-night trip to the little cigar bar across the street. Simple, relaxing, low key. Gone are the years of big house parties, renting out the back room of a bar, going out of town. Big New Years plans always end up causing too much stress – where are we going to stay, how much will it cost, what will I wear, who will drive us home, etc. “People who make huge plans for the New Year are really partying amateurs,” College Roommate informed me. “We don’t need to have some big to-do for New Year’s Eve because we are partying all-stars.” I’d agreed enthusiastically. Perhaps we were both covering up for our subpar plans. Me, drinking with a few people in the bar where I always go. Her, hitting bed early because she had to be up at the crack of dawn to drive to go see her boyfriend’s college football team play in some lame bowl game. (Our college plays in an ACTUAL bowl next week, thankyouverymuch.) I turned down an offer to go to New Orleans for a party that sounded like fun. I didn’t have a place to stay, wasn’t going to pay for a hotel room and was less than thrilled by the prospect of being anywhere near the French Quarter on New Year’s Eve. The last time I did that was several years ago and the guys we were with ended up getting in a fight with some guys from New York as we walked down Canal Street to the Quarter. I remember they were from New York because College Roommate had yelled, quite drunkenly, “I am from NEW ORLEANS. Why don’t you go back to BROOKLYN where you belong!” And I thought this was pretty funny because while my dear friend was from the general vicinity of New Orleans, she definitely didn’t live within the city limits. (Which I guess is splitting hairs when you’ve consumed countless cups of daiquiri, purchased in “milk jug” size for the occasion, while preparing to go out, so we let her slide.) And then the cops showed up and I remember crying for the purely selfish reason that if these guys got arrested, it was going to be me and my drunken belligerent friends wandering the city streets alone without a ride, unable to return to the suburbs where we were sleeping that night because I simply didn’t know the address of the apartment complex, so we wouldn’t even have been able to hail a damn cab. I love New Orleans, but I get lost almost every time I go. I have a terrible sense of direction and I don’t know the city well at all – I once led an expedition of revelers five blocks the wrong way down Canal because I didn’t pay attention to the fact that cross streets changed names – Bourbon becomes Carondelet, Royal becomes St. Charles. Alas, on that New Year’s Eve many years ago, the guys were able to slip out of the cops’ sight, grabbing us and pulling us down a side street and away from the action. “Outta mind, outta sight,” one guy, another friend’s older brother, told me as he patted a little bit of blood off of the side of his face. I nodded and wiped my eyes. I was 22. I’d seen my share of bar fights, but this was my first walking-to-the-bar fight. After some bar hopping and ridiculously overpriced drinks, we ended up at someone’s house in God-knows-where. (I thought we were on the West Bank, but each of my girlfriends has a different opinion as to where we actually were come 3 a.m.) I have a sneaking suspicion that our male tour guides insisted we go to this house to buy drugs – because no one offered us any drinks when we got there, which is pretty much unheard of for the Big Easy, and because we didn’t stay that long. After the hellacious hangover that I’d tried to stave off by drinking mint juleps the next morning with my Dad at Pat O’Briens before we went to a football game, I swore off New Orleans for New Year’s Eve and I’ve stayed closer to home. Since my overnight house guest just cancelled and it is looking like it is going to be a much smaller affair chez moi tonight, I’m thinking I don’t need to go buy more wine and chips at the store, as I planned. I also probably shouldn’t bake the brownies I’d planned to share with my guests. But I will. Just in case there is an early morning brownie-related emergency to which I need to attend.