The camera and the author remember New Year’s Eve equally as clearly.
This weekend I gave the ol’ liver a round of grueling exams. It pulled through, wearing nothing but jogging pants and an exasperated grimace, but I can say I didn’t wake up with a headache even once, and I stayed drunk for something like three days.
Kristin, Matt, Amanda, and Joey drove down from Nashville to ring in the new year. We spent Sunday touring Sun Studios (can anyone tell me the name of the short dude with messy hair who gives tours there? Yow!) and driving across the Hernando DeSoto bridge at sunset and, later, traipsing up and down Beale Street, looking for a place to drink and celebrate the new year without having to pay a cover. We found a place with pool tables and something like four chairs, and I had lots of drinks that night (I remember ordering a whisky sour, two amaretto sours, a lemon drop shot, and a SoCo shot) and I’ll be damned if I remember much more than soliciting a peck on the cheek from Phil at midnight. Oh, and talking with Alan about his current non-profit project that involves Katrina and public housing and sounds really cool. Oh, and slurring to some stranger in the ladies’ room as she exited the can, “Happy New Year!” Was that flare in her nostril in recognition of the bathroom’s lovely smell, or in recognition of the fact that I am a total effing nutjob? Guess we’ll never know.
Edited Jan. 4 to say: Originally I had a line in this post about hoping everyone had a good time. Actually, the ORIGINAL post had some brainshits about how worried I was that everyone had a shitty time. So I took that out because I thought I was being neurotic and overly critical of myself, and replaced it with a line about hoping everyone had fun. I should have left that original stuff in, because although I deleted all of it, that rotten feeling is still in my gut. It’s a feeling of awkwardness, telling me things are so off and so wrong and yet so beyond my grasp of understanding.
I still hope everyone had a better time than I suspect they actually did, but I’m quite sure everyone was miserable or uncomfortable or bored, and I’ve really got no indication that that’s not the case. I really don’t think I’m a lousy host, but maybe I am. I was once told that the party is over. And, yeah, okay, I get it now.
LT, you were a marvelous host when I was there.