December
31st
11:55
At a party in a house belonging to people I
have never met before, people are starting to breath a little quicker. Eyes
skitter at each other and drinks are finished as the waiters move through the
room like medics onto a battlefield. Trays and trays of champagne are emptied
into the crowd. A few assholes are brave enough to hold one in each fist.
I am one of these assholes.
11:57
The entire house quiets down like a flower,
closing shut for the evening. A woman giggles nervously, high on the air. I can
hear them breathing. A year can seem so long, but the last one hundred eighty
seconds are tiny and fast.
From across the large parlor that everyone
has filtered into, a man gives a short scream. My first thought is that someone
is trying to be funny. I am not alone, because a few others laugh too. My
second thought, right after the same man says in a scared-shitless tone "My
wife needs a doctor", is of the game, Clue.
That many drunken people in a room when a
tragedy has occurred become paralyzed. They freeze. One woman whispers "oh
my god" to herself, and we all hear it.
I don't see the guy’s wife because of all
of the people crowded around. I strain to look.
The voice of a man I had met earlier sounds
loud from directly behind me.
"This man is a doctor!"
The throng opens directly before us.
Automatic - like something from a movie. Spilling my drinks, he grabs my arm as
if he is Merlin announcing the unbeknownst Arthur as king to all of England. He
escorts me to a rather large woman laying tits up like a plague mannequin, all
wide-eyed and open mouthed. Her mauve party dress has flipped up past her
massive thighs and as we draw closer, I see her face is racing to match its
color. The people we pass are dreamy eyed and drunk. A few people start to
relax as we move forward. I see a young man sip his drink.
Time is slowing down. And as it dawns on me
what is expected, I begin to shit myself.
I hand my flutes to her husband, who
reminds me of the math teacher from the comic strip Luann - all comb over and a
shitty red bowtie framed in tweed.
I kneel down by her side because I have to.
A priest at an altar made of somewhere around three hundred pounds of old lady,
stuffed into hummingbird hide.
From other rooms within the house, people are
preparing to countdown to the New Year.
But wait a minute. Hold the phone, stop the
fucking story; I’m not a doctor. Or am I?
The answer is no. The truth is that I
sometimes create new career personas for myself when meeting people for the
first time, sure that I will never see them again.
My brother and I have done this often. It
is a game. We’ve pretended he was mentally retarded to board a plane first that
we had arrived late for. We have been restaurant critics to score comped meals
- situations of this nature.
An hour or so earlier, before I was staring
into the death mask of a woman not breathing, I was looking for a place to
empty my bladder.
I had just finished red bull/vodka number
six and was looking forward to the bright yellow emanations I was about to
conceive. After locating the line to the upstairs bathroom, a guy a little
older than me and just as drunk, started talking about what a great job he had
as a journeyman electrician and all the money he was making. I was bored and
when he asked what I did, all weird and blurry eyed, I asked him what hospital
his insurance carried.
He said Kaiser and I promptly told him I
was the youngest cardiologist in the history of Legacy-Emanuel. Why not.
He was impressed and I was satisfied. Then
it was his turn for the toilet and I stood in hall merrily whistling the theme
to M.A.S.H. The door swung wide and out he walked. While zipping with one hand,
he waved to me with the other and called me ‘doc’.
It felt good.
I was amazed at the amount of piss on the toilet
seat. I made my business, and using my foot, I flushed and found myself next to
a full-length antique mirror. Terrible faces and wings were carved into the
dark wood frame. Something from a Blake story.
Beautiful.
The jacket I wore was a marvel.
Sometimes, you’ll find an article of
clothing that was clearly made for you. Never seen anything like it on anyone
else, and as you pay too much for it, you are convinced that you never will.
That was the jacket I was wearing.
The material was the dark color of clouds
before they split apart and heave downwards to the cold surface of the earth.
Black silk collar and small silver buttons made to look like the fingernails of
god.
Red stitching at the cuff.
And it is the stitching that catches my eye
as I form my splayed hands into a shadow puppet raven and place them over her
solar plexus. For a second I imagined her spirit, her soul, clad in an ethereal
version of her cocktail dress, hovering over us and seeing what a big liar and
fraud I am. All around me, people begin counting down the last ten seconds.
Ten
What the fuck have I become.
Nine
I can do this. Anybody can do this.
Eight
What if she dies?
Seven
Can I go to jail for this?
Six
Fuck.
Five
I
press down hard. Nothing.
Four
Again.
Nothing.
Three
Hey,
she moved.
Two
Press harder!
She
reacts with black, acidic projectile vomit. She sprays my face and the front of
my jacket.
One
She
coughs. My eyes are burning and everyone is cheering.
My jacket is fucked beyond repair and I am blind.
Unseen
hands help us up. Her husband is saying something I don’t understand. She holds
me tight to her chest, which is wet and stinks of everything she ate and drank
that evening.
All
around us, people begin to sing Auld Lang Syne.
Blue Christian Winterhawk
A New Years Story 2012©
