I’ve learned not to have high hopes for New Year’s Eve. Even when I was younger and ostensibly had opportunity for a monumental outing, nothing much ever happened except excessive drinking. That suited me fine, though. The best New Year’s Eves I can remember during high school happened in someone’s living room. One year we watched The Shining and then I crashed at my friend Josh’s house. That was a great one. Later, during my college years and early twenties, my New Year’s Eves were spent in my friend Jeff’s living room drinking God knows what. In my thirties and forties, it’s been scrambling to just do something whether it’s watching the ball drop in a friend’s apartment or… well, honestly that’s all I can ever wish for.
Even with these lowered expectations, last night sucked. It was the second worst New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had.
This holiday season was a bit of a blur. I wanted to get into the spirit as I always do, I got a tree and watched Christmas movies but somehow it didn’t happen. When the actual holidays arrived I spent them either sick, traveling, or intoxicated: sometimes with some overlap but never all three at once.
I’d get sick, then I’d rest, then I’d feel better, then I’d get sick again, and repeat. All the while I’m taking COVID rapid tests that always come back negative.
New Year’s Eve morning began with some misplaced optimism. I decided that I felt well enough to watch a Spurs game with a friend at the Manhattan Spurs bar Flannery’s along with the requisite beers. I also planned to play soccer that afternoon. I would just go home after watching Spurs (a nice 3-1 win over Bournemouth), take a nap, chug some water and a Gatorade, and I’d be golden.
The only problem was that, after waking up after said nap, I felt achy as hell, which seemed odd. I felt like I had hydrated, and I even took some of those DayQuil orange capsules, which usually work for me. I decided to call out from the soccer game and sleep some more. But I kept feeling worse, achier. I got chills. I could feel my fever.
I took my temperature in the morning when I took my COVID test. It was 97.5. I took it in the late afternoon: 102.
I had been mildly sick for several days, why would this spike now? I took DayQuil. I had a flu shot. I was negative for COVID. What the hell was going on? It was time to do what I do best: panic.
Here’s the curse of the hypochondriac: just when you let yourself think, “I’m sure it’s nothing,” you recall a story resulting in death that begins with someone uttering the phrase, “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Once my mind starts spiraling, I have to take some kind of action and since the urgent care centers were all closed, I went to the Brooklyn Methodist ER.
All the while, I’m texting friends, texting my therapist, making plans for my dog if I’m in the ER all night. I’m panicking, taking and re-taking my temperature (and it’s not going down).
I waited hours to be admitted because, let’s face it, I’m a relatively healthy man with a high fever, I’m not that high a priority. I feel like crap. I’m coughing into my mask. I’m doom scrolling, texting friends. I look to my right and there’s a vending machine with, among other things, some bottles of Propel.
After drinking the last two, I imagined the night ahead, lying in an uncomfortable ER bed, probably with an IV, and then waiting for hours and hours to get discharged. So, I decided to leave and head to the Rite Aid to get Tylenol (I’m done with those NyQuil/DayQuil gelcaps) and as much Gatorade as I could carry.
I woke up this morning without a fever.
So, I learned a few lessons. Lesson 1: just because you feel a bit better that doesn’t mean you should drink a bunch of Guinness at 9:00AM while watching Spurs vs. Bournemouth. Lesson 2: electrolytes and Tylenol are miracle drugs. Lesson 3: even though I freaked out like a baby, it was honestly better than reactions I’ve had to medical worries in the past (to wit: I didn’t stay to be admitted, hey, it’s a step).
So, if that was the second worst New Year’s Eve, what was the worst?
In 2016, I went to an Italian restaurant called Sotto Vocce with my then girlfriend and her friends. As we sat down, my girlfriend opted to sit a few seats away from me, which struck me as odd. I ordered the lasagna, which was good but a little cold in the middle but I didn’t want to send it back. My girlfriend, her brother, his girlfriend and I all went back to my apartment to have some drinks and watch a movie.
That’s when the nausea set in, the special nausea that won’t let you relax, the nausea that proves without a doubt that there is a mind body connection and your body is telling your mind, “my dude, something ain’t kosher in the state of Denmark.” My girlfriend’s brother and his girlfriend left early and after pacing my apartment futilely hoping for another outcome, I found myself on my knees in my bathroom in the grips of food poisoning. My girlfriend rolled her eyes and said I probably just had to much to drink but the rest of the evening would prove me right as I couldn’t even keep water down and I had to run to the bathroom every hour on the hour until the sun came up. I lay on my couch and watched movies since I couldn’t sleep. Once or twice my rather annoyed, unsympathetic girlfriend came from the bedroom to both check on me and intimate that I might want to turn the TV down so she could get some sleep.
That’s how I ushered in 2017. In a few short weeks from that day, Donald Trump would be inaugurated. In roughly three months, the girlfriend would go home to Connecticut for the weekend and end our four year relationship over the phone. I started smoking again, lost twenty-five pounds in a month and a half, and became vitamin B12 deficient resulting in a scary condition called foot drop. I came to terms with the fact that I’d never work as an actor and that I was a crappy freelancer.
In short, 2017 was one of the worst years of my life.
I’m someone who looks for patterns and omens whether they exist or not. Right now my superstitious brain is wondering if a violently ill New Year’s Eve is the harbinger of a shitty year to come. 2023 wasn’t the greatest year and I have no plan for 2024.
I hope I’m imagining things. Happy New Year.
