Nobody Reads This Page – “New Year’s Eve”

 

c. 2023 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(12-23)

 

 

As a youngster, memories of New Year’s Eve celebrations were colored by the discipline of my religious family. As a Christian pastor, Dad tended to his flock with much reverence and care throughout the year. Mom played a special role as a sort of ‘first lady’ for the congregation, with social skills that had been handed down through generations of her own brood. She loved to sing and converse and uplift children and the needy. Her presence was vital, and made my father’s theological work much more successful than it would have been, otherwise.

 

The yield of this fundamentalist family paradigm was that I always remembered hanging a new calendar as something that came without the usual accouterments of alcohol, boisterous celebrations, loud music, and a hangover that followed. I heard stories of how others rang in the birth of a New Year, but never encountered such happenings as a participant. In my world of cultural isolation, only elements of a safe and innocuous sort were permissible. We drank fruit punch and ate gelatin desserts dotted with miniature marshmallows. Two things that were never appealing to my palate. People from our church played board games and chattered with each other, while keeping watch on those of us that had not yet reached the threshold of chronological maturity. Discipline persisted, even up to the stroke of midnight. By then, I had usually surrendered to fatigue and boredom.

 

Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians always provided the soundtrack.

 

As a teenager, in New York State, I finally managed to escape such stale traditions by sneaking away with friends. Counterculture heroes who I encountered during my video apprenticeship at Channel 13, on West State Street in Ithaca. We rode in a cramped, creaky Ford Pinto station wagon. With them, I headed to the Rongovian Embassy in Trumansburg, a watering hole of local renown which was known for featuring live music, and keeping a variety of imported beverages available. My handlers for the night were older and more seasoned veterans of scene-making in the area. Their patience let me enjoy this foray into independence. Something which I accepted with a typical amount of carelessness. I was young, artistic, and too full of myself. Soon after our arrival, I was also too full of Dos Equis Mexican cerveza.

 

My behavior must have been comic, though somewhat irritating. But the circle of friends with which I had traveled showed no impatience. They were tolerant and watchful, so I was on a long leash. When an Australian student at Cornell University paused by our table, I claimed to be British. She smiled with delicate, pale features, and shook her head in a bout of polite indifference. I was not yet able to accurately tell one region, or nation, from another on the basis of accent alone. I must have appeared to be very stupid.

 

“Sorry mate, I don’t believe you! Cheers!”

 

A modernist Rock combo played popular music and Reggae throughout the night. As the terminal moment of that trip around the sun approached, I went on the dance floor, and stationed myself in between rows of drunken revelers who were even more inebriated. I started to sing along with the lead vocalist, a fellow with permed dreadlocks and hippie attire. This act seemed to amuse him somewhat. Though he appeared to take it as a compliment.

 

When I sought relief in the bathroom, a Sharpie pen appeared on top of a sink. Feeling tipsy and rebellious, I scrawled my signature on the spackled wall. The moniker I wrote was one used on-air at my television depot.

 

“Remember the name! Rod Swindle!”

 

Even as someone who had hosted local programming of a contrarian nature, I was far from being notable. Yet in a state of willful intoxication, I had the notion that somehow this inscription rendered in fast-drying ink would become legendary. At least one or more of those in my troupe from the city must have noticed this anti-social testament. But no one said anything. I wasn’t chastised or corrected. Possibly because my mental capacity to process anything had already been obliterated.

 

My last memory of being at the proletarian venue that night was of stomping around, boots akimbo, in a skittish attempt to look nimble while inhabiting the wild crowd of beautiful people. I wanted very much to jettison my naïve self, and morph into the kind of Punk icon that I revered. Someone like Dee Dee Ramone or Sid Vicious or perhaps an older, more venerable figure from the era that came before. Like Iggy Pop, or Lou Reed. Or perhaps, Johnny Thunders. Viewed with sober eyes, I must have instead looked like a hopeless ass, floundering through a first swim into the sea of sweaty humanity. Yet shame did not register in my consciousness.

 

Somehow, I made it back to the wood-sided Pinto. I might have been dragged or carried. My brain cells did not record the manner of this exit. In the back seat, I toked on a clandestine smoke offered to settle my ebullience. I fell asleep on the way back to Ithaca. It seemed very dark on the road. My companions buzzed with lively debate over the musicianship we had encountered. Suggesting different interpretations of tunes that had been included, or alternate material. Each passenger had their own unique opinion. Through the haze of cigarettes and weed, I was grateful that my friend at the steering wheel appeared to be respectably competent for her role as our driver. She did not veer off course, or lose her way.

 

I arrived home on North Cayuga Street, long after the dark hours had claimed their victory. While hobbling up the front steps in my Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars, I reflected that Mom had once observed the sound of my footsteps always gave her comfort after being absent for so long. My noisy stumbling must have fit the bill, that night. I hoped that she could rest. I also hoped to reach my bedroom at the top of our interior staircase, without an accident. I couldn’t see anything clearly, but feeling my way along the banister worked well enough.

 

I fell into bed still wearing my leather motorcycle jacket. The year of our Lord 1980, had arrived with a baby’s cry. Or perhaps with my own yelping of penned-up emotions, finally set free. I had howled at the moon like a wolf pup, and managed to run through the snow. Now, it was time to greet the oblivion of slumber, and give thanks for my moment of libertine abandon.

 

In the morning, I would be sick at my stomach. But very satisfied.