NYE
There is something anxiety-inducing about experiencing your first full quarter-century. I’ve lived from Y2K through this. Birthdays never bugged me, but cognizing the arc from palm pilots to AGI, from puberty to the first signs of balding—it makes me tight.
During the final countdown I imagine reality turning into an episode of 24, and there’s a suitcase nuke in Times Square, and Jack Bauer can’t cut through the busy crowd—and I imagined all the newscasts on how an act of New Year’s terrorism is a way to permanently scar the changing of calendars, the psyche and morale of a culture.
But then it hits :00 and I kiss my wife as if it’s the destruction and creation of the universe, and it’s a strong, long kiss where I forget about everything like time, resolutions, and the * ** * * *.
Minutes later I see confetti thrown by 80 confetti men, and Ryan Seacrest’s hair gel, and banter about “joy,” and the Jonas Brother are live, and I wonder if I’ll ever get to piss my diaper at the center of the world to celebrate another revolution with American Idols.