by terry ernest halfway there A-LISTS
If your earliest recollections of New Year’s Eve are of your mother dragging your jump in and go for it. I used the start of a new year to quit smoking… okay it took
drunken father into the house and disclaiming…”Help me with your father honey, me seven tries but I finally got it. And each try started on January 1 just as mother
daddy is not feeling well,” you might be halfway there. earth completed her trip around the sun. According to sources close to me, at
As a young gay man, my first memories of New Year’s Eve were really more of the conclusion of the solar cycle each year, reverse inertial influences coupled
New Year’s morning. It was the crack of dawn and I awoke next to a certain young with momentary fluxes in quantum phased gravitational attraction allows our
sailor with an expertly shaved chest and thick, full beard. He told me his name brains a brief opportunity to re-energize and re-align; a reboot if you will. This
was Michael as he raced to slip back into his trousers and repeated his name as may explain our predilection for the dupe phenomenon, you know, the cliché
he hastily searched for his socks and shoes. While he wasn’t much of a conversa- behavior of resolving to make significant changes in the coming year and inevita-
tionalist I do remember being locked together in an enamoring smile just before bly falling short. I suspect many of us would find greater success in keeping New
he dashed out the door. My last words to him were… “Now that’s the way to start Year’s resolutions if they weren’t engineered under the influence of our favorite
A New
DecADe …
New OppOrtuNities
“ I suspect many of us would find greater
success in keeping New Year’s resolutions
if they weren’t engineered under the
influence of our favorite libation.”
the new year.” libation. We know from science that alcohol excites the braggadocio center of the
Well naturally my first New Year’s resolution was to find Michael and, oh I don’t’ brain and, well, you know where that leads. Fortunately, for those of us who are
know; maybe ask him his last name and find out how well his chest hair grew halfway there, experience teaches us to steer clear of promises made at midnight,
back. But that was not to be. It was a big Marine Corps base and the Navy was Jewish mothers who will likely guilt us into anything, and of course, any Glenn
scattered all over it. Elmo Zumwalt topped the Admiralty and lucky for me, but to Beck appearance without a mute button.
the chagrin of the Marines, only sailors could grow beards. I thought that would But just because we don’t make official New Year’s resolutions doesn’t preclude
make finding Michael easier but alas, after spending weeks chasing every beard us from taking advantage of that cerebral reboot we so richly deserve each
I saw he passed into memory, replaced by a boyish redheaded Marine who had a January. This year I will try to be more tolerant of Barack Obama as he follows in
thing for Valentines. his predecessors footsteps exercising his persona as the most powerful man on
Are you sensing a theme here? Most holidays have their dates chiseled in stone earth. I will try to understand that the $12 billion we are spending each month
so as dating targets they are easy to hit. And most Sailors and Marines like to on the Middle East ‘crisis’ will eventually rid the world of terrorists and we will still
imbibe on the holidays which make them targets, also easy to hit. Trust me when I have enough money to ensure food, jobs and quality healthcare opportunities
say though, that in those days, holiday or not, if you wanted to get laid on a Marine for every American. As for the economy, I will look more closely at what I buy and
Corps base you had to buy lots of beer. Okay so Freud might have analyzed this try to purchase at least three things each week that are not made in China but
more deeply but suffice it to say that holidays can be a sailor’s best friend. rather right here at home.
I think of New Year’s as rather like do-overs, a chance to repair a bad disk sec- If you ever participated in telephone booth stuffing or remember when the
tor and record something more evocative, a chance to re-establish broken links Hokey Pokey was the latest party craze you might be halfway there too.
on the old bike chain and ride in a new direction. To say that we learn from our
mistakes isn’t enough. Somehow the fresh start of a new year makes it easier to
feedback? halfwaythere@ragemonthly.com or blog@ragemonthly.com
January 2010 | RAGE monthly 23
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