{"id":4285,"date":"2010-01-02T21:29:12","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T02:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=4285"},"modified":"2010-01-02T21:48:42","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T02:48:42","slug":"new-years-eve-minus-ten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/4285","title":{"rendered":"New Year’s Eve Minus Ten"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’m dallying around the web and I come across This SLOG Post<\/a> asking what the various Stranger writers were doing ten years ago, New Year’s Eve. \u00a0 Yes, yes…ten years is a long time. \u00a0 I suppose. \u00a0 And what was I doing? \u00a0 Well lessee… \u00a0 Ten years ago was the…ah…Millennium<\/em>! \u00a0 Yes. \u00a0 And I decided to celebrate it…alone as I usually am on the holidays…at my childhood vacation spot, Ocean City, New Jersey. \u00a0 I figured it would be fun, and not rowdy since OC is a dry city. \u00a0 That’s “dry” as in, no alcohol. \u00a0 You can’t buy it, you can’t be served it, you can’t drink it in public. \u00a0 You can drink all the booze you can truck in to your hotel room from just across the city line where a convenient liquor store is conveniently located. \u00a0 But otherwise, you go without. \u00a0 Keeps the orangely tanned Jersey shore riffraff away. \u00a0 No beer cans everywhere, no broken bottles, no smell of urine in the parking lot, no blood on the sidewalks. \u00a0 I figured I’d celebrate there.<\/p>\n

I got a bonus. \u00a0 OC put on a really magnificent fireworks display at the stroke of midnight, that even Atlantic City across the harbor couldn’t touch. \u00a0 Because they didn’t even bother. \u00a0 No sense giving people a reason to leave the casinos.<\/p>\n

I had a great time. \u00a0 I was able to stay at a hotel I could only dream about staying in when I was a kid…the Port ‘O Call, which is the only high rise hotel right on the boardwalk in OC. \u00a0 Most of the boardwalk treats were open that night, and I had lots of fun. \u00a0 Then came the magic hour when the calendar rolled from 1900s to 2000 and the fireworks lit the sky and I was on the beach taking it all in and marveling how much my life had changed since I was the geeky little kid who used to love playing by the shore and on the boardwalk there.<\/p>\n

I saw a movement behind me and I turned to look. \u00a0 Two young guys turned towards each other, and while the crowd around them was looking up at the fireworks, embraced and gave each other a loving kiss.<\/p>\n

I was dumbfounded. \u00a0 Then delighted. \u00a0 Yes, thinks I, progress is being made. \u00a0 I was happy for them. \u00a0 Maybe when this new decade is over, I thought to myself, the next will find me in the embrace of my own soulmate. \u00a0 And at the stroke of midnight we’ll embrace and give each other a kiss just like those two did. \u00a0 That can’t be too much to hope for. \u00a0 Could it?<\/p>\n

It was.<\/p>\n

But don’t ask yourself if there could be anything worse the next decade could tell you then that you’ll still be single and lonely and ten years older on top of that, because there is. \u00a0 You could find out that the friends you trusted would help you if they could, think that you’re wasting your time pining for a boyfriend because you are just not boyfriend material. \u00a0 People who look like that want people who look like that…<\/em> They will look you in the face and tell you that your only hope is to find a trick for the night and get used to having an empty bed the next morning…and they’ll think they’re being kind to you by telling you this.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, I really didn’t need to know that. \u00a0 Not that I would believe it, but that they would tell me that. \u00a0 \u00a0 Strangers can bash you…they can take your life away from you…but only friends and family can chew your heart up and spit it back out. \u00a0 That is what the last decade taught me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m dallying around the web and I come across This SLOG Post asking what the various Stranger writers were doing ten years ago, New Year’s Eve. \u00a0 Yes, yes…ten years is a long time. \u00a0 I suppose. \u00a0 And what was I doing? \u00a0 Well lessee… \u00a0 Ten years ago was the…ah…Millennium! \u00a0 Yes. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[77],"class_list":["post-4285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-the-dumpsville-chronicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}