Wild Revelry Is So last Year

If all goes according to plan, the shiny ball will drop at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Makati Countdown to 2008, to the tooting of horns and the wild screams of the jubilant throng. As usual I’ll be there.

By “there” I mean sitting on my couch in front of the television set, wondering how long can they keep this gig going and thanking my lucky stars that I am miles clear of the blast zone, enjoying another party-free New Year’s Eve.

As Jan. 1 ripples across the country, from Manila to Davao, the masses will be singing “Auld Lang Syne” in full-throated chorus, fireworks will burst over many cities (except at my hometown Davao City), and revelers everywhere will experience a mindless surge of optimism as awful old 2007 teeters off the stage and 2008 — the new, improved model — steps forward to a burst of applause.

I will probably crack open a cold Coke Light, reflect on the many squandered opportunities of the past 12 months and then shuffle off to bed about an hour later than usual. Fabulous 2008 can get under way fine without me.

When I first moved to Makati nearly several months ago, it was different. My friends and I made the New Year’s Eve rounds, made a little noise and crawled back home in the early morning hours with the sense of a job well done. The hangovers were stupendous, but, like combat veterans, we wore them as badges of honor.

All across the city there was a definite sense of esprit de corps. We felt it while rolling underneath The Fort, just about the time that the big outdoor party on street level was breaking up. In wobbly groups of four or five the die-hards who had been standing for 12 hours and drinking for 8 moved zombielike toward the open doors of the party scene.

They presented an alarming sight. Looking like the remnants of a defeated army they propped one another up, rattled their noisemakers feebly on battered cardboard horns and turned disturbing shades of pale as the marathon of self-abuse caught up with them.

As the troop train rattled on, a dim thought would penetrate my cortex: “What they look like to me, I look like to them.” New Year’s resolution No. 1: Never do this again.
Time’s magic healing properties would negate this resolution, along with all the others. When late December rolled around, the invitations would arrive, we would accept, and the infernal cycle would resume.

The Guardian of London recently asked readers to submit their worst New Year’s Eve experiences. Their stories serve as a stark reminder of the misery that enforced jollity can bring.
One writer recalled the New Year’s Eve on which he went to relieve himself against some bushes bordering an expensive home in Sydney, Australia. Spying a large swimming pool on the grounds, he stripped down to his boxer shorts, leapt the hedge and took a dive. The home belonged to the prime minister, and a party was in progress, monitored closely by burly security men. After spending the night in jail, our hero woke up with a pounding head and nothing to wear on his three-hour walk home but a paper jumpsuit issued by the authorities.

The premise behind celebrating the New Year falters as the years go by. In your 20s, a turning calendar page brings excitement. The future looks bright, probably because there’s a lot of it left. As the decades pass, the years seem more menacing. Fleeter. And strange too. Think of it: 2008. In my youth dates like that turned up only in science-fiction novels. In 2008 there would be colonies on Mars and everyone would communicate through mental telepathy. It was not so much an actual date as a signpost indicating the distant future.

And now it’s here. This is disturbing especially to those of born in mid-century, good thing I fall short to that. It is not an occasion to cheer. One examines it thoughtfully, as Hamlet does Yorick’s skull. Preferably without having drunk four beers, two margaritas, a sidecar and a half-bottle of Spanish sparkling wine.

That’s another thing. The hangovers only get worse. Kingsley Amis once differentiated between the physical hangover (the hangover of youth) and the metaphysical hangover (the hangover of middle age and beyond). The second is far worse, Mr. Amis wrote, an “ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future.” That’s the smiling face of the new year for the heedless partygoer of a certain age.

So. As 2007 draws to a close, invitations arrive. Like a summons to jury duty, I regard them with dread. And then I regret. Others will have to carry the torch of joy forward into the new year, illuminating the future for those with the strength to face it.

Bless them. I will be there, in spirit, with the hardy souls who sign up for the annual Sunday Midnight Run, a four-mile race around Makati City. I will dine, in absentia, with the mild ones who pay PhP5,000 for New Year’s Eve at Cibo (“three-course dinner with choice of entree”) in Greenbelt. But physically, as the midnight hour strikes, I will be at home.

With luck, the evening should go something like this:

7 p.m. Eat dinner.
7:30 p.m. Wash dishes.
8 p.m. Look for reruns of midnight madness in Sydney, Paris and London.
9 p.m. Tune in to Makati Countdown to 2008 coverage, deviating now and then to see if ABS-CBN is doing a Top 100 countdown of the year’s hottest celebrity moments.
11 p.m. Struggle against growing torpor.
Midnight Watch ball drop. Sigh.
12:10 a.m. Retire.

I do have my New Year’s resolution ready to go however: No party in 2008.