A SHORT HISTORY OF HAPPY NEW YEARS (AND NOT SO HAPPY ENDINGS)

By

Ben Tanzer

1983
I get Jenny from my 10th grade Physics class drunk at a New Year’s Eve party and the only bed we can find is occupied. I suggest we share it with the current occupants which Jenny agrees to with minimal prodding. After seeing me without my pants on however, Jenny asks the other couple if she can join them instead. I watch from across the room.

1987
Lana my unrequited high school crush calls out of the blue and says I really, really need to come to her New Year’s party. I have already agreed to go on a family trip to Boca though and so instead of sleeping with her I watch Nuts with my parents and think about sleeping with her. Later when I finally do get the chance to sleep with her all I can picture is Barbra Streisand running down the street in a hospital gown.

1989
I see Maggie, an old New Year’s fling of mine, for the first time in a number of years. My night with her still remains the highlight of my brief and generally solo sexual history. I ask her how she feels about getting together again for old time’s sake and she tells me that it was following our last New Year’s together that she realized she preferred women to men.

1992
I am at a New Year’s Eve wedding and I am by myself. Pat the Maid of Honor is smoking hot and can’t take her eyes off of me. This is unusual. We make some small talk and she invites me up to her room. This is also unusual. When we get there she goes Crying Game on me. Not so unusual, but not so bad either.

1996
My then wife Farah arranges a New Year’s threesome for us at a party we’re hosting and I mistakenly believe the experience will be enhanced by my biting the worm at the bottom of a cheap bottle of Tequila someone has brought to the festivities. I end up writhing on the bathroom floor in a pile of my own excrement and Farah decides to take up swinging.

1998
Feeling lonely during a brief separation from my second wife Jordan, I hire a masseuse named Tia that I read about in the PennySaver to come over and keep me company. Following a minor misunderstanding over our differing definitions of what a “happy ending” entails, I spend the rest of the night, and ultimately much of the next year, with Jim who I meet in lock-up.

2000
In preparation for the new millennium festivities, I have planned with my new girlfriend Penny to take triple my usual dose of Viagra. Penny runs off with a fireman named Joe after I get stuck trying to wedge myself into the revolving door in the lobby and they have to call for the jaws-of-life.

2003
My mail order bride Josie arrives in time for New Year’s. After her younger brother Josef and his friends come over and kick my ass, I am forced watch my new wife make love to her real husband Karl in the kitchen, dining room, bathroom, and closet. They also take my blender.

2006
My son, who camps out in our room every night, vows to stay up all night watching the Disney Channel New Year’s Eve celebration. My third “official” wife Debbie and I vow to let him fall asleep on the couch so we can reclaim our room for at least three minutes of passionate love making. They are both asleep by 9:30pm and I ring in 2007 with Hanna Montana.