A Fresher Start

Hundreds packed the dance floor. White v-necks glowed and sweaty foreheads glimmered underneath the black light and through the haze of perspiration and body heat, a haze in which everyone moved together like a single blur as the stereos pumped out the pulsing bass of techno remixes to mainstream songs. They bounced up and down, rocked side to side, and thrust forward and back. I slumped over the railing and watched from the second floor, alternating my attention between tracking any piece of eye candy and completely spacing out. Someone took an opening on the rail next to me, and I recognized him again, but not soon enough to dodge him cupping his hands over my ear and yelling into it. “Com’n, just give me one kiss!”

I winced. Even my ear could smell the alcohol in his breath. I backed away a step, dragging my arms along the railing, and I turned my head at him. “I said no earlier and the answer’s not going to change. So, no.” I forced a crooked smile because I didn’t wanna seem too bitchy.

“Just one!”

“No.”

“You haven’t found anyone to kiss at midnight yet, and you got like thirty minutes left. You think you’ll find your New Years kiss at this rate?”

“No.”

“Well, if you wanna, I’ll still be up here in thirty minutes.”

“Thanks Shaun.”

I decided I wanted some fresh air, so I squeezed, ducked, and pushed my way down the stairs, through the bar, and outside onto the patio. But I was stupid to think I could get fresh air outside here. Cigarette smoke invaded my lungs as soon as I stepped out the door. It wasn’t as loud out here, but it was cold, just a little, and still crowded. I didn’t realize that the back of my shirt was soaked with sweat until I felt it cooling my skin, chilling my back while the cigarette smoke warmed my front and my sides.

I found Walden congregating in a circle with his teammates. I joined them for about five minutes, and then they all left except for Walden to go dance on the main floor. We managed to pull aside a few chairs by the fence and sat on their edges. I pulled out my cell phone to glance at the time and put it away again. 11:40.

“Shaun’s bugging me about reenacting two thirds of the Halloween threesome,” I told him.

We laughed it off and continued a more casual conversation.

“So how was your Christmas trip back up to NorCal?” Walden asked me.

Not bad. There was, however, that one thing that sorta just defined my entire NorCal visit, but I danced around the subject first using the conventional, “It was fine,” “Got to spend time with my family,” “Got some money,” “Did some shopping and eating,” “The usual.” But Walden knew there was more to my one-week visit back up North, so I finally told him all about it: My holiday hook-up.

“Five days before Christmas, it started like any other regular hook-up, the only immediate striking difference being that he, Jerick, was by far the cutest. Dark skin Filipino? Check. Clean face? Check. Height-weight proportionate? Check. And a sleeve tattoo—bonus points times a hundred. After the sex was over, we just sat there on my bed in the dark, talking about dancing. And then, well, I asked him if he was hungry. He was, so I had him take us to my favorite Vietnamese banh mi sandwich shop in San Jose. Since he didn’t live too far away, he took me back to his place afterward, and we cuddled on his bed and watched This Christmas, which was a really terrible movie. It was basically a two-hour long Chris Brown music video, but what mattered was the cuddling. And the kissing. And just being in his arms. And then we fucked again. Later we went back to my place, where he spent the night. And it went on like that for the next few days, culminating on Christmas Eve.

“San Jose has this ‘Christmas in the Park’ festival downtown every December. They close off a few streets for the entire month, throw in some carnival rides and a bunch of Christmas trees made by community organizations, and boom, it’s a romantic stroll through the park. Jerick and I went. And well, it was fun. We went on that one ride that swings you back and forth until it gains enough momentum to overshoot and you end up swinging upside down, or just getting suspended in the air for a while with the concrete some several stories directly below the top of your head. Dude, that ride is fucking a lot scarier than it looks. Jerick and I held each other’s hands, but at one point I think I squeezed too tight and hurt him a little.

“After the ride, we must’ve been in some sort of awe-struck daze. We were walking along the park, being openly flirty, openly touchy, openly affectionate with each other. He’d grab my hand and I’d let him. He’d stand up on his toes to kiss me and I’d meet his lips with mine. Walden, this is shit I never do. Even when I was with Trung, even after we were going strong for more than a year, I’d freak out and pull away if he ever tried to grab my hand while we were out in public. He’d persist and I’d eventually let him loosely latch onto my elbow, but kissing in public never happened. I never allowed it. Jerick brought out a side of me that I’d been trying to shut away for the last five years of my life. And it felt good. That night at Christmas in the Park with Jerick, it was a high point for me.

“And that night was the last time I’ve seen him. I thought we were going to hang out for a little bit on Christmas Eve, but then he decided on making an impromptu visit back up to Sacramento to visit his parents. That was fine. We texted a little bit. He wasn’t responsive. We didn’t see each other on Christmas, which was expected I guess, but the day after, my last day in San Jose, he was back in San Jose. I texted him to see if he could hang out, but he said he was still with family, but at that point, I sensed that it was just an excuse. Since I’ve been back in SoCal, we’ve had like one really brief text message exchange. And that was it.”

I paused to think carefully about my next few words. I didn’t want this story to seem like a parable about the player who finally got played. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe whatever ex drama he was having got settled. Or well, I was going back to UCI, and I was going to be there a long time while he’d still be up in NorCal. Maybe reality hit him. The truth was, well, it was just a hook up. A hook-up gone horribly wrong or horribly right. A holiday fling. Shit. I don’t know.” The truth was, well, I got attached. And now I had to sever myself if I wanted to move on.

It was 11:50. Walden offered me a few comforting words, but I got distracted and spotted in the corner Jeremy, a guy that Trung had been low key dating for the last month (low key, as in Trung didn’t approve my usage of the word “dating” to describe his relation to Jeremy because according to some certain background information that Trung collected by means of the Internet, Jeremy happened to have a boyfriend some several thousands of miles away, one that he never mentioned and one that Trung never wanted to bring up). Right behind Jeremy I saw another guy, who wore a thin unzipped jacket with no shirt underneath, and whose arm was snaked over Jeremy’s chest and under his shoulders. I excused myself from my conversation with Walden and rushed inside to find Trung.

Normally I would expect to find him dancing in a circle of his friends, or being the center of attention with his ghetto drunk dancing, dropping it to the floor like he owned the whole club. But instead, I found Trung sitting next to the entrance to the hip hop room, on the couch in the corner on the second floor, alone and sober, both hands holding his phone under his face and his thumbs twiddling away on the touch-screen buttons. I sat beside him and adjusted myself until our shoulders rested against each other’s. Trung didn’t break his intense focus on his phone, so I pulled out mine and mimicked him. We didn’t need to say anything to each other to understand where we each stood emotionally.

I browsed statuses on Facebook and read entries on Tumblr. Nothing but New Years resolutions, thank you’s for a great 2010, fuck you’s to a terrible one, and handles of vodka or rum and several colorful varieties of UV crowded together on a counter top, looking like a miniature metropolitan city—photos which foreshadowed a night that was only just beginning. I noticed the time and turned to talk into Trung’s ear.

“It’s 11:57. Do you wanna go into the hip hop room and dance a little?” He nodded.

The hip hop room on the second floor was a little less crowded than the main dance floor on the first floor; I at least had enough space to lift my elbows, but it was still just as hot and as loud as downstairs. Trung and I faced each other as we danced, leaving enough room between each other in hopes that someone cute would perhaps come over and ask one of us to dance up behind him (I usually hoped for this more than Trung did). I only began getting into the music however when a sudden storm of cheers and applause drowned it out. I looked up at the TV monitors in the corner and saw that a countdown ticked sixteen, fifteen, fourteen... Once it hit ten, everyone started shouting out the numbers as they ticked closer to zero.

Trung and I glanced at each other. We shrugged, and halfheartedly, nearly inaudibly among the screams around us, we mouthed along to the last few seconds of 2010: Four, three, two, one...

One single, thunderous “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” erupted throughout the entire club. Strobe lights flashed. Confetti fell. And fake smoke poured into the room. People clapped. People kissed. People hugged. And then they hugged some others. But Trung and I found ourselves locked in our hug as people around us moved from person to person, taking turns giving each other hugs or kisses on the cheek. Eventually the black light replaced the strobe light again. The last piece of confetti fell to the ground, and the fake smoke faded away at our feet. Most celebrants now resumed their dancing. But Trung and I were still hugging, my arms wrapped over his shoulders, the side of my head resting in his hair; his arms around my back, and the side of his face on my chest.

“Happy New Year, Trung.”

“Happy New Year, Brian.”