Happy New Year!
Back at the hotel, I pocketed a couple of tiny bottles of rum before heading into the hallway “to smoke.” I took my trip journal with me to write poetry, and plopped myself down on a landing in a stairway of the ritzy London hotel.
These were not my normal drinking circumstances.
Two tiny bottles weren’t going to last long, and I was completely alone, though I could feel New Year’s Eve in the air, even in the stairwell. Doors opened and closed, people occasionally bounding past me in the stairwell yelling “Happy New Year!” in the most adorable accents ever.
The writing in my journal was despondent. I had one tiny bottle left to last me the rest of the night, so I snuck back into the hotel room, leaving my journal on a table. It was dark; everyone was trying to sleep. I didn’t know if it was safe to take another bottle so I quietly grabbed another pack of cigarettes, and went back to my spot in the stairwell.
A guy leapt over me with a smile yelling “Happy New Year!”
American, I thought. “Happy New Year,” I replied somberly.
The guy leapt back up the stairs to where I sat. “Are you American?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You should come to our party!” he said. “All the Americans are partying on the fourth floor!”
“A party?”
“A party! It’s NEW YEAR’S EVE!” He started running down the stairs again. “I’ve gotta get some ice,” he yelled as he disappeared.
He left me there.
Even after two beers and two mini-bottles, I was not walking into any party alone.
But when the same guy bounded past again with two buckets full of ice he said, “Are you still here? C’mon! We’re on the fourth floor!”
“Okay,” I said – and I followed him.
Within two minutes, I was in a hotel room with a hundred of my new closest friends, and enough free alcohol to feed all the people in London.
Finally. I could drink the way I wanted to drink!
So I drank and drank and drank and somewhere in the middle of my holiday blackout, I started making drunken phone calls to Larry.
Larry was playing with his band at Paul’s Place for New Year’s Eve, so I called the bar. “Happy New Year!” I screamed into the phone. “I’m calling from London! Can I talk to Larry?”
Since it was earlier in Pennsylvania than it was in London, the band hadn’t even started playing yet. Larry got on the phone; I drunkenly screamed “Happy New Year!” at him.
The night is a blur, except for endless phone calls made from a stranger’s hotel room. In 1987 – or 1988, as it was in London – long-distance charges were astronomical, and even more expensive when using a hotel phone.
I did not pay for these phone calls. As the night progressed, Larry kept hanging up on me, so I kept calling back. I called maybe forty times.
After the sunrise, I wandered into my family’s hotel room. They were awake, showered, and wondering where I’d been.
Obviously I was wasted and hadn’t slept one minute. But I insisted on calling Larry again.
“I’ll pay for it!” I slurred. “I just need to tell him Happy New Year!”
As if.
“We’ve got to go,” Mom said. “Get your suitcase.”
“I have to call him!” I demanded. “Just give me five minutes!”
My parents were not happy to wait.
And five minutes cost me $50.
Then I slung my purple duffel over my shoulder and followed my family to the airport.