Two Thousand and One
This is always a weird week, bookended by Christmas and New Year’s. Christmas is a children’s holiday, and New Year’s Eve is an adult holiday; Christmas evokes the past, and New Year’s Eve evokes the future. The world stops, relaxes, has fun. And in the middle of it all, I have my birthday. It’s such a fun week, and I’m always sad to see it end.
December 31 is such a strange day. It means the year has been exhausted, drained. We’ve run smack against a wall and there’s nowhere else to go except through that door into another empty cavernous hall.
Every year on December 31 I sit down with my journal and summarize the year that’s ending. I’ve been doing this since long before I started this blog, but I may as well move my tradition online.
But first, you know what’s weird, as far as years go? We used to spend most of our lives moving towards something. For the longest time, everything was leading up to a climax, the millennial drumbeat bringing us closer and closer to The Year 2000. Throughout the 1990s, every New Year’s Eve brought us a step closer to that big, scary, unfamiliar, apocalyptic year. Can you believe it’s 1997? Oh my god, it’s 1998! Holy shit, it’s actually 1999! And then — BOOM! 2000.
And yet now — now it’s the end of 2001, and we’re about to ring in 2002. That millennial New Year’s Eve happened two years ago. Who could ever imagine we’d live in a world in which 2000 was in the past? Who could imagine living on other side? But we’ve been doing it for the past two years. “The Year 2000” is no longer something approaching ominously; we’ve passed it, and from now on, with every year that passes, we will see it receding further and further in our rear-view mirror. We can now measure our New Year’s Eves in the distance we have travelled from 2000. Two years ago? I shake my head in disbelief.
So. 2001. Fleeting impressions.
The biggest addition to my life this year has been my blog. This website. I feel like it’s been around forever, but it hasn’t even been a year yet. I started it on January 16, 2001. I began it on a whim, but it’s become a huge chunk of my life, even taking it over at times. Because of it, I’ve met some great people, I’ve gained new perspectives on things, I’ve further honed my writing skills. But more on all that in a couple of weeks, when I hit the one-year mark.
Early winter 2001: rediscovering sex and dating. Between August 15 and December 31, 2000, I’d had no sex at all. Not even a kiss. Four and a half months of absolute chastity. I don’t know why; I just hadn’t wanted to. I’d been too excited about living so close to Manhattan, and it seemed more enriching to enjoy that new kind of life. I finally broke the drought on New Year’s Eve last year; I was at the Den in central New Jersey with my friend Mack and a bunch of other people. I met a guy there, and sometime around 1 in the morning, we kissed deeply and he groped me. My drought was over. Happy 2001.
Around that time, I finally made use of PlanetOut and other personals websites and began going on some dates.
Much of the rest of the winter is a blur. Watching George W. Bush getting sworn in on TV on a rainy Saturday. I didn’t like my apartment. I couldn’t sleep at night because my upstairs neighbors were noisy and there was no sound insulation in the building. But in March, my office mom let me housesit for her for several days, and then I housesat for my parents for a week. When I returned to my apartment after two weeks, in early April, I bought a fan to drown out the noise and I started using a new pillow. From then on, I slept great.
The weather turned warm. I spent a glorious, beautiful day in Central Park in April, and I knew spring had arrived.
I grew a goatee. I had it for five months.
Summer 2001. It seemed to go on forever. It was warm. Fun. Carefree. Images of summer: I went to Fire Island for the first time. I went to my first New York City Gay Pride Parade, and I marched in it. My Twentysomething group was important to me. I had a core group of people with whom I hung out there, especially my British friend Wales, whom I met in June. Ringer t-shirts were everywhere. The ringer tee seemed to be the Official Gay T-Shirt of Summer 2001. I wore mine to death, all three of them. I had my ten-year high school reunion in June, and then I had a reunion in West Virginia with my close college friends.
In July I rediscovered Broadway theater. I saw five shows that month (at cheap prices), and my Playbill collection began to grow again.
In August, I met Wes, and we hit it off.
The summer went on for a long time. A long, long time. And then it ended.
September 11, 2001.
I was trapped in Manhattan that day. Toured it with a stranger. Later that day I learned that my college friend Doug had probably died in the World Trade Center. The world went nuts. In the days and weeks to come, I nearly went nuts myself — several times. When we finally retaliated, I watched the words stream by on the zipper in Times Square, having just come out from seeing “Hedda Gabler” on Broadway. Fall 2001 word association: airplanes. Skyscrapers. TV news. Bomb threats. Anthrax. Envelopes. News articles on how Halloween will be different this year. News articles on how Thanksgiving will be different this year. News articles on how Christmas will be different this year.
Fall 2001. Began my new job, working as a lawyer. Met Piano Man. That fizzled. Went to Richmond, Virginia, to attend Doug’s memorial service and see my college friends again. Saw them again at a wedding in D.C. in November.
I found a new apartment! At the end of October I finally moved out of my old crappy home and into my new place. Quieter, nicer place, nicer street, cheaper rent, cable TV. I started to feel like a real person again.
The last two months of this year: living in my new place. I read The Power Broker. I bought Kirk’s book. I discovered “Buffy.” I saw “The Lord of the Rings.” I got a bad cold. I turned 28.
And so, here it is. The end of the year. Smack against a wall. Nowhere else to go.
I’ve had no dramatic milestones in my personal development this year. No big coming-out stories. No major relationships. No big firsts like that. No watersheds. Watershed years were 1992 and 1998. This year, my progress has been more external: I moved into an apartment I like, I settled into a stable job.
I’ve dated a few guys this year. Had memorable sexual experiences. Met some good people. It wasn’t an earthshaking year personally, at least not in retrospect. This year was earthshaking literally.
But you know what’s funny? I’ve just said that nothing earthshaking happened to me this year. And yet I’ve chronicled most of my life this year, day after day, and there have been plenty of things that seemed big at the time. Hundreds, maybe thousands of small moments.
Sometimes life seems like a blur. You shouldn’t let that happen. And you don’t need to.
Just chronicle your life day by day. If you chronicle 365 of those days, you’ve got a year. And then you can look back and take stock of that year.
It’s important to keep track of those years. Because the span of a human life consists of a bunch of those years. And just one of those years consists of a whole slew of days, marching one after the other. And just one of those days consists of a whole bunch of moments. And it’s those moments — happy, sad, big, small, annoying, funny, scary, frustrating, upsetting, exciting — that make us human. Chronicling the moments means you chronicle the days means you chronicle the years means you chronicle a life.
Yesterday I saw three movies: “In the Bedroom,” “The Others,” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There.” It was freezing out. Below freezing, even. After I saw the last movie, I went to McDonald’s. Probably shouldn’t have done that. I had a stomachache aftewards. Then I went to Barracuda. It was packed. There were lots of hot guys there, but I couldn’t seem to talk to anyone. I never do. But it was nice to be in the crowd anyway.
Tonight I’m going to ring in 2002 at a party in SoHo. I was invited by one of my readers — the guy who lent me the “Buffy” tape of the episode where her mom dies. (Great episode.) I’d actually met him a couple of months ago, and we hung out again on Friday night. We had a nice time tooling around Manhattan together, and I got the tape. Tonight I’ll be at that party. Mike will probably be there, too.
Moments, moments, moments. A year of moments. Moments go on… life continues…
See you next year.
—–