How to Enter 2024

The time has come to leave things behind

How do you celebrate the new year?

I’ve heard that it can be a difficult holiday for people. There’s this imagined New Years Eve party, where everyone is wearing sequins and tulle (and who can say what has happened to the coats of all these people, because it’s absolutely cold outside, and those dresses and silky shirts are absolutely not weather-appropriate), and there are little foods to eat on sticks (things with dates, figs, prosciutto, that kind of affair), and everyone has slick hair and infinite flutes filled with infinite champagne, and at midnight there’s a mystery about who everyone is going to kiss, but everyone does have a kiss, and I think there’s also a disco ball involved. I don’t know who came up with this New Years Eve party, but whereas I know you know what I’m talking about, someone with a lot of influence must have invented it. It’s an amazing shared mythology.

One year, my sister and I went to a venue to see a concert, which seemed like the kind of place for the mythical party — but really, it stank like old vomit (Why was it OLD!? Hadn’t they thought to clean up the vomit BEFORE the concert? Or — were there people whose vomit just came out smelling old already? Or does vomit get old really quickly?), and no one was dancing, and I lost track of my sister immediately. I got a Lyft at 11:50 p.m. so I wouldn’t have to wait for one later, when I was sure there’d be a surge. At midnight, I asked the Lyft driver if he wanted to kiss, and he acted…