The First Holiday Party
My first Christmas with coworkers felt a lot like being a teenager.
I never thought it would happen to me, but my body has gotten used to getting up early, so I awake after only three hours of sleep with sharp pains in my stomach signaling that I am definitely not drunk anymore. I walk down my hallway, feet cold on ragged wooden floorboards in a house I pay for even though it doesn’t feel like home. Half empty cups of grocery store red wine scattered on the coffee table, I glide past them on my way to the bathroom. Looking in the mirror I notice my glasses in a way I usually don’t. They are thick and round and black, purposely oversized like I have something to prove.
I return to my bedroom but I won’t be able to fall back asleep, I realize, once I check my phone and see a text message from a coworker I have an old-fashioned crush on. It is the kind of distant, irrational, all-encompassing crush that I haven’t had since high school, the kind of crush that makes you diligently time each part of your day so you run into him in the hallway, the kind of crush that makes you remember every word he says to you and assign meaning behind each one as divine evidence of mutual feelings. I hesitate before responding because this is how one handles an old-fashioned crush.
The New England cold is raw in the early mornings before Christmas but I need a bagel, so I go out and buy two of them but eat only one, sitting in my car overlooking a body of water with a name I refuse to learn. Wearing a sweatshirt with my Long Island hometown painted on it and my December coat zipped on top, I feel my two hoods compete for space around my neck and hate it. My CD drive plays an album revered for its honest depiction of suburban teenagehood and I feel stupid for relating to something I am supposed to have outgrown.
When track four starts I begin to face the events of the night before, which are not difficult to recall since I only had three drinks, or maybe four, I should say, because I made the last one myself. The first two were made by the bartender at my office holiday party, but the third I made at my house, where I invited the other young employees to hang out for a few more hours after the party ended. When we got home, I sloshed cheap tequila into a sweet pink juice I wouldn’t drink if it weren’t spiked. My glass full, I watched my coworkers deliberately measure out their vodka with shot glasses, gently pouring only one shot per mixed drink, or maybe two, but that’s not really the point. My tolerance has dropped since I graduated from college and that makes me miss my friends and Beyoncé and a New York City pub filled with 19 year olds.
Even in college, I never blacked out, not even close, which is enough invincibility to convince me I am virtually immune to it. If my body were willing to let me forget, it would have happened the weekend after the 2016 presidential election, when I was filled with anger, a bottle of white wine, and something from 7-Eleven called a Straw-Ber-Rita. Trivial things felt deeply personal at that moment in the night and in history. Cruel accusations spilled from my mouth, my friends on the receiving end and alcohol fueling my misdirected frustration. Immediately after, the black and white tiles of the bathroom floor in their apartment on Fulton Street felt freezing cold underneath my hands as I lay wishing I would puke. They brought me cups of tepid water, and the next morning I texted them apologizing profusely for being so nasty to them. I wish I were the kind of girl who blacked out.
Reflecting clearly on my night, I can witness myself from the outside as I stumble through the first holiday office (after) party of my adult life. With my inhibitions lowered and seeking satisfaction, I act so earnestly I become vulnerable. I am the loudest in the room and I talk emphatically and with my hands and my sense of humor is drier than the mouths of those who have stepped outside to smoke. All the while I send drunken texts to my college friends reminding them but mostly myself that they are my soulmates.
I know we are allowed to blame our party demeanors on alcohol but I think deep down we all know that drinking lets us avoid accountability for the things we genuinely want to express. All night, each drink reveals who I really am, and the more I act like myself, the more disconnected I feel from the people around me. I am seeking positive reinforcement from anything I say or do but all that I am feels like too much for everyone in the room to take in. More than anything, I want to be wanted.
I see my desire to be wanted radiating from my actions all night and ultimately leading me back to that old-fashioned crush, who is the default object of my affection simply because he is straight, and a man, and not ugly, and he doesn’t say much, but usually he laughs at my jokes, even the one I made about Schindler’s List, which I tell myself means something very, very significant. I fall into him in a way that doesn’t feel like a choice, at least not a choice I want to put my name on. When I tell my friends in New York about him, I insist that even if I weren’t trying to sleep with him, he is the most down to earth of all the new people I have met at my first job after college. Regardless of my pining, he is my favorite coworker, I claim. I am full of shit.
He couldn’t make it to the holiday party because he had tickets to a Celtics game but mostly because this is how old-fashioned crushes go. Back at my house, I decide we should call him. In a voicemail I insist that he come hang out with us now that the game must be over. My phone is on speaker and I hold it up as I talk to make it clear that I am calling on behalf of the group, not just myself. These details are crucial in an old-fashioned crush. My coworkers do not say anything. I repeat my address I am not sure how many times. Though I didn’t make this decision consciously I wonder if I had some internal hope that bringing this group closer to my bedroom would bring him into it.
That plan does not work of course and his text message response I wake up to in the morning is the perfect amount of polite and appropriate, flattered but humble, innocent and unassuming. I respond with something I think is clever and charming but not too forward, craving from him the fulfilling reaction I didn’t receive from anyone the night before.
I finish my bagel, throw out the second one, drink a Gatorade or two. A stiff white takeout napkin dries my welling tears, that damn album playing on its third loop, and I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet. I plan to nap until the late afternoon in an attempt to sleep through the rest of this emotional hangover, then clean up the mess left behind last night. Instead I spend the rest of the day lying in bed but never able to fall back asleep, and I do not clean anything up until the next afternoon, when I wake up to an email that arrives earlier than expected. It is an acceptance letter from a graduate school in New York. A department chair welcomes me personally, offers tuition remission and a generous stipend, looks forward to potentially working with me. More than anything, I am struck by the inimitable feeling of being wanted.
