January 1998: New Years Eve 1998

What follows describes the events of New Years 1998. Several of my college friends came to Boston for New Years. These were our adventures.

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Five of my friends from college came to Boston last week to celebrate New Year’s Eve. It was a story I’d heard every year when I went to Homecoming. “We’re going to come up to Boston and paint the town red!!” After years of speaking, a few of my fiscally challenged friends managed to scrape up (or charge up) the funds to get up here. I often wondered what it would be like to be in college again, I think I found out these past five days, much to my body’s chagrin.

Of course, my friends couldn’t make it easy on me by coming up on the same flight. No no no. Three of them, came in at 10:00am, the other two came in at 1:30pm. Picking up my early friends would mean me hopping on the subway, headed to the airport, getting them, bringing them back to my place, and immediately hopping on the train to get the next contingent. That prospect didn’t appeal to me too much, so I told Chris, EJ, and Christophe (he’s French, he can’t help it) to head to the airport bar. I planned on meeting them at noon, and then we’d walk over to pick up the other two. As I arrived at the airport, I realized my mistake. The three amigos had been sitting in the bar for almost 3 hours and were thoroughly loaded. I of course hadn’t touched a drop, my liver long since having rebelled at the notion of alcohol before noontime. There is nothing worse than being Mr. Sober in a room full of drunks. Call me Mr. Sober. It wouldn’t be the last time.

I managed to survive (and keep the boys from getting thrown out of the airport) until Luis and his girlfriend, Priscilla, arrived. They too were sober, so at least I wasn’t alone in Drunkland anymore.
They presented their own problems, though. They took a connecting flight from Greensboro NC through Pittsburgh. They had had only one half hour to make their connection, and their bags weren’t quite as fast as they were. So we were housebound until 7pm, when the airline delivered the bags to my apartment.

At this point we were getting antsy and were ready to roll, so we headed out to Whiskey’s for dinner and a few (many) drinks. Whisky’s is a pretty cool place, on Boylston Street across from the Prudential Center if you’re familiar with Boston. Given that is was a Tuesday night, there wasn’t really a lot going on. We decided to try another bar, The Pourhouse (the bar where U2 played their first American gig, by the way) for a little while more to see if any prospects (i.e. women) presented themselves. None did. It seemed like everyone was saving it for New Years, so we decided to as well. We hopped on the T and headed back to my apartment.

As luck would have it, my new roommate was headed out of town to Boca Raton for a wedding the exact days my friends were coming in, so sleeping arrangements weren’t that crowded. Priscilla and Luis took over his bedroom. Our living room has a large, L-shaped leather couch, so two of the guys slept on that. The last one got a little fold out futon that I had brought over from Rachel’s. So everyone was pretty cozy and ready to go out and explore the city on New Year’s Eve.


Wednesday afternoon was for sightseeing and shopping. It was a nice crisp day with some snow beginning to drift down later on. We wandered through Quincy Market, which is a large walk-through marketplace with probably a hundred or so shops. We all ended up taking advantage of the post-Christmas sales at Abercrombie and Fitch and the Gap. The Southerners stocked up on scarves, hats, etc. I got a great belt from the Gap for $10 (half price.)

We got back to the crib relatively early, around 4:00pm or so. We just lounged around, resting up for the First Night Festivities. I checked my email and took a nap. At around 7:00pm, we all started preparing ourselves for the long evening ahead. Showering, shaving, the usual hygiene items. My friend Jorge from work also came over, and by 8:30 we were ready to roll and headed out to the club.

My friend George from work used to bartend at several places throughout the city, so he knew some people who worked at the Marketplace Café in the above-mentioned Fanueil Hall. He was able to rent out the downstairs part of the club, called the Brewskeller, and about 200 of us joined in the fun. It was only $15 including chips, peanuts, and other bar food. For Boston on New Year’s Eve, believe me this is a good deal. I got my first two beers for free, as I sold the most tickets (I had around 30 friends there.)

We got in relatively early, and the place was still filling up as we arrived. Everyone got their first drinks and we laid claim to the only pool table in the establishment. My pool playing skills have deteriorated immensely since leaving school. I no longer have the ready access to a pool table that I did in college (we had one in our fraternity house.) So I only played a few games and let the guys with some skill (all my friends) take on the rest of the bar. As far as I know they never lost. Every time I looked at that table one of my friends was on it.

The first round of Jell-O shots sent me on the proper course for the evening. Of course that was about twenty minutes after we arrived. Soon all of our (Rachel and I) other friends started to trickle in. Many of them were friends of Rachel’s from work, and the rest were friends of mine from wherever. My brother was supposed to come, but he ended up bailing out. He missed a hell of an evening.

The night moved on, and to be honest my memories grow vaguer and vaguer. I’m sure that had something to do with heavy alcohol consumption. It usually does. But anyway I was very much not my usual self this evening. I was the social butterfly, moving around the bar and greeting all the people I knew, which was probably around 100 people. I kept and eye on Rachel (the natural social butterfly) and every once and while we’d look at each other and wink, just to let each other know we were around. As the night dragged on I made sure I kept an eye on the TV, as I surely didn’t want to tie one on this good and miss the big event. I remember looking up and seeing nine minutes until the New Year, so I continued my rounds and eventually tracked down Rachel so I could plant a big kiss on her when the time arrived. Lucky me, by the time I found her there was only ten seconds left. Just like me, waiting until the last minute to do everything. But we kissed and hugged each other and all was right with the world. We then moved around the bar and kissed and hugged pretty much everyone in sight. I didn’t kiss my NC friends (well Priscilla I did) but I did hug them and drunkenly thank them for coming up and sharing this with me. Luis bought a bottle of champagne and we all shared a toast to the New Year.

Well we sure as hell weren’t going to let the party end there. At midnight the DJ really started revving up the dance music, so everyone was moving. Even me, who never dances, was socially lubricated enough to get down and boogie with my lady.

A funny side note to the evening develops here. One of my friends on AOL, Becky, came to Boston to hang out with her friends, as she usually does. It turns out that she was in the very same bar I was, and neither of us knew it or recognized each other. I’ve seen a few pictures of her, but they aren’t very good quality, and the browser on her Mac is broken so she has no idea what I look like. We started chatting on line and it struck us. I started describing some of my drunker friends and she recognized a few, including one of Rachel’s good friends who decided to have a seat on the floor for a little while and couldn’t be talked out of it. And I remembered her group of friends dancing up a storm. The more I travel through life the more I realize that truth is almost always stranger than fiction. I’m sure Patty Duggins (True Stories from the Legal World) will vote with me on that one.

Luckily for all of the drunker citizens of Boston, the subway ran until 2:15am (it usually closes at 1) so we were able to stay out until around 1:30. Being in Fanueil Hall, we of course had to stop off and get a few grilled sausages from one of the many vendors who are smart enough to prepare fragrant, greasy food at 1:30am. It was while I was happily chomping my sandwich that I saw one of the few things that stuck in my mind that whole evening. I saw a kid (and I say kid because I doubt he was more than 20 or 21) walking dazedly with his friend, blood covering his face. And I don’t mean a few smears, I mean it looked like someone painted him with a brush. And I remember seeing it drip off his chin and nose and stain his shirt. Obviously he had just been in a fight, and he and his friend were trying to get away. No such luck. As they staggered off, around six or seven other drunks jumped them and started beating the crap out of both of them. Kicking, punching, you name it. I felt bad, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I had my friends to guide through the subway, and even as big as I am I’m not about to take on six people. I watched this go on for about a minute and marveled that all the police officers we had seen around earlier were no where to be found. But on that night, I’m sure they were busy.

That’s another thing I’ve never understood. Violent drunks. But that’s a topic to expound upon another day.

The adventure in Fanueil Hall was over, so it was time to move onto the train. We managed to stumble across the street and past city hall to catch the train at Government Center. Of course there were plenty of cops inside the subway station where it was warm, and they made their overbearing presence felt by yelling at all the drunks (i.e. 99.9% of the people in the station.) We were among those drunks. My friend Christophe almost got kicked out of the station for some reason or another, but I was able to generate a moment of clarity and promise the officer that I would keep him quite and get him on the train. I told him they were from out of town, etc, etc, and he relented.

The train ride home was another adventure in and of itself. Jorge, in his very drunken stupor, heard a few girls sitting next to us speaking in French. Being fluent in French and Spanish himself, he joined right in. Now I speak French too, and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. But I guess they could, because they chatted away with him. No Jorge, at some point in this conversation, came to the understanding that neither of these women was going to have sex with him this night. On this night, that statement would have been true for every woman on that train, hell, for every woman in the city. As this realization dawned on him, he turned to Christophe and attempted to whisper “they won’t sleep with me, they must be lesbians.” Except the whole train heard his “whisper” and promptly lost it. Needless to say the novelty of a French conversation with Jorge wore off at this point.

We finally got back to my place around 2:45am. I somehow managed to hang up my jacket and tidy myself up before going to bed. Rachel, on the other hand, flopped fully dressed onto my bed, right across the middle. I went about my business and came back, and she hadn’t moved. I asked her if she was going to change into her bedclothes, she mumbled something about her “just resting for a while” and then changing. So I straightened her out, threw a blanket on her, and climbed in next to her and went to sleep.

She ended up changing around 6am.

So in summary, everyone danced, kissed, shot pool, drank, did Jell-O shots, and pretty much did everything you can legally do in public without getting arrested. Or should I say, without getting caught.



1/1/98

“Why do you drink?
Why do you blow smoke?
Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?”

Hank Williams Jr. “Family Tradition”

A day of recovery, football, and Chinese food.

I remember stirring groggily at around 9am. My bladder was sending messages that couldn’t be ignored any longer. I swung myself up to a sitting position over the side of the bed, and when I stopped, the rest of the room kept moving. Being the experienced drinker that I am, I realized I was still drunk. Taking this into account, I tiptoed my way to the bathroom, where I took care of business and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. There are few times in life that we look worse than the day after a lengthy drinking session. The bags, the mussed hair, the general look of pain, all of them just didn’t add up to a pretty site. Given this, I went back to bed.

I rolled out of the sack around 10:30 and commenced a day noteworthy only in it’s lack of activity. We started watching football around 11 or so, and only life sustaining activities took place from there on out. All non-essential movement was eliminated. We moved only to go to the bathroom and get water. Eating at this point was not an option.

However, as is inevitable with a hangover, it passes, and the need for food sets in. And what is the best hangover food on the planet? Damn straight, it’s Chinese. There is nothing like shrimp fried rice to suck up that leftover alcoholic residue in your stomach. And it just so happens that there is a great little place around the corner from where I live, so we walked over, ordered approximately $60 of food for 7 people, and trekked back. This is remarkable because it is the only time that day I left the apartment.

Chris and EJ mixed themselves a few drinks later on, but at this point our bodies had been abused enough. We just planted our asses on the couch, watched football, read the newspaper, alternately dozed off on above-mentioned couch, and essentially wasted twenty-four hours of our lives.


1/2/98

After such a lazy day, we were all up and about relatively early. We cooked a great breakfast (pancakes with fresh-picked Canadian blueberries that my roommate had retrieved earlier in the year) and headed on out for some more exploring.

Priscilla decided she had to have a Patriots hat to properly cheer against them Saturday in their playoff game against the Steelers. And of course, I happened to know of a shop in the Copley Mall that had fitted sizes. And if I can find hats to fit my big-ass head in that shop, then anybody can. Mission one, completed and successful.

Mission two: post cards. No problem, bookstore downstairs, tons of Boston cards. My friends loaded up and mailed a bunch out later on that afternoon.

Mission three: A watchband for Luis. We found a shop where he got a great deal on a nice steel band ($20, he said all the ones he had looked at in NC were not near a nice and cost twice as much.)

No other missions really, just some sightseeing. I took everyone to the top of the Hancock Tower, which is the tallest the building in the city, and coincidentally where I used to work until they moved my job to another site. It was a cool clear day, so we were able to see for around 30-40 miles. They also have some great displays on the growth of the city, from its colonial past right up to the present.

We moved on to a quick lunch at Durgin Park in Fanueil Hall, which is a pretty decent restaurant and not too expensive. EJ, as usual, was light on the check, which pissed me off to no end. I put in my share of the money (actually quite a bit more than my share) and just walked outside. I think that maybe he got the idea at that point.

As we were going to be headed out for a long night, we decided that naps were in order. We retreated back to headquarters and sacked out for a few hours. Around 6 we got ourselves ready and headed out. It was Rachel’s birthday, and we were headed out on the town.

Rachel’s 24th birthday was on the twenty-ninth of December, but this was the best time for all of her friends to get together. I made all the arrangements. About twenty of us went to an Italian place in the North End (this is redundant if you are familiar with Boston) called La Summa. I had been there before and new it was outstanding and not too pricey. My entourage (6 of us) arrived promptly at 8, and we met Lisa, Denise, and Kristen walking down the street at the same time we were. So the nine of us arrived and ordered drinks and waited…a few more people, Sadiq and Paul trickled in. Still no guest of honor. Around 8:30 Rachel, Megan, Tara and the rest of the entourage decide to grace us with their presence. Rachel immediately came to me and apologized, as she knows tardiness is one of my pet peeves. But knowing her (she’s never late) and knowing who she was with (they are always late) I had expected it. And how on God’s earth could I be upset with her on HER night? I couldn’t. I wasn’t.

So we all ordered up, I got the house special. It was a concoction of sausage, chicken, seafood, shrimp, and who knows what else and it was heavenly. One of those dishes that just explodes across your palette when you eat it. Pure heaven (or so I thought until the next night, but that is another story.) Dessert was just as good, some kind of Chocolate Heart Attack. Rich and delicious beyond belief. Everyone just sat back with a collective sigh.

We paid our bill and headed out on the town. The bar of choice this night was the Beacon Hill Pub on Charles Street, which is a great and inexpensive local haunt. The main crowd is college students, but it tends to draw a little bit of everything, from college kids to bums.

BHP

1/3

By this point in my friend’s visit, I was exhausted, but we still had places to see, so I sucked it up and we headed out to see some of the sites. We wandered around downtown and followed the Freedom Trail for most of the afternoon. We came back and had an afternoon nap, then headed out for food. Christophe, Luis, Priscilla, Rachel and I headed out to Grillfish. Luis had expressed his desire beforehand to get some really good seafood while we were in town, and this restaurant had come highly recommended. With very good reason, as we came to learn. All of the dishes are either pan or grill cooked, as you might imagine from the name. After having some calamari and mussels for an appetizer, we moved on to our main courses. I had pan fried trout, which was far larger than I expected, and quite honestly one of the best seafood dishes I’d ever had. The fish was fried with tomatoes, scallions, and a very light sauce, it was delightful. Priscilla had scallops, which were large and plentiful, Rachel had a spicy shrimp dish whose name eludes me, as did Christophe. Luis went all out. He started out with a curried seafood bisque that just exploded across your palate. He then moved on to the grilled lobster, which was very good, though a little different in taste from traditionally boiled lobster. After settling back for a few minutes, we ordered up a few chocolate brownie Sundaes and some expressos. We sat back contentedly for about fifteen minutes, then settled up and headed out to meet up with Chris and EJ. The hadn’t wanted dinner, so we sent them off to a sports bar and met up with them there. We then cabbed over to Jake Ivory’s, since Chris wanted to go to a good piano bar. Jake’s has dueling pianos, where you can pay for the songs that are played. The more you pay, the more likely they’ll play it. It was a good night, full of 22 oz beers and dancing and singing. Chris and EJ were leaving at 6am the next morning, and we didn’t leave the bar until it closed at 2. Luckily, we had planned ahead. We cabbed it back to my place, and they ran upstairs and grabbed their pre-packed bags (and a bottle of booze) and headed right over to the airport to sleep by their gate. The rest of us just went to bed.
We woke up around 10am the next day to see off the rest of the crew. Rachel and I called a cab and sent Luis, Christophe, and Priscilla on there way. The visit was over. We ran back upstairs and crawled back into bed. I needed the rest.
It was a fun time and I enjoyed catching up with some old friends and showing them around the city I love so much.