BEN CLARKSON FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL
'Happy New Year," said the girl behind the till and she handed me a Styrofoam container of Thai. "Happy New Year," I said back and I handed her my cash.
Outside, I fumbled with the buttons on my coat and headed back to the apartment on Pendrell Street. This was a few years ago, but I remember the blue-on-black compound of early night sky. The sudden, almost festive hits of red and white light from anonymous cars as they rolled through Vancouver's West End; the steam skidding from laundry-room vents. It was my 31st New Year's Eve and, like with the four New Year's Eves before this one, I planned to be asleep by 10, my head under the muffling Hudson's Bay blanket to keep midnight cheers from waking me.
From my apartment's window, you could see all the action on the street below. Wasted youths were heading to parties or bars; the women with bare arms, and hands jammed in their armpits for warmth; their boyfriends making bawdy jokes and calling to each other like sportsmen from sidewalk to sidewalk. I saw one couple dodge a catastrophic run-in with a car that was peeling off Davie Street. You could hear them laughing.
I had a movie lined up, but somehow it now felt depressing to think of watching The Family Stone when Christmas itself was over and the rest of the world had moved on. I resorted to a novel I'd been poking through.
It's hard to concentrate on a book, though, when you can hear those voices – foolishly happy – outside. Eventually I got up to look out at them all some more, and found myself tugging my coat back on, heading out into the night, thinking I could walk till I got tired. I brought my iPod, too, and as I made my way down to the water's edge, I listened to a recording an old friend of mine had made – he was reciting A Child's Christmas in Wales. Bernard's a true Welshman and has that lovely liquor-buoyed lilt to his voice. But listening to the story made me unaccountably sad; I pulled out the earphones before it was halfway through. A couple I knew was walking toward me anyway, laden with bags of booze and gourmet Cheezies. I steeled myself for their smiles.
"Where are you going tonight?" they wanted to know.
"Oh, nowhere," I said. "I never really get into New Year's." Which was true, but felt like a sad lie when I saw their guileless, sympathetic faces. They offered to bring me along to their own party down the street and I found myself making exaggerated claims about my distaste for late nights, how I was exhausted from work and was going to pass out in an hour anyway. They each gave me a hug, making me promise we'd grab a coffee soon, and then they waved their mittened goodbye.
I watched them disappear around the lamp-lit corner, and then continued on my way to the water.
It was far too cold on the beach, so the only people there were myself and a couple of drunk men making up their cardboard beds for the night. The water was more sound than anything else, a kind of black, heaving space where the lights across the bay came to an end. I remember its miniature crashes against the shore, the constant, slow beat. And I thought how strange it was that this constant work went on, whether myself or the drunk men in their cardboard beds were there. How that sound of the waves would beat on, uncaring, through the rum-and-Cokes, the sequined skirts, the halting first verse of Auld Lang Syne, all the tiny holidays.
For a moment there, nearly laughing at my maudlin state, I thought I'd follow my friends and call them up from the door of their building, tell them I'd changed my mind; I walked a block along the shore, the sand munching pleasantly beneath my feet. I figured I could still grab some off-sales from a pub, I could still show up and be the unexpected guest. People would shout from the couch and the kitchen, and I'd forget all about this weird quiet moment at the water.
I'd almost made my way back to the sidewalk when something slipped in my head and I needed to sit down on a frost-mossed log. The truth was, I wanted to be alone for New Year's Eve. Or I wanted to want that anyway, which was almost the same thing.
I wondered what my old boyfriend was up to that night and thought briefly, recklessly, about calling him up. But then I thought better of it. All I needed, really, was to get myself home and to fall asleep. When I woke, it would be a new year, with all those blank calendar squares in their neat and anonymous rows.
When I woke there wouldn't be this unsettling sense that something was supposed to happen. I wouldn't feel any longer that a walk on the beach was not enough, or that the sound of the tide was embarrassing to witness. I turned toward home, at last, thinking maybe next year.
Michael Harris lives in Toronto.