New Year’s Eve 2019 was my first time trying coke. Twelve of us stood around in a circle in the bathroom of my dad’s Tribeca apartment. Our hookup was a short Italian kid my friend had gone to a small liberal arts college with. He worked in the diamond industry and fancied himself a regular Safdie brother. Well, I’m editorializing here, but there was something rather Uncut Gems about it all. Life, as they say, was a major motion picture.
My biological sister (this becomes relevant soon, I promise) and I had decided to “throw down,” much to our poor father’s chagrin. Bless that man, may he never read this essay. If he is, please stop reading now. We sent him off to a grownup party of his own and decked the halls accordingly. My ex and I were fresh off a trip to Art Basel Miami, where someone had paid $120 grand for a banana duct taped to a wall. So, when I say decked the halls, know that what I really mean is we taped a banana to the wall and called it a day.
By NYE 2019, I was five years out of high school, but my entire graduating class, it seemed, had still decided to show up to our party. I know this will come as a shock to you, but as it turns out, it’s really fucking annoying to find good plans on New Years, so even the popular kids who didn’t care if I lived or died were there. Oh, you were cool in high school? Go off, king. Now you’re at my (dad’s) house, drinking my new and unimproved Four Lokos, while I’m in the bathroom sniffing second rate cocaine from a young guido drug lord.
As we filed out of the bathroom, I locked eyes with myself in the mirror. I felt amazing. Electric. I felt like a rabid bunny. So glam. My brain had never before been filled with such brilliance. I teetered out into the living room in my high heels, eager to find someone to talk at.
Allow me to caveat this story with an important footnote. I refer now to one of the main characters as my sister. She is not my biological sister, it’s vital to note. She is one of my lifelong best friends, and our relationship is much closer to that of family than that of friends. So, when I say my sister filed out of that same bathroom with me, I mean my sister not by blood but by choice. We flitted around the party. Me and my sister. Another rabid bunny. Maybe it was my glossy beady eyes, but I couldn’t stop thinking about bunnies that night. We were a pair of coked up Energizer bunnies. We radiated. We buzzed.
It was then that I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. There she was, deep in a Lexapro/cocaine induced blackout. She wrapped her arm around me. Pulled me close. We kissed. Her lips were soft on mine. As we made out in the middle of the apartment, I was vaguely aware that half of my high school was watching, but I didn’t care. Darling, I was onstage. And for once in my life, that was precisely where I needed to be.
As we pulled away, though, a wave of guilt washed over me. My then boyfriend was standing right next to us. How dare I make out with someone else right in front of him? This time, I pulled him in close. Did it count as a dance floor makeout when the dance floor was your childhood living room?
We pulled apart and the incompleteness of the triangle itched my staticky brain. I’d made out with my “sister.” I’d made out with my boyfriend. We couldn’t not complete the triangle, could we? I pushed the two of them together. Your turn now! Sometimes, when intoxicated, my actions proceeded faster than my brain could process them. The two of them took my push and began to make out. God, guys, you didn’t need to seem so eager. But hey, who could blame them. They were hot! Besides, we’d all shared in the sanctity of the bathroom circle. What happened there, stayed there. Well, besides for the hundred plus people who looked on with rapt attention, and the however many people who then went on to read about it six years later in Hobart.
Finally, the triangle was complete. My coked up bunny brain could rest easy that night. Just kidding! I didn’t sleep at all, duh. All these years later, we can joke about that cursed night. We cringe in shame looking back at it though. I’m two years sober now. Not because of that New Years, but not totally in spite of it either. Suffice it to say, breakfast that next morning was Awkotowns, USA, populuation three. And by breakfast, yes, I do mean a white Monster and a bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos. Vom.
When I told my sister I was writing this piece she gave me the a-okay. “I give you full creative license,” she said. “I just do NOT want it to seem like there were weird subtextual libidinal vibes between the three of us.” Readers, there were not. Sometimes you just have to bring the party.
