When the waitress threw the drink in my face at the stroke of midnight, I was horrified, to say the least. When I got over the initial shock of what she had done, I tried opening my eyes, but they stung with a vodka vengeance. It must have been a “martini,” I thought to myself. I held back my tears of public humiliation and a botched New Year’s Eve, as my friend and co-worker, Danny Cohen, tried wiping the excess liquid from my face and party dress.
Just moments before, I had been planting a kiss on Danny’s roommate, Leeor, who had voluntarily offered himself up as my New Year’s Eve smooch buddy. It all started a few weeks earlier, when Danny graciously invited me out with a group of his closest friends to ring in 2014 at Segafredo’s on Brickell.
At first I was hesitant, because in the past, New Year’s Eve had always been such a let down. Despite buying a fabulous dress, dinner and dancing, it always ended up in some way, shape or form, as a depressing debacle. The date would be wrong, the dinner would be ungodly expensive and the dancing? Well, put it this way: I’m way past the “clubbing it at LIV” age.
So, as most sane and reasonable adults do, I retired my ridiculous pipe dreams of the perfect New Year’s Eve night. Instead, I spent the last few years at home, in my furry pajamas, with a bottle of bubbly and the holiday blues. Watching the ball drop in Times Square wasn’t such a bad thing, but what girl doesn’t dream of more? Like that scene in the movie, “When Harry Met Sally.” Just before the stroke of midnight, Harry rushes to Sally’s side and admits his undying love for her and all of her crazy idiosyncrasies and then he sweeps her off her feet and in unison they fall into a deeply romantic, passionate kiss. Sigh. That’s why I accepted Danny’s invitation.
Besides, he sold it to me pretty hard. Danny promised the party would have great food, affordable drinks and a dynamic crowd. At first, I hemmed and hawed over the prospect because of a weird superstition I’d developed thanks to “When Harry Met Sally,” which I explained to Danny in no uncertain terms: “I can’t celebrate New Years Eve without kissing someone at midnight. It’s bad luck.”
Read the rest of my New Year’s Eve journey that turned into a very Thanksgiving Day kind of year at www.wsvn.com or shop for a new pair of boots featured in the blog at www.kokopalenki.com.