Out With the Old, In With the New

By Nan DePlume

Installment Ten: In which our hero flings herself into a relationship and a new year. 

I can’t believe it: I’m actually looking forward to New Year’s Eve. I have a checkered history—well, with pretty much everything—but especially with this holiday.

Here’s just one example: When I was in my early 30s, my friend Carol and I decided to celebrate New Year’s ski-bunny style, even though we were hazards on the slopes. While waiting in the gear-rental line, I spotted exactly the kind of man I went for back in the ‘90s: goateed, lanky, and louche. His offhand ski clothes—heavy on the flannel, light on the nylon—made him look more like a grunge musician than a skier, or even a snowboarder. Think Chris Cornell in Soundgarden’s heyday.

Best of all, he seemed to be eying me as much as I was eying him. But as someone congenitally unable to flirt, I had trouble holding his gaze, or even mustering much of a smile. So the Satanic Lord (the nickname conferred the moment I spotted him) got his gear and sloped off to the slopes.

That night, Carol and I went to a rowdy bar, where I fought the “is that all there is?” malaise that besets me most New Year’s. At the stroke of midnight, I tried to feel and look optimistic as my friend and I stood among a crowd of couples cramming tongues down each other’s throats. Then suddenly, a face emerged from the crowd to deliver a tongue-less but nonetheless urgent kiss.

My instinctual and very startled reaction was to shove the guy and bellow a resounding “Fuck off!” When he stepped back, I saw it was none other than the Satanic Lord. Unable to believe my eyes or the situation, I froze, voiceless. He shrugged and took off.

After Carol gave me a drunken pep talk, I set off to find my Lord. I searched the bar, but no luck. He’d likely left, since getting cursed and shoved in the first minute of the New Year may have felt inauspicious. But probably not as depressing as my sense of being doomed not just for a year, but maybe for a lifetime.

* * * *

A decade or two later, not only do I have a New Year’s date, I may even be in a bona fide relationship. One helped along not by Cupid, but my mother.

Other mothers would have worried, but mine seemed to relish each link in my long chain of serial monogamy. Once I overheard her tell her water-aerobics group, “Nan goes through men like she turns the pages of a book.” Sitting poolside, watching mom and the other Dippy Dolphins stretch and twist in sunglasses and rubber flower-bedecked bathing caps, I felt glamorous and a shade dangerous. Like a character in, well…a book.

But somewhere after 40, the romantic game began to feel more frantic than fun: musical chairs with the chair supply dwindling fast. My choice seemed to be teaming up with one of the “meh” men who was still playing, or finding myself standing alone when the music stopped. So I withdrew from the game, at least for long stretches.

Then mom, in her techno-klutz way, used Facebook to put Mitchell and I back in touch ten years after geographical distance and emotional caution had ended our relationship. Now he lives not on the other side of the country, but in L.A., which is just an hour’s flight away. And I don’t know about Mitchell, but I’m starting to figure out that too much emotional caution can be just as dangerous as not enough.

If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend reconnecting with an ex—provided there’s been enough time to forget the squabbles and grudges of your initial foray, and to redevelop a sense of novelty and excitement regarding each other’s characters and bodies. With Mitchell and me, that last part was notable, since though I’d clearly remembered finding him incredibly sexy, rediscovering why felt damn thrilling. Plus, reconnecting with an old lover offers the security of knowing you won’t be confronted by maladroit techniques, unpleasant kinks, or ugly toes.

One proviso: make sure the ex in question is a good one. You don’t want to head into Round Twenty-Nine with the one you constantly fought with, or retest your patience with the guy who’d bored you so much, you’d wished he came with a “mute” button. You want someone who makes you think, laugh, and care. Who makes you feel good about yourself—especially the way you are when you’re with them. If they don’t do that for you, you’re better off flying solo. Which—at least for me—can be exhilarating.

Mitchell was definitely a good ex—and obviously, a hit with my mother. He was idealistic enough to go into education, and driven enough to found a public high-school program that’s launched hundreds of disadvantaged kids into college. Idiosyncratic enough to like bowling and Beckett, yet definitely not perfect. For instance, his taste in music is bland and a little annoying, and he looks like a scrawny greyhound when he dons his cycling gear before a ride. But man, he looks cute as hell shaking that pert cyclist’s ass to Taylor Swift…

* * * *

“I’m glad we’re celebrating New Year’s in San Francisco.” Mitchell’s voice is raspy from the trudge up Telegraph Hill.

“Me, too,” I pant. “Hope the fog stays off.” From previous New Year’s, I know that when the fog rolls in, the city’s fireworks display can dim to the point of looking like a couple of flashlights in a cloud.

We make it to the top of Union Street, a dead-end overlooking the glittering white lights of the Bay Bridge and the drunken throng gathered on the waterfront. Up here, the only other people are five sedate locals settled in on eastward-facing lawn chairs. We greet them, then stand in a spot that’s off to the side while still commanding a sweeping view. Mitchell pops the champagne, which tastes delicious, even out of plastic flutes. And there’s no fog.

When the fireworks start up, we watch with champagne in one hand, warming the other in each other’s back pockets. I voice the oohs and aahs fireworks have elicited in me since toddlerhood. Mitchell doesn’t make a sound, but each time I steal a glance, he looks as excited and childlike as I feel.

The finale ends in a deafening whiteout. We kiss and Mitchell’s beard, which he’s growing back at my request, scratches my chin in a delightful way. A way that tells me there’s another human being right here, creating friction with me—and seemingly, rather fond of me.

“You know what, Nan?” he says, pulling away so he can see my face. His expression holds some of the exhilaration it had during the fireworks. “You’re kind of sweet.”

“Sweet? I don’t get that one very often. Even I think I’m kind of bitter.”

“Hmm, do you think?” Mitchell cocks his head in feigned puzzlement. “Actually, you may not be quite bitter enough,” he says, switching over to feigned menace. “But I can fix that.”

At that moment, I decide that I not only love him, but I might want him around for the rest of my life. And I’m not even drunk.