New Year’s Eve, right? Whoo whoo, yeah, greatest night of the year! XNZZzzzzz.
Who am I kidding? I have a limited tolerance for going out late to loud, crowded places, especially if it’s cold or damp out. I’m so sensitive, I can actually feel my feet starting to hurt and my eyelids drooping a week before the party starts. It’s amazing! I’m psychic!
On New Year’s Eve in particular, I’d much rather have people in, or hang out at friends’. They can be noisy, and I can be noisy, but I need the environment to be stable and soothing, preferably warm and dry. I like easy access to the bathroom, and I like to hear people talk over the music. This is why I’m dating a DJ and why my friendship with TSG makes SO MUCH SENSE.
The First Miracle
Sunday night was different from most New Year’s because while the Rapper had a DJ gig scheduled, he had also had a long and busy week, and so he was more than willing to make a pact that we would leave his party early and just. go. home. as soon as his set was over. Miracle!
With this contract in hand ahead of time, I felt strong enough to perform wardrobe anthropology and put together an Outfit, which in turn suggested some Hair, and by the time 10pm rolled around, I actually almost felt like going Out.
The party was just a block away, under a dank bridge, around the corner, up a short hill, around another corner and through an alley, to a post-industrial complex I never even realized was tucked back behind Queen Street. I got there by following people through the rain. I have no idea how anyone else found the place.
We stashed the Rapper’s gear on the concrete floor of “Room 3″– a photography studio by day– and then found our friends upstairs in the candle lit bricks-and-beams loft that must be someone’s dream office. Drink tickets were bought. Dancing was done. Numbers were counted down. Midnight was kind of low key because people who do like go out in Toronto don’t ever appear anywhere before midnight.
Then we went back downstairs for the Rapper’s set, after a ten-second detour to Room 2– a pulsating closet, cold like a meat locker, where a few scattered ravers were flailing about in front of a heart-shaped projection screen. In Room 3, people stood around drinking, nodding slightly to classic hip hop. A string of guys leaned on the wall near a spot where some linoleum was taped down to the floor while just one of their friends danced on it.
From there, things predictably went downhill. Bottles of water were going for $6. Groups of four and five people crowded into the bathroom together– not for any illicit reason but because there was exactly one stall and the line was so long. The ubiquitous Scene Crazy Guy stalked about in a floor-length Gore Tex jacket warming up to giving my friend the finger later. My friends began to frantically cycle between rooms 1 and 3, and after a while, I couldn’t keep up.
The Second Miracle
My whole being sighed in relief when the Rapper’s set ended and he willingly, miraculously gathered his things and headed for the door. The booker met us on our way out and helped us muscle through the crowd outside that was now pushing and shoving to get in for $40.
As we walked home, leaving the party to safely rage on without us to dawn and beyond, I truly felt at peace with the world– and maybe a little smug. Never had the air felt so fresh, the prospect of quiet so seductive!
It was then that we walked through the propped-open front door of our building, and up the debris-strewn staircase to our floor, and down our hallway dripping with bass and realized we hadn’t really left the party, we’d just walked to the opposite end of it.
There were people smoking in the stairs, others chasing each other up and down the hall. Our new neighbor leaned in the open doorway of her apartment, hard rock spilling out after her, drinking a glass of wine.
“Happy New Year, Eh?” She said, raising a glass like she was doing us a favour.
At the South end of the floor, a crush of people gave up trying to squeeze into an apartment and found seats on the floor in the hall. In an alcove to the right of our door, a couple argued, no laughed, no argued, no laughed, no argued, clumsily bumping a bottle of beer against the wall that butts up against our bathroom.
“It’s OK,” I told the Rapper as I bolted the our door behind me. “At least here we can go to the bathroom whenever we want.”
He grumbled and walked past me to take advantage of the privilege.
I started to worry. The Rapper is a pessimist. When he gets down, he can stay there for a long time. As the wind fell out of my sails and my smugness abated. I put on my pyjamas.
And then another miracle happened.
The Third Miracle
“Great, now they’ll be at this all night, grumble grumble grumble, grumble. We should have a freaking bake sale grumble grumble grumble. Take advantage, grumble grumble,” the Rapper said, dragging his feet from the bathroom to the bedroom.
“What?” I laughed.
“A bake sale,” he repeated angrily.
We have these kinds of conversations at least three times a day. It’s what makes the relationship work. Usually we have a good laugh at our newest inside joke and then go back to bitterly licking our wounds. Often I demand some kind of foot rub and then he digresses into retelling me the plots of old comic books until I remember myself and turn away to check my email, leaving him to orate to the back of my iBook.
I’m not exactly sure what made me reach for a bowl and a spoon just then. Maybe it was the sheer poetry of the suggestion– starting the New Year by turning a ridiculous negative into an even more ridiculous positive. Maybe it was the fact that I had leftover gingerbread cookie dough in the freezer that I didn’t want to eat myself.
“We’re doing this?” he asked me as I dug the rolling pin out of the dish rack. “Are you sure?
I grinned, eyes wide, manic at the prospect of getting my flour in my hair and then initiating an act of commerce.
Whatever the reason, suddenly, at the un-bakely hour of 2:30 AM, we were rushing around the apartment in a flurry of activity– me, measuring and mixing, he, gathering materials to make signs and makeshift tables– actively hoping for the parties to keep going.
“If they can just keep it up until four,” I said, “We can offer gingerbread AND chocolate chip.”
“I don’t think there’s any chance of that not happening,” he said, in his characteristic double-negative way. “How’s my sign?”
“Good. But instead of Eary AM Bake Sale, can we call it Ghetto Bake Sale? I think it will resonate better with our market. It’s a brand we can pull off.”
“OK,” he said, crumpling his crisply printed sign and reaching for a Sharpie marker. “But what if no one comes? What if they won’t buy our cookies?” A far-off despondent look settled into his eyes and threatened to take root.
“Don’t you get it?” I practically shouted. It doesn’t matter if they come. It doesn’t matter if they buy. As long as we get the bake sale set up in time, and people walk by it on their way out, we’ll be able to say we had a bake sale. We’ll be able to remember that time we had a bake sale in the doorway of our apartment, and we’ll be able to tell people about it.”
“This is an art project,” he said, suddenly reverent.
“Yes!” I nodded so emphatically, I almost put out my neck. “We’re doing for the sake of doing. It’s so Zen. It is its own reward. Let anything else that follows be beautiful on its own terms.”
“Should we use my cash box?” he asked.
“Yes! Good idea.”
And so, at 3:30 AM, we dragged an old, short Ikea book case to the door, upended a cardboard box from the Price Chopper, and laid out our wares: several batches of chocolate chip and gingerbread cookies.
The Rapper pulled up a chair and manned the till while I grabbed some tape to put up our signs.
The Fourth Miracle
The fourth miracle of New Year’s Eve happened before I could even get the signs on the wall: a gaggle of drunk people stumbled past our door and did an abrupt double-take.
“Oh my…”
“What the?”
“Are those… cookies?”
“Chocolate chip and gingerbread, two for a buck, totally vegan and nut free!” chimed the Rapper, falling back on his busking skills.
And they reached into their pockets and they paid for our cookies.
“Oh My God. THESE ARE STILL WARM!”
“Fresh from the oven!” The Rapper’s dimples danced in the hazy amber light of the hallway.
We barely had time to make change before more hungry hands descended on our plates, like vultures who didn’t mind paying, and in fact seemed enchanted by it.
A rasta-haired urban camper came running up to our doorway.
“It’s all vegan? All of it? Vegan? All? Really?”
“Why are you sitting here in this hut?” Someone wanted to know.
“This is our apartment.”
“But it’s so… small.”
“That’s a wall. The apartment continues on the other side of it.”
“Oh.”
“What charity is this for?” a guy in jeans and a rumpled polo shirt asked.
“No charity.”
“Are you students?”
“No.”
“I’ll take four.”
The first batch of buyers ran back to their party and told all their friends, and from then on we had a steady crowd of people gathered around our door, some buying cookies, others just tagging along for the spectacle. For about fifteen minutes, we were stars.
“You guys are amaaaazing. Can I take your picture?”
“These are the best cookies I have EVER eaten. BEST COOKIES EVER. You guys, i am so serious. Oh shit, where’s my beer?”
And then, the last chocolate chip cookie sold, and as quickly as they had come, the revelers dispersed. Left alone with just six dejected gingerbread cookies we retreated as quickly as we had come, withdrawing all the evidence of our trade into the apartment behind us.
The parties died down. The bass was shut off. And as quiet descended on the complex around us, and the sky lightened over the apartment building across the way, we counted our spoils.
We made $22.
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