on appropriate hangovers

and so it always happens this time of year that I get a bee in my bonnet about how I want to feel about New Years. Either it's carefully cultivated indifference ("oh, I dunno. Whatever, no big deal"), or a desperate need for the big-kiss-at-the-end-of-the-countdown cheese, as seen in romantic comedies. This year I'm getting a feeling for the latter plus a new desire to just... well.. sort of get shitfaced in some way or other. And nurture a hangover maybe.

Whenever I express this desire to others, this is how the conversation goes:

them: why on earth would you want to do that?

me: because I've never had a hangover before, and I thought this was a good occasion to do it.

t: well you've never jumped off the Harbour Bridge before either.

m: yes, but that's terminal. People have hangovers all the time and I want to know what that's
like. Also, I've never been vomity drunk before.

t: why the fuck would you want to feel like that?

m: because people are always going on about how wasted they were/are and I just want to know what they're talking about. It's like a need for empathy.

t: you don't need any empathy! It's a horrible feeling!

m: well you do it all the time.

t: yes, but it's awful.

m: so why do you do it?

t: I don't do it to get a hangover or vomit!

m: yes but you still drink with the knowledge that you'll probably get a hangover and possibly get drunk. If it's so awful why don't you just not drink?

t: shut up, dick!

OK, so they don't end it like that. But I had to end the script somewhere.

What irritates me is the patronising "oh, I've been there, and you don't want to do that, little one" tone that seems to permeate this conversation. Drinking and getting shitfaced is, from what I've seen, a large part of this culture, and what confounds me is the cultivation of the idea of "accidental" shitfacery, when, quite clearly, in this town at least, the act of drinking is a deliberate stepping stone to shitfacery. So it's OK for the drinker to decide to get shit-faced while drinking, under the pretence of "accidental shitfacery", but not OK for me to decide to get shitfaced to see what a hangover is like?

Maybe the hangover curiosity stems from the one (and last, he vows) time that Stephen got shitfaced - on the night before the day before our wedding. I'd had a rather pleasant hen's night bowling while he played poker and drank Soju in the wedding marquee until he fell off his chair multiple times and vomited in the garden. The next morning, when we were due to complete a not entirely small amount of gardening to get the grounds ready for everything, his brother answered the phone blearily and told me that Stephen wasn't going to make it to the phone. My dependable, always there Stephen, not coming to phone when there was a heap of sweaty labour to be done? I had never experienced a hangover so first hand before. By afternoon, I still hadn't seen my groom-to-be and I was miserable. I remember sitting in the grass with a trowel in one hand and 20 little pots of pink flowers to be planted on the ground next to me, and crying. All because of Stephen's Hangover.

Later, when I asked why he couldn't physically have dragged himself out of bed and helped me, he told me that having a hangover felt like death. I don't know how that feels and I guess ever since then I've wanted some kind of empathy. I could have just gotten shitfaced a few days after when the wedding madness was over, but it would have seemed... unpoetic. I could have got shitfaced last New Years, but... to be honest, I can't actually remember what I did last New Years, which is just my point. I want to remember my New Years. And ironically, forgetting it in a drunken stupor would actually be more memorable than what I did last year. Which isn't to say that last New Year's was crap, I'm sure it was pleasant, but it was so pleasant that I forgot it. Maybe a bit of debauchery this year will mark the occasion in a more appropriate fashion.

We'll see.

(and it's not lost on me that I'm extremely privileged this is my only New Year concern)

breakfast:
rice and left over scallops, finished with a plate of cherries. I am so lucky to live here.