BAR HAVOC: A LONG DECEMBER

It’s that time of year when it, you know, ends. Bar Havoc reflects on 2012 and apologizes to her liver; because let’s be honest, things like this don’t improve with age.

How the hell is it December already? How is it that one more year has trickled by and has come down to these past few weeks of 2012? I feel like someone is tightening a collar around my neck—just a few more weeks to make something of this year,

to not feel like it was a waste, to be proud of whoever I was this past year.

I don’t feel different; nothing will have changed as I ring in 2013 behind the bar per usual. I will be exactly where I was last year with no one to smooch, Godamnit. (Now taking applications for New Year’s smooch by the way…)

Ringing in 2012 with one photo break during a 16 hour bartending shift

Let’s recap 2012. Last December I was still harping over a break-up. I remember I took a lot of trains home to Rhode Island and I would write in a moleskin journal as I looked at the bare trees that rushed by. I would listen to Tori Amos and the words just flew from the tip of my pen.

I missed him so much, but looking back, I think I just didn’t have anything else to do.

I went on a 10-day cruise to seven different islands with friends in January and I didn’t do a damn thing. It was on the beach in Barbados that I realized I was past the age where I wanted to party on vacation. I got back from that trip so refreshed and so sure of myself. I had gotten a killer tan and gotten over my fear of karaoke, scuba dived shipwrecks, and held a monkey wearing a diaper. I danced, napped, swam, read, and forgot Boston existed. Turns out it did; and when I got home, things weren’t so different after all.

I went on a few dates with boys I met at bars in 2012. I went out drinking with bartenders I met at bars. I left the boys because they weren’t bartenders and the bartenders left me because there was always someone better. It’s almost 2013 and all of those things are still happening.

I got promoted at both of my jobs in 2012, and at another I started writing things that people actually read. I just won Dirty Water TV’s award for best nightlife blogger. I am most happy with this aspect of my life; I know now that what I am doing now is what I will be doing for the rest of my life.

I feel ever so sorry for my liver.

It’s 5 p.m. and we’re heading into the second week of December. I’m still in my pajamas. I slept through breakfast and had pizza and orange soda for lunch. I will probably be late for work. My shift starts at 6 p.m. Yes, 2012 was a delight, a success, and I am certainly not at all a mess. Bring it on December. Give me all you’ve got.