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The Last First Day of the Rest of My Life

BUZZ BUZZ! “Looks like another scorcher today folks! Eighty-eight degrees and—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—rising fast! But we’ve got twelve uninterrupted minutes of cool tunes coming up—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—so stick around for some Culture Club, Metallica and Phil Collins—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—right after these—”

My first conscious thought is that I want very much to stab myself in the eardrums to make it stop. But I smack Snooze instead, the blessed silence returns, and I bury my aching head beneath the pillow.

Soon, instead of cursing Buffalo’s Number One Home of the Eighties, Nineties and Beyond with all the fire and venom I can muster, I’m dreaming fitfully about Phil Collins. He’s holding a crisp white bouquet of stephanotis and riding naked on a unicycle down the aisle at my brother’s wedding….

BUZZ BUZZ! “—and the seventeenth K-HIT caller who can tell me Axl Rose’s real name—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—will win a pair of tickets for tomorrow night to see November Rain—” BUZZ BUZZ! “—the rockingest tribute band Buffalo has ever—” BUZZ BUZZ!

Oh, for God’s sake!

(SMACK!)

I lift the pillow and squint, one-eyed, at the glowing green numbers…. 8:10. Crap. But everything gets fuzzy and warm again and I drift off… Ahhh…there’s Phil again, and he looks lovely—

BUZZ BUZZ!

Grrrr…

(SMACK!)

I squint again… 8:23? Damn. I squint harder… 8:28! Shit!

Painfully, excruciatingly, I open the other eye. A pack of Canadian cigarettes next to the alarm clock comes slowly into focus….

No. Please no. Oh God, NO! NOT AGAIN!!!

I wipe the sleep from my face, panicking now. On the floor, ripped spandex shorts, a bicycle seat and a muddy tire….

Maybe it’s a dream. A bad, bad dream.

I pinch myself—hard—just in case, and wait.

Nothing.

Hoping against hope, I turn over….

Ugh. There he is—Jean-Jean. On my formerly very white Egyptian polished-cotton sateen jacquard sheets by Ralph Lauren. Still wearing that dirty baseball hat. Still sleeping. Snoring, even. The audacity.

Maybe he’s just a hallucination.

Yes, that’s it! A hallucination induced by alcohol poisoning!

But as last night’s events bleed through my slowly waking mind like a spreading stain, I recall that I only drank two and a half martinis over a four-hour period. Barely enough to give me a hangover, let alone mental delusions or visual disturbances of any kind.

But wait… Hold on a second… I did have several olives, come to think of it, and hadn’t I once read somewhere that gin-soaked olives have been known to cause, in some suggestible individuals, effects not unlike those of the storied tequila worm?

Perhaps not. But surely there was an explanation other than the obvious: That I’d slept with the idiotic French-Canadian bicycle messenger from work.

Again.

And yet here he is, all wrapped up in my fine 400-thread-count bedding like a birthday present from hell. Happy 29th, Holly! Here you go—humiliation incarnate. Hope you like it! What, pray tell, could I look forward to next year? A tumor?

But it isn’t my birthday. Thank God at least for that. Nope, it’s just a plain old Friday morning. Which means that last night’s senseless debauchery was both desperate and stupid, completely devoid of any excuse—rational, alcoholic, depressive or otherwise. Understandable for a Saturday night maybe, when the symptoms of singlehood flare up and otherwise disgraceful hookups might be forgiven, but on a Thursday?

I should be ashamed of myself. Beyond ashamed, really. Why hadn’t I just stayed home alone and watched an E.R. repeat with a cheap bottle of wine like all the other normal, hopeless, single women in Buffalo?

“Excuse me,” I say, and nudge him with my heel. Hard.

He turns over, grunts and smiles.

“Ahem!” I say loudly, covering myself.

“Heh?”

“Please, Jean-Jean, wake up! Allez vous!” I don’t know much French, but I can assure you my tone spoke volumes.

“Come hon now, ma petite. Believe me when I tell you I know you don’t want dat! For sure I know dat!”

“Jean-Jean, it’s like this, so please listen carefully. Last night was a mistake. I know I’ve said this before and I’m sorry, but this time I really mean it—I don’t want to see you anymore! So please just go home, okay? Please. Just go…”

He grins and rolls his eyes at me. “Dat’s what you said hlast week, ’Olly, and da week before dat! But you halways come back to Jean-Jean for more!”

“Well, I can promise you I’ll be sticking to my word this time and—”

“Eh!” He puts a nicotine-stained finger to my lips. “Why say someting you regret? Jean-Jean, you know, is twice da fun! And to love ’im is to deserve ’im more dan once, ma petite. Many, many more time dan dat! So now dat you ’ad ’im, you can’t forget. No never!”

With that, he hops out of bed and begins collecting the T-shirts and rags and rubber bands which comprise his work uniform.

“What does that even mean?” I moan to no one in particular, and fling his cigarettes toward the door. “Please hurry, will you? I’m late for work….”

“Jean-Jean is halways ’appy to oblige you, ’Olly. See you—layter!”

The cheeseball winks at me twice, in case I didn’t catch it the first time. He stuffs his crap into a mud-splattered backpack and swaggers out the door, leaving me alone with a beer bottle full of cigarette butts and unwelcome memories of last night’s awkward fumblings.

I pull the covers back up over my head for a few precious moments and vow to try and see the bright side of this latest romantic debacle. Like…at least I was getting some! That has to be worth something, right? And to be completely honest, Jean-Jean isn’t such a bad guy, anyway—he just needs to grow up a little. With some career counseling and maybe a Queer Eye makeover, he might even make a nice boyfriend for someone someday. Just not for me. In the meantime, what did it matter? Nobody would ever have to know…

Except moi, that is.

Fortunately, my history with Jean-Jean taught me that while the nausea and self-loathing born of my temporarily misplaced affections may linger for a while, eventually they dissipate along with most of the gory details. (Mother Nature is no fool—if the passage of time didn’t take the edge off our labor pains, our heartbreak, our bikini waxes, the human race probably would have died out aeons ago!) And thanks to a few modern amenities—namely condoms, soap and water—potentially unwelcome reminders of such ill-advised trysting are practically a thing of the past.

The regret, though…well I suppose that’s a little different. It never fully disappears. It just sort of fades away until it becomes a tiny little pinprick of shame, part of the growing list of things I wish I’d done differently, or not at all. Yes, the regret is unfortunately quite permanent. Kind of like the new grease spot on my pillowcase.

Two showers later—including a violent exfoliating session that would have skinned a lesser woman alive—I am officially late for work before I’ve even left my apartment.

No, the day has not begun well.

On difficult mornings such as these, I try to find solace in a series of uplifting aphorisms I’ve collected over the years. They help me salvage whatever shreds of optimism I can from the wreckage of my life. So I try to tell myself that the world is my oyster, that comedy is just tragedy plus time, that today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life?

The perfect mantra for chronically regretful yet eternally hopeful sorts like me. Most of the time, the simple, wonderful truth of it is enough to put the spring back in my step.

Only today the slate is not clean, the start is not fresh.

The start, in fact, stinks.