New Year Bants

"Bartender. Another bottle, please?”

"Thanks," she said as he put the bottle on the counter and retrieved the empty one.

He took one look at her slouched shoulders, sad eyes, and the empty chair next to her. "What's the problem; lonely on New Year's Eve?"

"Mind your business," she snapped.

The bartender shrugged. "Okay".

"Wait," she said as he turned away. She looked around the bar. "Your place is kinda empty, are you closing soon?”

The bartender smiled. "See the church in the corner?"

She smirked. "The one with the big cross on the roof?"

The bartender laughed.

"Yes. In about…," he looked at his wristwatch, "30 minutes, once the clock strikes 12, most of its members will make their way straight to my bar, and I'm going to make a lot of money because every single one of them is coming here to get drunk. You know, to celebrate being alive in the New Year. So, I'll be here till 5."

She smirked again. "From the church straight to the bar, won't Jesus be upset though?"

"Well, he did say, give unto Caesar."

"Yea, yea," she interrupted him: "Can I stay here till then?"

He shrugged again. "Sure."

"Thanks," she said as she took a gulp from her bottle.

The bar was relatively quiet. The only sounds came from speakers she could not see that played songs that she did not know. There was a huge clock hanging over the entrance, and every three minutes the bartender looked at it and rubbed his palms in anticipation.

She rolled her eyes. Ridiculous, she thought. Just absolutely ridiculous.

The clock finally struck 12. And the bartender screamed in her face: "Happy New Year!”

"Whatever. Just give me another bottle," she replied.  

"Okay,” the bartender said with a big smile. "Okay."

In a few minutes, the bar started to fill up with people. All of them smiling, laughing, hugging and shouting over and over again

"Happy New Year!”

“We made it!”

“Thank God!"

The laughter, the shouting and the now louder music resulted in an awful merry din that had her rolling her eyes even more. After she gave cold looks to two people who tried to hug her and another who screamed “Happy New Year” at her, everyone else left her alone.

The intermission did not last long.

"Happy New Year." This time it was a man who had just taken the chair next to her.

"Don't try to hug me.”

He laughed. "I wasn't going to."

"Good."

He looked at her, his head tilted, his eyes amused.

"A shitty mood to be in on New Year’s Day, don't you think?"

She ignored him.

"It's the New Year, a smile wouldn't kill you."

She said nothing.

"Okay, maybe smiling isn't your thing," he said with a resigned shrug.

"And shutting up isn't yours."

"Excuse me?"

"Telling me to smile, be happy. Like you are getting paid for it. Seriously, what is there to be happy about?"

"How about being alive?”

"Alive? So is a brain-dead patient on life support, a cancer patient with only three months to live, a criminal who's just been sentenced to die, an orphan living on the streets. Oh, and a chicken that’s about to be slaughtered for lunch. They are all alive, but I can assure you they aren't happy."

"Wait, I don't…"

She interrupted him. "Sure, you've made it through the last 365 days without dying, doesn't mean you are going to survive the next 365 days. You could literally walk out of this place and get run over by a car. I could literally walk out of here and get mugged and shot and dumped in a gutter somewhere and it wouldn't even be tragic. It would all be part of a grand plan".

"What?"

"You know, the philosophy that all events have been predetermined by God or fate or some other bullshit."

"That’s just ... I don't believe that."

"Of course, you don't, because you'd like to think that your choices and actions matter but news flash honey, they don't! And neither does the New Year. It is just another fucking day!”

He stood there staring at her, completely stunned. The bartender gave him a walk-away-dude look. He started to, then changed his mind.

"What happened to you?" He asked

"Excuse me?"

"No offence but you sound incredibly bitter."

"What?"

"Sure, bad things happen. I know that. But good things happen too. We make mistakes. We are human and we are allowed to. But it's not about the mistakes. It’s about making up for them and the New Year is the perfect time to..."

"To what? Erase a lifetime of mistakes? Become a brand-new person? Leave the old you behind? And maybe ascend to sainthood while you are at it. You think you suddenly become a new person because the clock strikes 12 and the year changes?"

Another man walked to the counter, his steps swaying, his smile wide. He wasn’t drunk but he was halfway there.

“Tony! Two more bottles please!” He screamed at the bartender.

“I’m not carrying you off the floor tonight, Steve.”

“Not this year, Tony,” the man said through a hiccup. “I’m a changed man.”

See?! Her eyes said to her sitting companion.

The bartender caught this and laughed.

“She’s got a point dude, I know I’ll be carrying Steve off the floor tonight.”

“That is just one person,” the man said. “One person who loves his alcohol way too much. He’s no reason to judge the rest of us.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh please, you are all the same. Diving into the new year like it's some mythical pool of immortality. All expectant and hopeful and so hopelessly naïve. Thinking things will work out for you because you believe they will or because you made it in, and others didn't. Rubbish. Things will either work out or they won't. And more often than not, they don't. So, you all need to chill with the optimism; it's nauseating. In fact, if I had my way, all you dumb, naive, optimistic people wouldn't be let into the so-called New Year"

She turned back to the bartender: "Another one."

The bartender obliged.

The crowd got louder, their voices drowning out the music. The man looked on as everyone danced and laughed and drank. He could see it in their faces—this optimism, this hope that she clearly despised. The crowd seemed more drunk on this than the alcohol. She wasn’t wrong. People are expectant and hopeful and shamelessly naïve and—he paused as his thoughts came together—brave. People are brave too. He turned back to her.

"It's cowards who shouldn't be let into the new year.”

"What now?" She asked. The new bottle halfway to her lips.

"It's not optimistic people. It's cowards who should stay out of the New Year and it seems to me that you are one."

"You don't know me."

"I don't have to. You've sat here and listed reasons why we shouldn't care. Why it's all pointless. Why we shouldn't try. But your words are those of a person who has given up and who would rather wallow in self- pity than actually try. Giving up is easy. It is convenient, and comes with a long list of reasons that always appear reasonable. Why try, right? When you can sit here and convince others not to."

"Funny, because you look like you haven't tried a single day in your life," she said as she quickly scanned his jeans, t-shirt and old sneakers.

He laughed.

"Last year was the worst fucking year of my life. It was awful. I lost my fiancé."

"Lost? Like she ran away from you or she died?"

"Oh no, she's alive. But she's dead to me. The cheat. I lost my job. Six years I worked for that company and they let more than three dozen of us go without so much as an explanation or an apology. My Mum, she died, got hit by a bus actually. So maybe there is something to your rambling. So right now, I'm unemployed, miserably single—you know cos my ex died—and squatting in my friend's house because I can't afford to pay my own rent.

Don't get me wrong. I was very depressed, like ‘lie in the dark for weeks’ depressed. But finally, I decided that I could either lie there and whine about how much life was unfair to me or I could get up and move on.”

She clapped sarcastically. "Good for you”.

He shook his head.

"You don't get it. You are clearly hurting but you've sat here and acted like you have the monopoly on pain. Like you are the only one who is hurting and the rest of us are skipping through life with big fat smiles on our faces. But you are wrong. We all hurt. And some more than others, but that is life. Without pain, we would not know pleasure. Without sadness, we would not know happiness. It takes a really brave person to keep moving in a world that constantly gives you reasons not to. And you, you could be brave. But you'd rather be a pessimistic coward, who's determined to ruin the new year for everyone else."

"I am not a coward."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are. What’s the point of being alive if you are not going to live? You've got a new chance, a new year. Something a lot of people didn't get, and you won't even acknowledge or use it."

"And that makes me a coward?"

"Exactly. And maybe the world needs cowards, how else would we know the brave? But ask yourself though, does it have to be you?"

He turned back to the bartender: "I'd like my drink now."

"Happy New Year," he said to her as he took his drink and walked away.  

"What the hell?" She said as she watched him go.

The bartender shrugged: "Another drink?"

About the Author

Ezinne Njoku is a 23-year-old graduate of Mass Communication living in Lagos, Nigeria. She writes because she loves to, and hopes to continue to do so in a way that inspires.