It happened. I haven’t even snarfed down my annual butterball turkey with extra stuffing when I was confronted at a dinner party last night with one of my least favorite questions on the planet. Right up there on the same level as, “How many people have you ever slept with?” is:

“What are you doing for New Years?”

As if I’ve even thought about that! I still haven’t even worked out the details of what I’m doing for Thanksgiving and it’s a week from today. I haven’t even started mentally preparing myself for the disgustingly glossy, commercial ‘cheer’ that is Christmas – a holiday I find not only stressful, but vomit inducing.

New Years conversations? Really? Already?

Ironically enough, I don’t find New Years vomit inducing (although I think January 1st may be our country’s national high for people puking). New Years instead is an annoyingly tricky holiday, and it doesn’t help that people (especially people in Manhattan) are obsessed with it. Everyone wants New Years to be a good time, but ultimately the pressure to have fun undermines the holiday. Plus it’s an opportunity for every bar, restaurant and half-decent club to rip off the American public.

Some of the abuse people have to look forward to on New Years Eve includes:

1. Buying three hundred dollar ‘tickets’ a month in advance to enter your typical douchey club on 27th street.

2. Being forced to hitchhike, hire a limo, or take the bus, since finding a free taxi in the city will be more competitive than purchasing a Hermes Birken bag.

3. Should you venture outside of Manhattan, being subject to drunk partiers irresponsible behind the wheel judgment.

And last, but perhaps most importantly:

4. That dreadful awkward ‘after the ball drops’ moment. I feel pretty confident that the first few nano-seconds of 2008 are inevitably the most uncomfortable of the entire year. I’d like some sort of award-winning psychologist to develop an informational pamphlet on how to handle those theoretically ‘joyous’ after midnight moments.

Technically, you’re supposed to embrace/kiss/slobber on your significant other in a state of euphoria as confetti swirls around you like in an uber-cheesy movie. So if you’re a serious couple at least you have a game plan. The out of control drunken nature of New Years however, has been known to cause fights between even the most stable couples. So even if you’re hitched, there’s no guarantee you and you loved one will be on speaking terms by the time the clock hits midnight, in which case you can pretend to mack on each other as the ball drops and welcome in the New Year secretly hating each other. Not fun.

Even less fun, is surviving this entire situation with someone you’re in a ‘grey relationship’ with. Suddenly, what you do together when the ball drops serves to define your entire relationship. Like if you kiss in front of everyone during those chaotic New Years moments (as if anyone’s watching…or cares) you suddenly run the risk of morphing into a ‘real’ couple. You could just pull each other into a joyous hug, that’s very grey appropriate. Or you can avoid eye contact all together. Or hide under a table with a bottle of champagne and wait for the moment to pass. Grey relationships thrive on grayness. The smog is the relationships fuel. So any social situation which calls for a clarification of your status is probably best avoided. Yet another reason why New Years often sucks.

Single and spending the holiday with friends is probably the least stressful option. Then you can spend the moments between 12:00 and 12:01 A.M. squirting champagne in one another’s faces and jumping around like apes. Unfortunately, a New Years level intake of alcohol usually makes people hornier than an in-heat hippopotamus on estrogen medication, so you run the risk of hooking up with one of your friends, or worse, some predatory sleazo at the bar.

So a New Years game plan where you don’t end up pissed, an embarrassment, insanely emotional or full of regret?

If someone comes up with something let me know, because apparently I have to start planning now.

***

Thank God the bras have still not caught the fashion bug. The ailment is limited to handbags and jewelry and anything else that is visible. That of course means no more buying from wholesale jewelry.