I been wracking my memory

I've been wracking my memory for some new year's memoir. I have squeezed out a few.

Back before I married my kid's father, when I was still in law school but he was out earning a living, he bought us tickets to a New Year's Eve party in an old art deco hotel in St. Paul. There was going to be a swing band and a cash bar. I have avoided reasons to get dressed up most of my life. He-wh0-shall-never-be-named should have known from this single date that I didn't have the chops to be his wife. And I should have known that he was not the guy for me, also based on this single night. Maybe I'll write more about this evening some day but for this evening's trip down memory lane, I will limit myself to my standout memory from it. This particular New Year's, the hotel, the swing band, I think it might be the only date I've ever had on New Year's. I have spent many New Year's Eve's with people but this is probably the only one that required special shopping for evening wear. I actually had to buy a pair of high heels just for this night. Is someone ever going to explain to me why anyone wears spiky high heels to go dancing? I admit that I never have given high heels much of a chance. I don't get them.

Anyway. to the standout memory. We got dressed up, we drove downtown, we got a table, one of those little cocktail tables. And ordered drinks. Then we danced to that swing band. This was fun. Then he got way drunk. This was the night I realized he had a drinking problem. He kept drinking and drinking. I got drunk, too, but I remember dimly deciding that I was going to have to stop, that I couldn't possibly keep up with his drinking pace. I decided, right there in the old Commodore Hotel ballroom, with F. Scott Fitzgerald Daisies-wannabes and Gatsby-wannabees partying all around me, that I was going to have to discipline my drinking. I had this little epiphany in which I flashed back and realized that I had been more or less keeping up with him when he drank. In this little moment, I resolved to stop drinking when I was out with him. Later, when I would order cokes in bars, he used to get angry at me. He said spending a buck for a coke in a bar (this was the eighties) was a waste of money. I said spending if spending a buck for a coke was a waste of money, wasn't it also a waste to spend a buck on a beer? Anyway, I concluded, in the middle of my one New Year's Eve date, that my boyfriend was a lush. And I married him