New Year's Kiss by Brian Rowe

On a night that promised to be as basic as any other, I found myself trudging through eight inches of snow with my brother on my left side and his girlfriend on my right. With each shivery step there was the ill-desired prospect of over-crowded bars, all packed tight with inebriated tourists. Dustin had promised me one of the five stops would be a gay bar — in Reno, Nevada, this meant rubbing shoulders with leather daddies and drag queens shipped north from Las Vegas — and that we would be throwing our twenties down at the blackjack tables after we’d consumed at least seven amber ales. Since I only had six dollars and two nickels in my wallet, I figured I’d let my brother do most of the buying tonight.

I rested my freezing, chapped hands inside my jacket pockets as we made our way down an empty side street toward the first bar of the evening. I told my brother I would have what he was having, that I didn’t have much of an opinion on the matter. I wasn’t in the best of spirits. This would mark my third year in a row without a New Year’s kiss, my third year without a boyfriend. And this year I had zero chance of finding a guy, because unlike Los Angeles — where I’d lived for the past eight years, and where a thousand young twinks swarm the city like a gang of man-hungry zombies — the only cute young gays in Reno were either still in the closet or wearing enough perfume to be considered girls with jock straps. I nursed my mediocre beer, way too tart for my taste, and nonchalantly spilled most of it in a trashcan before heading back out into the piercing cold.

The gay bar, inexplicably named The Saloon but nicknamed Bright Star by the Reno gays, marked the fourth stop on our invisible checklist. My brother appeared more excited to step inside than I did, as if he assumed the place would answer all fifty of his questions about my lifestyle and my daily NC-17-rated practices. His girlfriend Kami held my hand for a moment as we made our way inside, clearly terrified that she was going to be swallowed whole by a couple of overweight lesbians.

The darkly lit, miniscule bar had a crowd of at least a hundred people, with barely any room to maneuver, and too loud an oldies soundtrack to make manageable conversation. While Dustin ordered me a gin and tonic, and Kami constantly darted her head back and forth as if she had exploding electrical wires implanted in her skull, I decided to fake that I was heading to the bathroom and scope out the best homosexual talent Reno had to offer. A lot of the noticeably hungry players were older bears on the lookout for their sweet, virginal cubs. Some appeared too old to be out past eight on a Friday night, and others, the more promising ones that looked under forty and cute enough to share a casual smooch with, seemed to be taken. I wasn’t looking for a date. I just wanted someone to hold hands with in those seconds before midnight, someone who looked less hideous than Frankenstein’s monster and had a set of teeth that wouldn’t mortify the strangers around me. After thirty minutes of non-talking and non-dancing, we departed the gay bar, Dustin and Kami holding hands, my hands becoming intimate only with the full glass of gin and tonic tucked away in my warm leather jacket.

“What time is it, Kami?” I asked, noticing that she was holding onto my brother with her left hand and texting one of her friends on her iPhone with her right. She didn’t answer me — with all the commotion on the sidewalk I could’ve shouted that there was wet fecal matter running down her dress and she would’ve answered me with an apathetic yawn — but I managed with one quick step and a bend of my torso to see on her phone that it was a few minutes past eleven. I had never gambled with my brother before, so I was looking forward to some terrific nonsense; plus, spending (Dustin’s) cash like crazy on the blackjack tables would be a reason to escape the frigid temperature.

But according to Kami, there was one more bar stop on our little adventure, a place so crowded that to walk from one end to the other would have been a feat akin to performing a death-defying high wire act. As soon as I passed the portly bouncer, as well as a large sign that strictly forbade outside alcohol from entering the premises, I pulled the tall glass of gin and tonic out of my jacket and barely avoided spilling more than half of it over a group of young, giggling Asian girls.

Dustin and Kami ordered some more drinks — I told them I was good for the next three months with my extra-large hangover in a cup — and we continued to mosey on through the massive crowd. With patience and determination, the three of us made it to the back of the bar, the room extending into a large seating area where there was actually room to breathe.

“I’m gonna use the bathroom,” Kami said. “Can you hold my drink?”

Instead of handing her Peachtree Martini to her lover boy, she dropped the drink in my hands. While she strutted into the ladies’ room, I enjoyed a couple tastes of her girly drink, a strong mix of flavors that included vodka, peaches, and orange juice.

But then I almost choked.

I turned to my left to see him.

Landon stood in the midst of a group of twenty-somethings, maybe eight in all, a Corona in his right hand and a cigarette in his left. While his friends were laughing and talking over each other, he seemed to be lost in his own little world, tapping his feet against the sticky hardwood floor, watching the local New Year’s coverage on the large television set with cool disinterest. He was 6’2, maybe 170 pounds, with short brown hair and a pair of piercing blue eyes. He was dressed like a hot nerd, doofy yet somehow unattainable, with a blue-and-purple checked long-sleeved, collared shirt, a black tie, and a large pair of dark-framed glasses resting atop his adorably pointy nose. When he turned to one of his friends and finally smiled, revealing a tantalizing set of pearly whites, my heartbeat accelerated and my nerves started performing uncontrollable jumping jacks. I noticed a few seconds later that my jaw was noticeably dropped down, a small speck of drool forming on my bottom lip.

“You OK?” my brother asked.

Kami returned from the bathroom and pulled the drink out of my hand. She tousled her hair before taking a sip. “What’s up? What’s going on?”

I turned my attention to the loving couple in front of me only for a second or two, when I felt a shoulder rub against mine. I turned to my left to see Landon make his way to the men’s room. Again, I caught my jaw losing control of itself, but I closed it back up before any of my spit could go further than the edge of my tongue.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I just recognize someone.”

“Oh really?” Kami asked. “Friend of yours?”

“Well, no, actually I’ve never met him.”

Dustin crossed his arms and looked to ponder this quandary as if he had a physics test to study for. Kami seemed to understand the predicament.

“Him? Is this a guy we’re talking about, Ryan?”

“Yes.”

“A cute guy?”

I tried not to blush. “Very.”

“Let me guess,” she said with a smile and a stroke of my brother’s right arm. “You guys have chatted online?”

I nodded but didn’t answer because I saw Landon exit the bathroom at that instant and start to walk back toward his friends, which, lucky for me, meant he had to brush by my shoulder a second time. I didn’t think I was going to say anything. But in his short march from the little hallway to my prominent left shoulder, I decided to go for it.

“Landon?”

He turned to me right away, and before I could follow up my first word with another, he smiled at me with that huge, infectious grin and wrapped his arms around me like I was a big brother he had been searching for all his life.

“Hi, Happy New Year’s,” he said, impersonally, and I wondered if he recognized me.

“Hi,” I said, my brother and his girlfriend looking on with anticipation. “It’s me, Ryan. We’ve chatted online. I’m from L.A. I work in —”

“Ryan!” Landon shouted. “You’re the casting guy, right?”

“That’s right!” He remembered.

He hugged me again, and then I decided to hug him back, taking this opportunity to feel the muscles on his shoulders and his tight little six-pack.

“Landon,” I said, brushing my hand against his, “this is my brother Dustin and his girlfriend Kami.”

We all exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, and I kept waiting for Landon to ditch me and go back to his group of friends, who were still talkative and rowdy at the back of the bar. But he stayed, and he asked questions about me, and he never stopped smiling, as if this little train stop at my station was his best surprise of the night. I wasn’t sure if he had any attraction toward me, but it felt special to be in the company of a young man, only one year younger than I, who was both supremely attractive and hilariously charming, the kind of sexy beast a more introverted and less queeny gay like myself could actually talk to.

At the point when I was scratching my brain for something to talk about, a friend of Landon’s, a pudgy, blond-haired simpleton who looked like he had never received a proper lesson on how to shave, grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him forward, telling him that the group was moving on to one of the casinos downtown. Before I could utter another word, Landon was starting to move away from me.

“Well, it was nice to finally —” he started.

“Yeah, for sure!” I butted in. “Can I get your number?”

It had been at least a year or more since I had an opportunity to ask another guy for his phone number — while my dating life had been plentiful in my college years, I had found myself hibernating in my creative work for the last few months. He hesitated for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to present such personal information. But he took a step toward me and told me the number, anyway.

“Text me!” he shouted as he maneuvered around my brother and made his way out of the bar. I could see him lighting up another cigarette as he stepped out into the chilly nighttime air.

“Ryan!” Kami shouted, slugging me on the shoulder much harder than she needed to. “He was cute!”

“You’re telling me.”

“And he was totally into you!”

I shook my head. No he wasn’t, I thought. Of course he wasn’t. No guys were into me. Especially any who look like that.

“He gave you his number!” Kami continued. “You should text him!”

I finished inputting his information into my iPhone. “He might’ve given me a false number. How sad will that be if I text him or call him and it’s not even him!”

“Well I think this is great,” she said. “You two look so good together!”

Kami turned around and made her way to the bathroom again, even though she had just peed ten minutes prior. My brother shrugged his shoulders regarding my run-in with the young man — being a straight jock type, albeit having no qualms about my sexual preferences, Dustin really had nothing to say.

“How’s your drink?” he asked.

I had forgotten I was still holding it. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I want to gamble a little bit before midnight.”

“Good idea.”

We stepped back out into the furious cold around 11:30. The roads were starting to de-clutter, and the sidewalks were surprisingly barren, as if a fierce, blustery wind had rolled into town, blowing all the tourists as far as Lake Tahoe. But it only took a minute to realize that everyone had migrated to downtown Virginia Street, four blocks up, where at midnight fireworks were to be shot up into the sky for an exuberant fifteen minute, action-packed show. The three of us walked side by side for the next few minutes, passing over so many stretches of black ice that I was astonished to arrive at Virginia Street with all three of us intact, still standing tall, without a single party-crushing blow to the head.

“You should text him,” Kami said.

“Yeah? What would I say?”

“Just tell him it was nice to finally meet. It’ll make him smile.”

We entered the Silver Mine casino, which was adjacent to Reno’s famous “Biggest Little City in the World” sign and the designated arch where the fireworks were going to be shooting off. Since it was already 11:35, we decided to abandon the blackjack and instead grab a quick drink before making our way outside for the fireworks.

I wanted to text Landon, but I had no idea what to text him. When Dustin handed me yet another dark amber ale, the idea popped into my head.

“I know what I’m gonna say.”

“You do?” Kami asked.

Again, Dustin had no interest or comment.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Landon for our entire walk to Virginia Street. It had only been a few minutes, but I already missed his heart-melting eyes, his adorable smile, his velvety skin, his striking, lofty cheekbones. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to see him again tonight.

I started inputting a text on my phone and decided not to think too hard about the words I was punching in, fearing I would psych myself out and cancel the text. I sent it before I could stop myself.

Kami noticed me grinning, and she pushed past my brother to grab hold of my jacket. “What did you say to him!”

“I said…” I didn’t finish the sentence. I liked teasing Kami.

“Tell me! Right now!”

She kept a strong grip on my jacket that suggested I would have to reveal my secrets no matter how much I wanted to keep them only for me. Even though she was a foot shorter than I was, she was wearing the man’s pants tonight.

“I told him that we were going to be under the arch at midnight, and that he should come find me.”

Kami didn’t respond so much as let out a loud wail that stunned even the loudest of celebrators in the adjacent casino area.

“This is so exciting!” she shouted, finally letting go of my jacket. “Oh my God, it’s so romantic!”

“Yeah, well, for all I know he could be on his way back to Carson City.”

She flicked me on my forehead. “Doofus! It’s time to think positive! It’s New Year’s, for God’s sakes. It’s time to give thanks.”

I did a double take. “Don’t you mean it’s a time for new beginnings?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

She wrapped her arms around Dustin, who by this point was probably more than a little aggravated that he hadn’t had a chance to gamble any of his money away yet. I glanced down at my phone to see that Landon hadn’t texted me back. It was 11:38.

At 11:45 I looked at my phone again. There was still no text from him. By now we were making our way through a depressing, surprisingly crowded area filled with tacky but colorful nickel slots.

“Anything?” Kami asked.

I didn’t even have the heart to voice my response. I just shook my head, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to text me back. It had been almost ten minutes. That was like twenty years in texting. He had given me his phone number, and he knew through our pretty well obvious flirtations that I was into him. He knew I was going to text him. He knew I knew he was going to have his phone on him. And yet he wasn’t texting me back. That was the surest sign of all.

Not. Interested.

I sighed and checked my phone again. 11:48. Still nothing.

“We should go outside now if we want to get a spot under the arch,” my brother said.

I nodded and followed the two of them, watching as Kami rested her head against Dustin’s right shoulder.

We made our way along a winding outdoor corridor, and I tried my best to stop constantly glancing at my cell phone. By the time we made it to Virginia Street, which was closed to cars between the intersections of 2^nd and 6^thStreets, the entire area had become an infestation of pedestrians, hundreds of people standing around, mumbling, no specific words seeming to escape anyone’s chattering mouths. It was so loud that I couldn’t hear myself think, so I focused on following Kami and Dustin to the right side of the arch, where there was a modicum of room to cozy up with over-excited strangers.

The sign itself, right above my head, pulsating with bright yellow lights as if it was meant to be a precursor to the upcoming fireworks display, appeared to have been fixed just in time for the New Year’s festivities. On a recent trip to Reno I had headed downtown for a night out with two high school friends, only to discover the famous sign suffering from a bad case of cancer. “The Biggest Little City in the World” had been reduced to “The Biggest Little City World,” which I thought could make a great title for a Ray Bradbury short story, and the “O” in “Reno” had faded to make the big letters stand for one of the main characters of an animated Nickelodeon TV staple. But tonight the sign had strength in every inch of its foundation, gleaming its lights over all the spectators waiting in the numbing temperature for a free sky spectacular.

“Did he ever text you back?” Kami asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t —”

Then I felt it against my leg, that wonderful vibration. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and held my breath as I clicked open the main screen.

The vibration hadn’t alerted me to a missed text from Landon.

It had alerted me to a missed call.

“Oh my God!” I shouted, loud enough to spook a family of four standing right behind me.

“What is it?” Kami asked, diverting her attention away from her boyfriend for a moment.

“He called me! I don’t believe it!”

“Ryan! Oh my God! Call him back! What time is it?”

I checked. Sweet Jesus. “11:53! Oh, holy crap!”

“Call him!” Kami screamed. “Call him right now!”

“I am!”

I was so embarrassingly excited that it took me three tries to successfully dial his number, trying my best not to drop the slippery phone on the icy cement. Finally I heard ringing, and I smiled nervously at Kami as I awaited Landon’s response.

On the fourth ring, Landon picked up his phone, but I could barely hear him. He proceeded to talk for the next few seconds, but the only words I could decipher were “hey” and “street.”

“Landon! Landon! Are you there! I can’t hear you!”

All I could hear was chaotic screaming through the phone, like a dozen homeless men and women were trying to claw it away from the poor boy.

“Landon! I’ll try you again!”

I hung up and quickly dialed his number again, but this time four rings became six, and the call went straight to voice-mail.

“What did he say?” Kami asked, her breath masking her face for a second, to the point where Dustin looked like he had his arms wrapped around a headless blow-up doll.

“I couldn’t hear him,” I said, before dialing his number a third time. Again, it went to voice-mail. “Crap! What do I do! I don’t want to look desperate!”

“What time is it?” Kami asked.

I could hear the rumbling in the large crowd becoming louder by the second, everyone anticipating that magical minute when time stands still, friends and lovers embrace, and chapped lips meet chapped lips to form wet, salty drool.

My phone didn’t light up for a moment, and I feared it had gone dead. When the light finally came back, I breathed a sigh of relief, only to see that I had a missed call from Landon.

“Shit!”

“What time is it?” Kami repeated, louder this time.

I checked. “11:56!”

“Just text him!” she shouted. “Text him where you are!”

Good idea. “OK. Here goes!”

“Did you do it?” Kami had her arms wrapped around Dustin, who was watching our shouting match back and forth with varied amounts of interest.

I texted Landon my location and stashed my phone into my right jeans pocket.

“Now,” I said, smiling at Kami and standing up high on my tippy-toes, “we pray!”

“He has to find you!” Kami shouted. “He has to! He just has to, Ryan! My God!”

I crossed my arms, shivered big time, and scanned the tops of a thousand heads in hopes of spotting the tall brunet beauty.

I checked my phone. 11:58.

“Do you see him?” Kami shouted.

I didn’t. I surveyed the line of people hovering near the casino, as well as the stragglers dancing on the sidewalk. I turned around in hopes that he would be coming at me from behind, but he wasn’t among that crowd, either.

11:59.

“It’s time!” my brother shouted. I glanced at Kami to see the world’s most depressing frown plastered on her typically glowing face.

But then…

“RYAN!”

The shout came from the left of me. My heart leapt into my throat as I jumped back up to my tippy-toes and scanned the left side of Virginia Street. Landon was walking toward me, maneuvering through the raucous crowd, revealing that smile of his that made my frozen body completely melt from head to toe.

Thirty seconds or more might have passed before we were face to face, but it felt like no more than two. One second he was across the way, a tiny bobbing head in the distance, and the next he was standing right in front of me, holding my hands in his, tilting his forehead against mine, and giggling like a naughty schoolboy who had skipped class to make out with his most desirable crush.

“You made it,” I said.

“TEN! NINE! EIGHT!” People were screaming at the tops of their lungs.

“OH MY GOD!” Kami shouted, noticing for the first time that pretty boy Landon had arrived just in time. She jumped up into the air, twice, before wrapping her arms around my brother and averting her eyes, finally, away from me.

Landon wouldn’t stop smiling as he held me tight, staring at me with exuberant glee as if we were celebrating five amazing years together. He bowed his head down before moving in closer toward my lips.

“THREE! TWO! ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

I felt his warm breath graze against my left cheek, and the clamor of boisterous cheers drained away from all my senses. I closed my eyes and found his lips, soft and inviting, open just enough to let me in. The kiss lasted only a second or two, but it felt like a golden eternity, a moment in time forever sketched in my memory.

When our lips parted, we both were brought back to the present by the deafening crash of fireworks above us. We smiled at each other again, recognizing the luck, randomness, and cosmic beauty of this perfect moment, before turning our attention to the rainbow of heavenly colors above.