The Last Night of the 2010s

I spent the last night of the 2010s in a night club.

Not where I thought I’d be. It was winter vacation, and I had gone down to Nagoya to visit a couple friends, to do some on-location research for a novel project.

One of those friends from university invited me to a New Year’s party. Said it’d be pretty chill, lots of foreigners from around the world. Another friend and I came over to his place the night before. Played Mario Party, ate conbini food, watched that Saiki-K anime. Typical nerd behavior.

I loved Nagoya. Still do. I studied there for a year, fell in love with all its third-place quirks, the chip on its shoulder as the least-relevant metropolis in Japan. So much of my memories of university life come from evenings in Sakae, from walking home for an hour because last bus stopped way too early, from going to campus with girls who looked gorgeous and ready to rock no matter the occasion, no matter how bad the commute. I learned to cook in Nagoya. Learned about the perils of bureaucratic paperwork. Learned about the importance of tracking your finances and not buying a Sega Saturn on a whim for $35.

So, my return to my emotional homeland, on the last night of the 2010s.

It was fun revisiting old places, seeing old friends. Now I had a job in Japan, an actual future to take hold of. My newest web novel had just launched, and I was getting ready for so many more to come. Why not celebrate with booze and strangers?

And then December 31st came and I had a shocking reveal. This bar was pretty loud, pretty dark, and already a party by nine at night. Three thousand yen to get in, but unlimited refills of your single cup. Unlimited Mario Kart on a projector screen for those who gave up on being social.

We made a goal there at the start. Fifteen drinks, nine at night to three in the morning. Let’s meet cute people, wingman each other, get drunk as hell, and have a great time. And absolutely NO Mario Kart.

We met a group of Japanese girls, young like us, a bit shy in a foreigner-heavy place. I was shy, my social anxiety flaring up anytime I wanted to flirt. But that was the whole challenge! The whole reason I joined this event!

Starting a conversation with total strangers was so difficult for me. Still is, even five years later. But with my more-social friends? With a circle of cool people, though… A few drinks in, I really felt like this could work. One of the girls was even kind of interested in me. Kind of shy too! A few more drinks and the whole world felt new.

Then at ten the bar shifted and turned into a club. The chairs and tables got pushed to the side. The music cranked up a few decibels. And all my growing confidence withered.

I was not prepared for the pulse-pounding music, for the sweaty Brazilians going wild on the newly minted dance floor. All my training had failed me. I knew how to overcome my anxiety when talking in a group, when getting comfortable and then splitting off for one-on-ones. I did NOT know how to keep this going when it was too loud to talk. When social barriers were still too high to lean in and whisper compliments in a girl’s ear.

The club overwhelmed me. The sensory overload of flashing lights and rumbling bass and seven standard drinks flared up in me a panic attack. I backed up away from the crowd and morphed into a wallflower.

I found no perks to doing this. But my brain wouldn’t let me join in the fun. Wouldn’t let me get past myself and just go wild. Even when I jumped into the crowd, danced away and let the rhythm wash over me, it was just a couple minutes before the bumping hips and endless songs pulled me out of it.

Constant second-guessing. I didn’t like the way I looked–loathed it. I didn’t know the way people thought of me–dreaded that. And here I was, surrounded by strangers dancing their cares away while my friends had slinked off to places unknown–probably Mario Kart–, while those cute Japanese girls one by one went home.

With no lifeline, no one to talk to, I just broke down and gave up.

My place was against the wall, away from the chaos, observing a moment of joy on the last night of the 2010s. A ghost, a camera, a vessel to capture this moment for the future–one that I am delivering on right now by writing this piece. Like a scene from a movie, I could watch from afar and enjoy without participating.

But, you know what? It wasn’t so bad. I spent a year in a remote rural town where the average age was fifty. Of course I wasn’t used to clubs. This was my first step into a larger world, as a wise man once said. No need to beat myself up about it.

When I thought about it that way, the end of the decade felt a lot clearer. I spent my teenage years, my early twenties, absorbed in the internet. Now, starting here, I’d finally get a chance to develop in the real world. Not just making friends, not just making out, not just becoming a famous author. But understanding myself, and showing that self off to everyone.

That wallflower bloomed, if for a few moments. Yeah, there was so much stuff I wanted to do in the 2010s, so many alternate paths, so many missed opportunities. But tonight was the last night of the 2010s–and tomorrow was the first day of the 2020s!

My decade. Ten years to conquer the world, and more importantly conquer myself.

A whole future unfolded before me as I clung against the pushed-back chairs. Traveling Japan, meeting new friends and old–finding a real job, no more JET–pushing the Quinlan Circle to be a real publisher, going to Comiket and selling out by noon–getting a Wikipedia page and showing it off on every single first date–actually, finally, joining in a dance club without getting totally overwhelmed.

Delusions of grandeur. But I was hungry. Ravenous with ambition and totally without a real plan to make it happen. A fire in my belly to make the new decade count.

Eventually, I reunited with my friends. That cute girl who was interested in me still stuck around with them, still chatted with me. We celebrated the countdown, ushered in the 2020s with upracious, heavily inebriated cheer. That fire didn’t go away.

I got to drink thirteen before I set down my cup and someone stole it. That was okay. My friends had given up by nine or ten. And it gave me time to sober up before the club kicked everyone out. To spend more time with the people who actually cared about me, not about the people I didn’t get to meet.

We poured out, rambling through the streets of Sakae causing a ruckus on our way to the subway station. I was way too loud. Shouted at strangers, cackled at my own jokes. Made that Japanese girl giggle a few times. Forgot to even get her LINE.

Then we all took Nagoya’s first train of the decade and peeled off to our apartments and hostels and capsule hotels.

We had no way of knowing those covered-up reports of a mystery disease one country over. We had no way of knowing that the economy would crash, that our jobs would be in peril, that the whole world would completely and permanently change over the next six months. For that brief moment in the deep night of January 1st, the new decade felt like an unlimited horizon.

I’ll never be able to recapture that feeling. I’ll never be able to bloom again against the wall of a club. But I don’t need to. That future didn’t happen, but I’m still going down the best path the world gave me. I’ve met a world of new friends. Traveled to so many places. Published a half-dozen books. Gone to a night club and somehow enjoyed it. I’m literally living my dreams from that night, just in a radically different context.

No point chasing an alternate past when I’m staring down a much stronger present.

(photo credit)

Read the full 2010s Retrospectives blog series.