#and literally I wouldn’t leave the condo/balcony until I read it

[thequietguynextdoor]

.

[sexandwistfulness]

1/1/20, part i (or, torch ginger flower gins and tonic)

It is minutes away from the end of the decade and I am livid. For some reason, since we got to this party, the DJ has refused to play a single song from the 2010s.

Daft Punk's One More Time. Britney Spears' Toxic. Rihanna's SOS. "This is decade erasure," I announce with fury.

My companions tonight in Kuala Lumpur are three bi boys drinking torch ginger flower gins and tonic. For the benefit of the reader, let us know them by their apparel: there's Bomber Jacket and Marxist Tee and Ralph Lauren Polo, all relatively new friends.

They didn't know each other before tonight, but I think I've done a fine job bringing them together. They instantly vibe.

Bomber Jacket matches my anger. "Where's Lanaaaaaaa?" he calls out. "Blue Jeans was 2011. If I were spinning I'd just play all of Ultraviolence. That was 2014. Iconic."

An acquaintance of Marxist Tee's and mine suddenly pops out of nowhere, escaping her boyfriend to knock her vodka soda to our gins and tonic in celebration.

"Oh my God! You're in town," she notes with delight. Then she looks at, around, and behind me. "Is —— here too?", meaning Gallatin Girl, Gemini Girl, Guarded and Goal-Oriented Girl, the frizzy-haired workaholic who collects novelty earrings and Azerbaijani rugs, who would always tell me to buy her a rug whenever I noticed the work of any weaver. I never got the chance to.

She notices, just a beat too late, the way I fix a smile and my bi boys all wince and surround me in a protective circle. "Oh, no," I airily admit. "We're not together anymore."

The acquaintance rapidly disappears and everyone scrambles to find a new conversation topic, even as I assure everyone that I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm on to bigger and better things, I'm over it, so on, so forth.

What's Love by Fat Joe featuring Ashanti and Ja Rule comes up. "Absolutely not a fucking 2010s song," I shake my head. "Everything about Fat Joe, Ashanti, or Ja Rule screams 2001." God, I feel fucking old.

Ralph Lauren Polo finishes his G&T and decides to go for a beer instead. He's the most buttoned-up among us: he has his London School of Economics degree, dropped a great job at an oil company to work as an aviation regulator. He mentions no men or women heavy on his mind. His life is throwing his hands up in frustration upon reading the news. He gravitates to me, a former journalist, thinking I have insight and contacts and insider information. I don't think I have any, but sometimes I make something up to amuse myself.

It is 11:50pm on December 31, 2019, and Usher's Yeah comes up. What is going on? This DJ is acting like the 2010s were a musical wasteland. No, sir. We have just ten minutes to rail against this stunningly tone-deaf send-off to the last decade by naming the first highlights that come to us.

Marxist Tee: "The entire fucking work of Kendrick Lamar, bitch."

Bomber Jacket: "Shake It Off. Someone Like You. Shape of You, Stay With Me. Somebody That I Used To Know!"

Ralph Lauren Polo: "Uhhh... Despacito?"

"The entire fucking work of Lorde, our lord and savior." "Havana!" "How about... Old Town Road?" "Take Me To Church!" "Fuck it, the DJ can even play Blurred Lines if he wants as long as he plays something else from the last ten years too."

Marxist Tee brings up a podcast he listened to earlier today which centered on the fact that people often blurred the 00s and 10s together because these were decades that didn't have names — or awkward ones. Noughts. Teens. "At least we're entering the Twenties now." "Great, like I want more depression."

I spent most of the decade working news. These were momentous times. But they were not, by any means, particularly happy ones.

Bomber Jacket is still listing his top pop singles from the teens, although really all he's doing is alternating between Lana Del Rey, Ariana Grande, and Taylor Swift. "Cola! 22! Thank U, Next! God Is A Woman! Blank Space! Summertime Sadness! 7 Rings!"

On that final note I launch impromptu into the melody from 7 Rings, the melody from The Sound of Music:

"Drone strikes and ISIS, "And Brexit for Britain. "Wish Game of Thrones season eight wasn't written. "Planet is dying, and Trump needs no mention— "These are just some of the Terrible Teens."

"Fuck off," Marxist Tee laughs, almost spitting his drink. "That's the worst thing I've heard."

Someone is letting out fireworks five minutes early. Everyone cheers at first until they check their phones and realizes that it's not time yet. The premature hugs are accepted nonetheless.

Everyone has their phone out: Stories, Snaps, clips to clog up their camera roll. I start to tap out an email just after midnight, and my friends notice. "Excuse me," someone, I think Bomber Jacket, says. "Are you writing an email? And it's not for work? Sir, this is the year 2020."

You wouldn't get it, I smile back at him.

For the next two hours the DJ continues to refuse to play any song released between 2010 and 2019. In fact, he literally plays Toxic again, which admittedly does not go unappreciated by my friends, but remains to me practically a crime against humanity.

As the DJ wraps up, Marxist Tee finds an aux cable from someone and shoves our criminal music man aside to plug in Kanye's Monster. A cheer erupts, and everyone knows all the words to Nicki Minaj's verse.

Finally spent, we take the twenty minute walk to my car. Walking with mild dread down a busy, familiar street, I turn behind and look up to see Gallatin Girl's condo building, her unit twenty-one stories up, the only balcony with dangling plants jutting out through the railing — I should know, I was the one who moved those plants there from her previous apartment in the building next door, I was the one who watered them and faced them towards the sun.

And I stop to think about the carpets from Azerbaijan, my Muji pajamas, my back-issue Monocles and Bon Appetits, the terrible amateur watercolors I'd leave for her to find which she'd either quietly trash or put up on the bedroom wall, my toothbrush last seen sitting in the toothbrush holder in the bathroom, my Tide pens in the bedside drawer on my side of the bed, the bottles of white wine in the fridge she wouldn't drink unless she didn't have anything else to drink, all the flotsam and jetsam of the life I briefly shared with her. It was just months ago, but it feels like a whole different lifetime. It was just months ago, but a whole decade has passed. I take one last good look. I turn away, and I remember that it is January 1, 2020.