My first office job, as a research analyst at John Hancock Insurance, may have been procured through a chance meeting at the local sex club, but by December of 1998 I’d won the hearts (or minds) of management over, had made several new friends (some of whom I’m still quite close with) and started dating a sweet boy who worked in Crabtree & Evelyn while he pursued an acting career at Emerson. It was as far from a sex club as one could get, and I embraced the possibility of something quieter and more stable as I approached the midpoint of my twenties.
Making my way into the office world, I’d been promoted to a higher-level position, where I was asked to review work rather than do all the research myself. The idea of an office career presented itself, but I was too young to invest in something so safe. Instead, I retained all my wildness, bringing it into the office in my own sartorial manner, joining my co-workers for bar-hopping nights of madness, entertaining overtime Saturday afternoons with martinis and joints and not making it back to the office more often than not. Best of times, worst of times, the usual province of a recent college grad – aimless and hopeful and somehow both too silly and too serious for my own good.
Living in the condo was ideal for a single young man – or a single young man and his boyfriend who occasionally spent the night. It was small and cozy, and entirely too tiny for a party of more than a few, which made the holiday gathering I was planning an absolutely ridiculous idea.
It quickly became the talk of the office, and it demanded Christmas decorations, a fully-stocked bar, and a few viewings of ‘Auntie Mame’. By the time the night of the party arrived, the excitement and anticipation had become a juggernaut of their own – all I had to do was gently tug at the reins of the evening, toss back a couple of cocktails, put on a pair of feathered wings, and open the door for the guests.
That holiday party was, from what little I can recall (and from the many pieces of it that had been told to me over the days and weeks that followed) a wild and debauched night. The guest book from that evening is filled with hilariously drunken ramblings from people I’ve known for decades, along with a number of people I don’t remember in the slightest. Looking through it for the first time in years, I am touched by how young we all were. A couple of people in it have already passed away. One of them – a fellow named John – wrote the following:
‘Alan – I promise you nothing, and in ‘nothing’ I promise you my respect and love. I would never discount anything that didn’t come at too high a price. I’ll never be able to afford you and it has nothing to do with how much I make. Keep being you. Love, John— This was probably more sentimental than I intended – please disregard.’
In ways too numerous and varied to fully and accurately convey, that encapsulates this section of my life, and this party in particular. As I mentioned, we were so young – so very, very young – and in that youth were the twin opportunities of protection and ruin, both waiting to exert their own pull, with all their accompanying traps and tricks and treachery.
For all the fun that was on record and in the memory of others, the only thing I really remember from that night is walking into the bedroom as the party was dying down, finding my boyfriend almost asleep in bed, and wanting nothing more than to be alone with him.
There were two more people who signed the guest book that evening – two new friends who would play a part in the years to come: JoAnn and Kira. We didn’t know then that twenty-five years later we would be taking a holiday stroll together…
